La polizia brancola nel buio

I don't even know where to start. I have this at the bottom of my giallo ranking, for good reason. "The Police Are Blundering in the Dark" is a 1975 film directed by Helia Colombo (actually composer Elio Palumbo) and starring complete randos (such as a man under the laughable pseudonym Danny P. Gerzog). It was actually shot in 1972 under the bizarre title "The Lettuce Garden" but wasn't released until 1975, a good indication of its "superb" quality.

Honestly, I don't know where to begin, so I'll list out the positives and negatives.

Positives: 1. The music

Negatives 1. No plot (characters sit around doing nothing) 2. Clunky camerawork 3. Bad acting 4. Dim-witted characters 5. Bad dialogue (Albertooooo!) 6. Horrible MacGuffin 7. Bad "twists" 8. You get the idea...

Does that summarize it for you? I will say I had fun watching this, only because I laughed AT it. I will commend it for trying to introduce twists. The problem is that these twists come completely out of left field and are introduced in the last five minutes.

It may seem like I am deliberately tearing this film to shreds, but I'm only telling you the truth. It's better to skip this one, because the only suspense is when it will fade to black.

2.5/10.

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?

Following her strange disappearance, a man begins looking into his girlfriends' strange arrival at a small town that eventually leads him to a remote house occupied by a series of bizarre figures with a deadly secret that eventually brings a killer to the house knocking them off one by one.

This was a maddeningly ineffective and problematic giallo. Among the few positive points with this one is the ability of the film to at least work in the traditional genre elements somewhat effectively enough throughout here. The series of stalking scenes here aren't that bad, with the opening attack of the victim by the side of the road or a woman getting stalked in her bedroom while being spied on undressing and taking care of herself before going to bed, offering up some rather intriguing elements familiar with the genre. Both offer up clunky if still somewhat extended chase scenes featuring the unsuspecting victims going about their lives before running into the madman and being knocked off in silly-yet-brutal fashion featuring a slew of suspenseful stalking tactics and some fine nudity in the process. Other scenes, like a garden-set stalking scene or the killer taking out a victim in gruesome fashion before leaving the bloodied body to drown in a bathtub, make for equally sleazy and graphic encounters that set the stage for the wild finale that bring about some inventive twists for its positive points. Beyond that, there's just not much to this one that works. The main factor to be had here is the interminably boring and dull setup that has almost nothing at all interesting happening for long stretches. The whole idea of the disappearance taking place nearby and him coming to her aide to try to find her is a decent enough hook, much like the later investigation that turns up the family living in the remote house where he starts looking into the truth but it has just nothing all that exciting happening during this time. Dealing with a skeevy gardener making uncomfortable eyes at the young daughter, a scientist trying to make do with his latest discovery while being confined to a wheelchair, and the multitude of side characters that populate the house should've been a recipe for something to happen as he makes his way through the family uncovering what happened. Instead, everything is just undeservedly bland or drags on interminably with the outright worst of it being a dinner sequence that offers up nothing of any interest about anyone and never seems to end even with the notion of them being spied on the whole time. The other factor to this one is the general air of cheapness over everything here. The villa where everything takes place could've had some atmosphere but it's way too bright and cheerful to be effective at generating an air of danger, the flimsy effects give themselves away at nearly every opportunity with the outright goofy manner of their execution trying to look intimidating, and the whole presentation of the fabled machine that gets involved here is a straight mystery as we get nothing about what it is or how it works. The concept of the machine is such that it stretches credibility with how it even manages to catch the killer in the first place, and trying to place the actual figure doing the crimes at the point they were committed is a stretch at best and a gaping plothole at worst as it involves time-travel to pull off. It all comes together into one of the more underwhelming and bottom-tier gialli in the period.

Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Violence, Nudity, Language, and sexual scenes.

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!