A Máfia Sempre Mata!

Giuseppe Vari (under the pseudonym of Joseph Warren here)reknowN for his fantasy peplum ROMA CONTRA ROMA (1963), directed this wannabe giallo. Some interesting political undertones in the script but that's really all you'll get. Standard stuff by Lou Castel and Adolfo Celi but you'll get the sexy Beba Loncar at her best. Cinematography is TV-like. Fine for a rainy saturday afternoon but don't expect much out of it. Good suspense though

A fine looking and well acted giallo that sadly doesn't really have the drive or umph to make it particularly good. It starts off strongly enough, with a photographer witnessing a murder, but then it gets dragged down in a blackmail story that takes an age to get anywhere. Adolfo Celi's cop slows it all down further, and there isn't a whole lot of murder to boot. A nice looking but ultimately hollow view.

Who Killed the Prosecutor and Why is often considered a part of the Giallo genre, although it mixes a Giallo formula with police procedure. The film is generally not seen as one of the best Giallo's - and I have to say that doesn't really surprise me as while it's not awful, the genre has a hell of a lot of better films than this in it and despite a good plot, this one is unfortunately rather routine. The plot certainly does provide the opportunity for an exciting thriller; and indeed there have been exciting films based on similar plots before and since the making of this film; but here it just doesn't work well. The film starts by showing a photographer taking photos of his girlfriend on a beach. It just so happens that he's doing that at the same time that a bunch of inept criminals are putting together a car crash scene to make it look like somebody died by accident. The photographer wastes no time in taking photos of the incident and with the help of his pornographer friend, aims to sell them. However, it's not long before various people start turning up dead...

Director Giuseppe Vari (who also directed the best of the Emanuelle series - Sister Emanuelle) clearly didn't have much of a budget to work with and unfortunately he isn't able to get over this fact as the film does look very cheap throughout. It would also seem that he couldn't afford to hire a decent scriptwriter either as the plot rarely gets out of first gear and there is little in the way of surprises, which really is a shame since this is a plot that didn't have to play out in a completely expected manner. The acting is not very good on the whole, with Lou Castel giving a lacklustre performance in the lead role and only memorable cult actor Adolfo Celi standing out. The film does feature genre staples in nudity and violence - although both are featured only mildly. There are a fair few death scenes in the film although most of the violence happens off screen and the nudity is clearly only there for the sake of it. I wasn't expecting a surprise from the ending and it's a good job because I wasn't surprised by the time the film finished. Overall, this is worth tracking down if you're a hardcore collector - but otherwise I'd recommend staying clear!

Man, this director sure got a lot of mileage out of that topless dancing scene. Just as well though as this is a straight down the middle quasi-giallo that takes too long to get cooking and doesn't have enough sauce once it's ready. Or cheese.

Lou Castel is an arrogant photographer with a hot Euro-babe model as a girlfriend, and while he's taking stylish of her on some beach somewhere (well, while having it off on the beach after the photo session) he spies two men putting an seemingly unconscious man into a car, then causing that car to explode. Lou takes pictures of the two men and does what any honest citizen would do: He goes to a porno director and asks him how they go about blackmailing the men in the picture.

The blackmail thing doesn't pan out but the wheelchair bound porno guy (whose name is Uncle Fifi!) suggests that Lou take the pictures to a certain publication and ask them for a ridiculous amount of money, as the man killed was a high-ranking Prosecutor. However, by this point a black-gloved killer, complete with hat and raincoat, starts stalking and killing the cast, starting with the one hitman we did see at the start of the film.

We also spend plenty of time with cop Adolfo Celi, who, using his brain power, has to track down the killers of the prosecutor and Lou Castel. This helps the film immensely because Adolfo's natural charm keeps things afloat while not being terribly exciting. For added giallo quirkiness there's also a mafia boss who loves cats, and Adolfo Celi's character is a stamp collector.

However, there's dozens of these gialli so this one doesn't stand out from the pack too much. It's well made, well-acted by Celi and Castel, but isn't exactly essential when compared to the thousand or so other gialli made in 1972.