A beautiful woman is burned with acid, slashed to death with the razor, and stuffed in the trunk of a car belonging to the Swiss ambassador to Ireland. Sounds like the beginning of an Italian giallo, huh?. This is a pretty disappointing one, however, especially considering it comes from legendary Italian film director Riccardo Freda. The Dublin location is pretty interesting, but all the Irish and Swiss accents turn out to be a nightmare of bad dubbing. And this is one of those rare movies that actually would have benefited greatly from having the gore scenes censored out because they are tasteless, gratuitous, and worst of all, just plain laughable. The hero is an Irish rogue cop (he looks Irish anyway, but judging from the inconsistent dubbing of his voice, he must be part Italian as well). He has a teenage daughter and an elderly mother who fancies herself a latter-day Miss Marple (and I have confess, I've always wanted to see someone do to Miss Marple what the killer here does to her). He also embarks on a highly improbable affair with the ambassador's beautiful daughter (Dagmar Lassander). I haven't personally dated a lot of beautiful Swiss women, but I don't suspect too many of them would invite you upstairs for the night if you said things like: "So, luv, should we get it off on the motorbike or in the bushes?"
The movie contains a lot of nasty violence moving it past the comical tastelessness of gialli like "Strip Nude for your Killer" towards the genuinely unpleasant tastelessness of Fulci's "New York Ripper". The end which manages to combine some very gratuitous teenage nudity with some VERY severe abuse of the elderly might appeal to fans of transgressive cinema, but probably no one else.
The movie contains a lot of nasty violence moving it past the comical tastelessness of gialli like "Strip Nude for your Killer" towards the genuinely unpleasant tastelessness of Fulci's "New York Ripper". The end which manages to combine some very gratuitous teenage nudity with some VERY severe abuse of the elderly might appeal to fans of transgressive cinema, but probably no one else.