Cadavere per signora

Corpse for Lady is a comedy around a traditional whodunit for a murder. Four little girls from the good society of Genoa had made a pact to help each other even if they have to make sacrifice. Now grown up, Laura (Sylva Koscina, Sette scialli di seta gialla), who has a brother pianist, Enzo (Lando Buzzanca, Divorzio all'italiana), is married to a wealthy shipowner, Augusto (Francesco Mulè, Psicosissimo), and gets in trouble when her former lover Claudio (Angelo Santi, Le Streghe), being bankrupt and wanting to flee abroad, blackmails her with her love letters to get money.

Laura asks her three friends to help her to gather the amount: Renata (Scilla Gabel, Tiro a segno per uccidere), a doctor, Marina (Sandra Mondaini, I Maniaci), who is married to Michele (Toni Ucci, L'Assassino), a lawyer, and, for the fourth of them Giovanna (Rosalba Neri, Top Sensation) is now a nun, her mother Costanza (Elsa Vazzoler, Io uccido Tu uccidi), who is married to Tommaso (Piero Mazzarella, L'Assassino si chiama Pompeo), an upstart meat merchant. Renata brings the money to Laura's villa in Portofino on the seaside in order to give it to Claudio, but she phones in panic her friends: Claudio has been killed by an unknown during a fight and the money has been stolen. They reunite together in order to get rid of the body, but things won't happen to be so simple.

A lot of characters come indeed to visit them, thrilling every time the ladies: a policeman (Salvo Libassi, I due pericoli pubblici), two strange mariners (the comic duet Franchi and Ingrassia, I due Mafiosi), an escaped criminal (Gianni Minervini, producer of La Casa dalle finestre che ridono), a French merrymaker and his girls (Paolo Bonacelli, Cadaveri eccelenti), and the commissioner Guglielmetti (Sergio Fantoni, Il Sicario), who had been Marina's former fiance. Finally, after a lot of long incidents often laborious, all gather to the villa for the solution of this light mystery. (Viewed in Italian 1h27 version.)

The premise of the movie is really quite good. Pretty women, blackmail, and murder. But the interesting premise is quickly squandered and the whole movie turns into a second rate Weekend At Bernie's. It recovers somewhat at the end, but it's a shame when I think of what it could have been.

Let me just say that this is Sylva Koscina at her prettiest and I would be happy to stare at her in front of a brick wall for an hour and a half.

One of the four friends is a nun and this character was kept out of the movie until the end. I understand why, seeing how her character was used in the story, but she should have been brought in earlier, maybe on a tangent story. Instead they had her mother fill on for her as the 4th friend. This change worked well, but there was no reason why this level of trust should have been given to someone who didn't have the same history as the other friends.

I believe that a movie requires 3 main things to be good, good direction, good acting, and good writing. The acting was the only thing this movie got right pretty much throughout. I would have thrown 2/3 of the writing in the trash and had them try again. Mario Mattoli is hit and miss as a director. I love some of his films, but others leave something to be desired. Another director, such as Dino Risi, would have really been able to run with this good premise.

Now having said all of that, I'm sure I'll watch this movie again.