Los mil ojos del asesino

The splendid but totally irrelevant title leads you to suspect that "Killer with a Thousand Eyes" is a giallo, but it's not. It's a euro crime/thriller. It's a Spanish/Italian co-production almost entirely filmed in Portugal, and I generally always love these European potpourris full of excessive violence, sleaze and testosterone-laden macho actors. "Killer with a Thousand Eyes" is an enjoyable effort as well, but nearly not the best of its type. There's plenty of action and quite an enormous body count, but the plot is very standard and full of cliched situations. A typical example is how the lead hero (giallo/western regular Anthony Steffen) continuously runs into people that have crucial information for him, but when they are about to reveal it, they are killed from a distance by an unseen assailant. This trick occurs in practically every euro-thriller, but no less than four times here, as if the writer/director Juan Bosch didn't have a whole lot of inspiration. Tough London Interpol agent Steffen is in Lisbon to investigate the murder of a fellow agent, and he discovers that his late colleague was on the verge of uncovering a wide smuggling and drug-trafficking network; - naturally with some very eminent people involved. Anthony Steffen wasn't a great actor, but this role fitted him well and he even looked a bit like Christopher Walken when he was younger. It's an overall mediocre movie, but there are a few nicely grisly murders, a decent soundtrack and a handful of lovely scenic images of Lisbon (including a car chase on the famous 25th of April Bridge)

The most bizarre and hilarious sequence in this film has nothing to do with the plot whatsoever and involves Interpol agent Anthony Steffan struggling to open a packet of hotdogs, then cracking an egg open by smashing it against a kitchen cupboard before dumping it in a frying pan. No idea at all why that was put in there, but it sure was funny.

Anthony has been sent to Portugal to pick up the dead body of another agent murdered on the job. He's miffed already because he was given his orders right in the middle of a bust, and he wasn't finished telling all those drug-filled hippies that they stink. He's also not happy that he's not allowed to investigate what's happened and leave it all to the Interpol agents already stationed in Lisbon, so what does Anthony do? He fakes boarding the plane and goes on a violent journey trying to track down the killer (or killers) (or killer) (or killers) (maybe).

This is a lot more action orientated than usual and is more of a hybrid of Euro-Crime and Giallo as various factions try and take down Steffan, but that said there's also a black gloved killer going about so let's not split hairs. I did notice that Anthony sure got a lot of people killed, including an agent mate of his, and subsequently the agent's wife who's silhouette is mistaken for Anthony's. Whoops!

Throw in a car chase and a kick-ass machine gun, a car chase or two, and I was happy. The body count for this one is through the roof, basically leaving one character to survive the film, and they got shot too! Entertaining stuff, this one. No idea what the title means mind you.

The Killer with a Thousand Eyes is a Giallo of the extremely rare variety - amazingly I could find almost no literature whatsoever about it on the internet and it seems almost like the film doesn't exist. In my time of tracking down seemingly non-existent films, I've realised that there's often a good reason for the anonymity; but this Giallo is actually rather good and a step up from director Juan Bosch's better known 'The Killer Wore Gloves'. The director is not particularly well known for his originality; his other Giallo basically took the genre's best elements and fashioned a derivative story out of it, and that's basically what we have here too. Our main character is a special detective who has been deployed to Lisbon in order to investigate a series of murders. After looking into the murders, our hero realises that they are somehow linked to an illegal drug smuggling operation and so sets about looking into that in order to solve the murders and stop the smuggling from taking place.

This film boasts what is undoubtedly one of the coolest titles in the entire Giallo genre (which is really saying something) but sadly it bears no relevance to the plot and in fact that murder story takes a back seat to the police investigation. This is actually not a bad thing, however, as Juan Bosch keeps things ticking over nicely and the film is made exciting with a constant stream of events to further the plot. There's only a handful of murders in the film, and unfortunately they don't represent a strong point for the film as they're all bloodless and it seems like the director wanted to get them over and done with as quickly as possible; which is likely to disappoint a lot of viewers. By 1974, the Polizi genre was gaining popularity and that seems to have had an effect on this film; as there's plenty of police procedure as well as a handful of fist fights. The director manages to keep things together for the ending, and while it's not especially exciting; things are wrapped up nicely. Overall, this is not great or a must see Giallo; but it's a nice genre entry and has more going for it than The Killer Wore Gloves. Worth a look if you can find it.

