Tracce di veleno in una coppa di champagne

With a bow to Sunset Boulevard with the late George Hamilton narrating as William Holden did in that Billy Wilder classic just how it came that he got himself dead, Medusa did an impossible thing. It has the beautiful scenery of the Grecian Isles, photographed in color and it's in one dull and confusing picture.

When Hamilton and his sister Luciana Paluzzi are not living totally useless lives as international playboy and playgirl, he's got a very interesting sideline killing people just for the thrill of it and he's got Luciana cleaning up after him.

One of the folks he kills is a guy who does a little of it himself in his line of work, gangster Cameron Mitchell. That one might have had some rational basis because Hamilton's in deep and he's been cut out of his late father's will so no payback money from that source. Truth be told Mitchell's on the hook for that particular bad investment with his bosses.

In the end one really doesn't care one way or the other how Geroge got dead.

Jeffrey (George Hamilton) is a frivolous, quite possibly psychotic playboy. He and his sister stand to inherit the family fortune through their zillionaire father's will. It's not long before those involved with the will begin dying at the hands of a mysterious strangler.

Not even fellow psycho and loan shark, Angelo (Cameron Mitchell) is a match for this shadowy figure!

MEDUSA is a semi-dark, somewhat twisted tale of greed, violence, and murder. There are a few memorable scenes, like Angelo's swimming sequence. Though kooky and dull, this movie is worth watching to witness Hamilton and Mitchell face off in their dueling histrionics. Hamilton is his usual smirking self. So, if you're a big fan of "The Man With The Tan", that'll bump this one up a couple of notches...

Confusing tale of hell-raising playboy (Hamilton), a rogue mercenary thief based in Greece and living a bizarre double life as a cold blooded murderer. Enchanting though she may be, Paluzzi's Medusa connection is tenuous, instead the film focuses on Hamilton's bloody conquests with a succession of exotic imports, among them, Alana Stewart and the beautiful (and unknown) Nora Valsami. The rub of course is that Hamilton never actually recalls doing the deeds, while the manipulative Paluzzi disposes of the evidence (complete with mop and bucket) before suspicion is aroused.

Takis Kavouras is effective as the no-nonsense, yet ineffectual police inspector, while Cameron Mitchell is wasted as a local mobster who ends up, literally, swimming with the fishes in a sadistic demise. Hamilton is suitably hammy as he feigns drunken stupor one moment, fractured lunatic on the edge the next. The relationship between Paluzzi and his character is complex and, to my mind, never properly revealed (there's an implied incestuousness never realised). Paluzzi, for her part is assured and suitably sinister as the title character, with just a hint of the mythology to make the title linkage (revealed in the film's final act).

Authentic and attractive location work, combined with some effective chills and suspense are hampered by the convoluted storyline, making for a very uneven thriller. "Medusa" seems to dramatically change track at intermission, switching from a routine crime drama to a twisted "Bonnie & Clyde". Director Hessler's plot is full of sadism, lust and jealousy - just the ingredients necessary for a Greek tragedy of this ilk, but it ultimately lacks cohesion and sense.

I got this as part of a box set and ignored it for years. Desperate to tidy up the unwatched films in my collection prior to Christmas, I threw this one on and watched it in a flu haze. George Hamilton sure is annoying, isn't he? This film is part crime caper, a quasi-giallo for a while, then a tragedy. I must have very low standards because I didn't find this one too slow at all, but the over-acting of George Hamilton really scuppers the film. His character is so absolutely smug and irritating it nearly derails the film. On the other hand, Cameron Mitchell, who is also way over the top here, manages to entertain as a cackling old gangster.

What you have here is a bunch of people you don't care about after an amended will. A mysterious person is killing off folk involved, but it ain't that hard to figure out who it is. Medusa was worth one watch, but throughout I wanted to reach into the screen and strangle George Hamilton, who constantly acts like a moron who's been put in front of the camera for the first time.

You can get this film free through public domain - that should ease the pain a little.

George Hamilton shows why he became more popular for his tan than acting ability with "Medusa," a terribly insipid attempt at a crime thriller with would-be supernatural undertones. The plot...ummmmm...doesn't really make any sense (and not in the good David Lynch way). Okay, imagine Andrezej Zulawski's "Possession," with made-for-TV production values, none of the surreal sh1t, and a bunch of cop-thriller baloney. Set against a Greek backdrop, George (our hero?) plays a character more obnoxious and muggy than what you'd find in a typical "Saturday Night Live" sketch; anyway, he runs afoul of scenery-chewing gangster Cameron Mitchell (whose presence in any movie is like the official stamp of bad taste) who is whacking a bunch of guys(?); George spends the rest of the film running around Greece, wooing (and killing) random females, and finally fleeing to 'Atlantis' on a boat with his unusually devoted sister. Some existential hokum about the body dying, but the soul living forever is tossed in like an afterthought. Blandly directed by Gordon Hessler, "Medusa" is a slow-moving bore, its only amusing moments belonging to Mitchell ("The Toolbox Murders"), who gives an epic bath-house speech that is brilliant in its own head-scratching incoherence.