L'assassino... è al telefono

Eleanor (Anne Heywood), a famous theater actress, arrives in Ostende, Belgium, to perform in her new play, Lady Godiva. But at the station she meets Ranko (Telly Savalas), a hitman come to kill a diplomat, and they recognize themselves immediately, awakening in her an old trauma. She faints under the shock and looses through an anterograde amnesia all her memory since the last five years, in fact since the accidental death of her boyfriend Peter (Roger Van Hool), thus joining the giallo characters of the disturbed heroin (Le Orme, L'Occhio nel labirinto, Senza Via d'uscita). Eleanor has now to reconstruct herself by finding what exactly happened so dreadfully five years ago about Peter and Ranko, and that she has since forgotten.

But the cat Ranko with his compulsory black gloves and switchblade knife starts to stalk the mouse Eleanor in a threatening way. Was she herself a murderer? Does Ranko work for a hidden somebody? Was Peter's death really accidental? Who should be the bad genius of Eleanor's life? We wander with her through the labyrinth of her disjointed thoughts where past, present, fantasies and plays mix up concealing all issue. Her relatives try to help her to get out her state of "chronic anxiety verging on paranoia" and to gather the pieces of "the mosaic of her memories": her husband George (Giorgio Piazza), her lover Thomas (Osvaldo Ruggeri), her doctor Chandler (Antonio Guidi), her sister Dorothy (Willeke van Ammelrooy), and Peter's sister and owner of the theater Margaret (Rossella Falk, from Piu tardi Claire to Sette orchidee macchiate di rosso).

On his side Ranko the killer doesn't waste time and begins to add corpses to extend his hit score. And as an actress must perform on stage, Eleanor will be back at her theater for a spectacular final confrontation, allowing the real tragedy to join the played ones. Finally the killer is not so much on the phone, but the title must have been chosen to match with great Hollywood standards like Dial M or Sorry Wrong Number. Even if the film lacks in some way of rhythm, punch and thrill, it stays classic within the style in this very heart of the giallo wave, and does achieve at last its mission. (Viewed in an Italian 1h38 version.)

The Killer Is on the Phone is available in a clean, vibrant version with Italian audio which is always a plus. However, though it's low on sleaze (which I wholly approve of) it's also low on action and intensity, leading to a slight dullness.

I appreciated the twists in the mystery which is more of a "why" than a "whom" but you have to really wait for that ending.

I generally delight in spooky atmospheric fare, but this film comes across more like a drama than a Gothic horror, and I did not particularly like the main character which made it difficult for me.

Still, L'assassino...e al telephono is solid and I can't in good faith knock it as a whole.

Run-of-the mill Giallo with slashing , suspense , plot twists , intrigue , well staged crimes and unexpected finale. A woman : Anne Heywood is shocked when sees a man : Telly Savalas who results to be the killer who murdered her boyfriend some years before . But it happens she has amnesia and doesn't remenber the past happenings . Little by little she has got strange flashbacks about the fateful events previously committed by the sinister murderer.

A regular but tense and mysterious Gialli with usual gloved killer carrying out a criminal spree . Customary Giallo in which thrilling events , intrigue , twists , turns and stabbing scenes show up lurking and threatening throughout buildings , streets , parks and other locations from Belgium . Stars the beautiful but mature Anne Heywood as a woman who is stalked by a contract killer, being shocked by a former murder , having amnesia, and doesn't remember anything about the earlier deeds . Anne Heywood had a long career and in her maturity she played exploitation movies with various lascivious and sordid characters , including nude scenes , such as : Good look Miss Wyckoff , The Lady of Monza , The Nun and the Devil, The first time on the Grass and Ring of Darkness . Along with Telly Savalas , the popular Kojak , here on the other side of the law as a hit man who attempts to eliminate a potential witness . They are well accompanied by a good but not very known support cast , such as : Ruggieri, Piazza, Willeke Van Ammelrooy and Rosella Falk .

It displays an anticlimatic musical score by Stelvio Cipriani in his usual style with plenty of synthesizer music typical of the Seventies . Enjoyable and colorful cinematography by the famous Joe D'Amato or Aristide Massaccesi . Being shot on location in Gaasbek castle , Lennik , Theatre Royal Monnaie Brussels , Brugge West Vlaanderen, Ostend , Flanders , Bruges , Belgium . The motion picture was regularly directed by Alberto de Martino , as it has some shortcomings , flaws and gaps . Martino was an acceptable artisan who directed several films of all kinds of genres around the Italian B-series , as he made the following ones , Peplum : Medusa against the son of Hercules , Triumph of Hercules , The Invincibles , Seven Spartans , Rivolt of the Seven, Invincible Gladiator . Eurospy : Operation Lady Chaplin . Warfare : From Ardenne to Inferno . Terror : Hyden Park, Holocaust 2000 , Miami Golem, Horror , AntiChrist. Thrillers : Puma Man, Rome like Chicago , The man with Ice Eyes , The Consiliere . And Spaghetti Westerns : Django shoots first , One Hundred thousand Dollars for Ringo, The Seventh Cavalry , among others .