After the death of a colleague, a British police officer is sent out to Spain to investigate the incident and finds that the murder is connected to an illegal drug-smuggling ring that will stop at nothing to keep their identities a secret and put him in danger to solve the crimes.

This was a decent enough if somewhat underwhelming Giallo/procedural mixture. When this one works, it's due to the film's strong adherents to the genre's formula which produces some rather fun and striking stalking scenes here. The opening ambush scene where the killer targets the one victim from behind, a great ambush at a riverbank where the killer strikes a victim with an assault rifle before taking shots at the hero who tries to escape in the car nearby and the rather nice stalking in the apartment room which has some tense moments before the realization of who's in there with her. However, the influence of the procedural crime/thrillers at the time brings along some rather nice traditional action elements here with the multitude of fist-fights and brawling that occur throughout here which includes a series of hand-to-hand fighting that's far more brutal and hard-hitting than the traditional Giallo sequences and gives this a wholly different tone. Likewise, the car chases through the mountain roads in the outskirts of the city feel more in tune with that particular genre and the finale features a traditional action-movie style series of shootouts where he takes out the henchmen that flies quite in the face of the traditions of the genre, going against the black-gloved killer appearing before the last survivor archetype that is used here first for the shootout in the compound before the final fist-fight at the docks which is all fun even though this here is decidedly unconventional when it comes to this particular style. The fact that there's not a whole lot throughout here is what tends to be the biggest flaw against this one, as there's way too much tough-guy machismo that flies completely against the expected usage of Giallo norms that gives this one a rather action/thriller tone here rather than a more suspenseful offering. The pacing does make for a solid make-up here, but it doesn't utilize these into any kind of suspenseful tactics for much of the time, resorting to gunshots for the majority of the kills and rather strong action sequences rather than stalking here that makes for a dull time in points. There are some solid points to this one but it does have its flaws.

Rated Unrated/R: Violence, Nudity, Language and drug use.

This Spanish film set in Portugal combines Eurospy and poliziottesco elements with a touch of giallo. Alas the result is very far from being convincing. Michael Lawrence (Anthony Steffen, La Encadenada), a British Interpol inspector, is sent to Lisbon by his chief Foster (Richard Kolin, El pez de los ojos de oro), and decides to lead his own inquiry about the murder by a mysterious masked killer of his colleague Alistair MacAndrew (Julian Perez Tabernero, Siete Minutos para morir).

Lawrence is welcomed there by the commissioner Pereira (Jacinto Ramos, As Ruinas no interior) and the inspector Albert (Antonio Pica, Los Ojos azules de la muneca rota), who introduces him to the other Interpol officers: the French Jacques Darnel (Angel Lombarte, La Novia ensangrentada), the Canadian Duvallier (Julian Ugarte, Tutti i colori del buio), the German Jacobs (Joan Borras, El ultimo viaje), the Venezuelan Olalia (Raf Baldassarre, Gatti rossi in un labirinto di vetro) and the Hollander Van Eik (Alfonso de la Vega, Paranoia). All the issue turns around the control of the drug traffic, in order to make of Lisbon a hot spot for smugglers.

But as Lawrence goes on "snooping" with his investigation, the murders of everybody involved start to occur. The killer seems to have "a thousand eyes": should one of the police officers be a traitor? Lawrence tries to systematically retrieve the track of the assassin, meeting the gay owner of a pension (Francisco Jarque, Las Crueles), a prostitute, Diana (Carmen Liano, Libertad provisional), Mrs Darnel (Romy, Al Diablo con amor), a wealthy Brazilian fond of exotic birds, Costa (Eduardo Fajardo, L'Assassino è costretto ad uccidere ancora), and his girlfriend Sarah (Maria Kosti, Una Libelula para cada muerto), owner of a fitness center.

Between a jumble of gangsters shootings, thugs fightings, even with karate, car pursuits and killer's prowling in subjective camera, the film piles up absurd situations mixed with highly predictable ones, through a rambling plot and a languishing pace, where the characters are wasted. At the end of this linking of violent scenes set in his fumbling quest, Lawrence shall have to confront the very effective responsible of the killings. (Viewed in English 1h23 version.)