La polizia brancola nel buio

"La Polizia brancola nel Buio" (The Police are blundering in the Dark) occupies a place of honor among the bizarre gialli. Even for a Giallo, "La Polizia brancola nel Buio" is quite strange: the film begins with a bang; a girl is driving on a road and suddenly a flat tire forces her to stop by the road. She looks around and sees someone nearby, and she asks him to help her in changing tires. He promptly goes there to help her and the girl says: "molto gentile" (that could be translated as - very nice of you). Suddenly the face of the girl changes from a smile to an expression of terror; the stranger had a pair of scissors in his hands, and starts running after her with murderous intentions. She runs through a forest, hitting branches, and losing one by one her upper clothes, till her tits are bare, it's then that the killer reaches her and slashes her throat. Sex and violence!

After a while, there's another girl on a road, and she's forced to stop her car in front of an inn, her car must be fixed, and to crown it all, rain starts to fall, a heavy rain. Will this girl survive the inn? Well, anyway, this girl is wet, she wants to get dry, so she warms herself by the fireplace, but not before taking all her clothes off. It seems that there's someone in the room, or is it just imagination? These two girls and other ones had been going to a villa nearby to make photo shoots. This villa is inhabited by odd characters; many film scenes are filmed inside its walls, the characters do nothing much, they dine, talk, play cards, and there is the owner of the villa that invented a camera that photographs thoughts… and so on. There are many people who think that this part of the film is boring, but I haven't felt this way – the dialogues are completely over-the-top, and things are weird and ridiculous. And just don't forget – there's a killer on the loose.

This film could be cool, if the director had some sense of style, but no, the death scenes and everything is kind of pedestrian. I think that the only way of breaking the limits of a low budget is through the imagination, and this (in a way) is something the filmmaker lacks, but the film is so uneven, incoherent and amateurish, that it has some strange kind of charm. Why? I don't know. I've seen this film twice already.

A reporter agrees to meet a model friend at an isolated villa. Turns out she's been stabbed to death by an unknown assassin. The owner of the villa is a wheelchair-bound man who has invented a device for photographing thoughts. Typically for these types of movies, the house is also populated by a selection of other oddballs and eccentrics.

The Police Are Blundering in the Dark is a bargain basement yet extremely strange giallo. It opens with a half-naked woman being chased by an unseen assailant and then being stabbed to death with a pair of scissors. But from hereon in it just gets stranger. The very idea of a machine that photographs thoughts is of course ludicrous. Its nearest giallo equivalent would be the ridiculous eye device in Dario Argento's Four Flies on Grey Velvet. But that's where the comparison ends, as this flick is hardly on the same level as Argento's one. It is a somewhat bizarre entry in the giallo sub-genre it does have to be admitted and for that alone it deserves at least some recognition. But it's strictly a movie for Euro-trash connoisseurs, it's not even going to necessarily appeal to giallo enthusiasts as it's a little bit too clunkily offbeat for its own good.

First, this movie was made years before 1975, but didn't get released until 1975, when long movie titles with "police" were trending, due to the popularity of eurocrime. This movie was meant to have been titled The Salad Garden or something, but they changed it. This however, is a cheap and poorly executed province giallo with at least one recognizable face, most other actors you probably rarely ever saw before - and for good reasons. I don't know where to begin, you need to see for yourselves, but the bizarre salad dinner scene has some of the most hollow dialogue and acting - and not to mention the overlong crazy scientist scene performing his arts on a regular home mixing table, randomly pushing knobs for what feels like several minutes. Good lord, how did Vinegar Syndrome even go the whole mile restoring and releasing this mediocrity, when there are real low budget diamonds waiting to be recovered?

What a bizarre mess!

We begin by seeing a woman having her car break down and getting a pair of scissors in her neck for her trouble, which then leads to a shot of a deranged man tending a lettuce patch and chuckling. We then cut to another young lady who breaks down and calls her boyfriend to get help. He's says he'll be right along, but neglects to mention he's in bed with another girl. Naughty, fella, naughty!

This guy is Marcello and every single female member of the cast wants to tug his tummy banana. Marcello does eventually head off to pick up his girlfriend, but not before she receives a pair of scissors to the neck (although she's given time to strip off for the camera of course). Marcello is confused when he discovers his girlfriend's car is still around, so he's unsure where she's disappeared to, and instead he ends up at a villa full of very emotional people/suspects.

There's the afroed-wheelchair scientist who has perfected a machine that can print out peoples thoughts (which it does by taking pictures via the eye of a gold statue situated in the dining room!). His wife, who suffers from 'Erotomania', whatever that is - she just seems pissed off that she lives in the country, and their neice, a blonde, sexually repressed girl who lives in terror of her uncle and seems to be the main subject of the thought machine. Plus, there's the doctor who looks after the scientist, the giant gardners guy, angry butler Alberto and yet another sexually repressed maid who has the hots for Marcello, and everyone else for that matter.

This film looks like it cost about five lire to make and even though there's plenty of nudity to keep you awake, an interminable dinner party in the middle almost derails the whole thing. Luckily the thought machine and a novel death for the killer goes in its favour. Of course the killer's motives don't make much sense and there's a couple of extra twists at the end because...you know...it's a giallo. Got to have twists!

Talky, nearly gore-free, and overlong at under 90 minutes, The Police Are Blundering in the Dark might be one of the least interesting giallos ever made. While most giallos aren't known for their award winning scripts or realistic dialogue, there's usually a little style or sleaze to keep one's interest, but this film is too coy and pedestrian to keep one's attention.