There were five main reasons why "The Killer is on the Phone" stood on top of my watch list, and they all add up to each other! Number one: it's an Italian giallo! This perverted and violent type of whodunit-thriller is my favorite sub genre of horror and it's my personal mission to track down every single and most obscure installment ever made! Number two: it's an Italian giallo from the magical year 1972! They heyday of my favorite sub genre was relatively short, give or take from the mid-sixties to the mid- seventies, but the early seventies were the best years and 1972 in particular with too many brilliant gialli to list ("What have you done to Solange?", "Don't Torture a Duckling", "Who Saw Her Die?", "The Red Queen Kills Seven Times" and about fifteen more). Number three: it's an Italian giallo from the magical year 1972 and directed by Alberto De Martino! Mr. De Martino perhaps wasn't the greatest cult director from Italy, but he did courageously attempt to cash in on every trend and his movies are always massively entertaining ("The Antichrist", "Blazing Magnum", "Holocaust 2000", "The Puma Man"…). Number four: it's an Italian giallo from the magical year 1972, directed by Alberto De Martino and starring Telly Savalas! That's right, the one and only Kojak and former Ernst Stavro Blofeld makes a rare giallo appearance here! Savalas was and forever remains a monument of 70s cult cinema and here in this movie he gets to do what he does best: stand around silently and look ultimately menacing! Number five: it's an Italian giallo from the magical year 1972, directed by Alberto De Martino and starring Telly Savalas, AND entirely shot on location in my native country Belgium! Admittedly that last little detail meant the cherry on the cake for me. For some unknown reason, they shot the film in Belgium instead of Italy and it's fantastic to see familiar places pop up in a giallo, like the Ostend ferry port or this beautiful park in Bruges. Hence there also was the opportunity for Willeke Van Ammelrooy, an actress only famous in Belgium and The Netherlands thus far, to receive a bit more international recognition.

Of course, considering all the above points, you'd think that I'm extremely biased and couldn't possibly write a properly objective review about "The Killer is on the Phone". Not true, in fact, because even though I'm incredibly happy that I was finally able to watch this movie, I do reckon that it's merely just a mediocre effort that probably won't even make my giallo top 50. The main shortcomings here are definitely the slow pacing, the unnecessarily complex and illogical plot and – most of all – the lack of violence and perversity. Theater actress Eleanor Lorraine spots a bald and uncanny man at a drinking fountain and faints. This was the same man who murdered her beloved husband five years ago, but because of the shock she suffers from amnesia and doesn't remember anything that happened in the past five years, including the killer's identity. The killer – Ranko Drasovic – doesn't know Eleanor's memory is gone, so he starts stalking her and plans to get rid of the witness. Meanwhile, Eleanor's surrounding also face many issues. She doesn't recognize both her new husband and her lover, and she has forgotten all her lines of the stage play that premieres the next Saturday. The script surely has a lot of potential and features a handful of great ideas, but the elaboration is poor and implausible. Eleanor suffers from a severe case of amnesia, yet everybody allows her to wander around town on her own and hold private investigations without offering her help or support. The killer has numerous of opportunities to eliminate her quickly but prefers to observe her endlessly, instead… probably just to stretch the running time. Oh, and by the way, so much for the film's title, as the killer only calls her house once and that sequence is rather irrelevant because there isn't an actual telephone conversation going on… The last 10- 15 minutes feature a few suspenseful moments and typically absurd giallo-twists, including the chase behind the theater scenes and the truth regarding her husband's death, but it's not enough to save the film. Stelvio Cipriani provides a marvelous musical score, as usual, and furthermore this film only proves that Bruges is a beautiful city; 36 years before the blockbuster hit "In Bruges" did the same.

This Giallo by Alberto De Martino, who made a very watchable and entertaining "The Exorcist" rip-off in 1974 ("L'Anticristo" aka "The Tempter"), boosts Anne Heywood in the female lead role as a woman that suffers amnesia after she sees the killer of her husband again five years after the murder, and Telly Savalas as the cold-blooded assassin who tries to kill her before she regains her memory.

The idea is nice, but De Martino's direction is a little bit too slow and, especially in the first half of the film, the flow of the scenes sometimes looks hacked up in a way, so it's difficult not to use the fast forward button on one's VCR. The second half is better and the film becomes a passable thriller, while the climax itself with the uncovering of the person who contracted the killer five years ago remains the best moment of the whole picture.

All in all a mediocre, rather anemic Giallo. Savalas also acted in De Martino's mafia actioner "I Familiari delle Vittime non Saranno Avvertiti" aka "Crime Boss" aka "New Mafia Boss" of the same year, which also doesn't belong to the best films of its genre.