The Devil Has 7 Faces

Il Diavolo A Sette Facce

Export Title: The Devil Has Seven Faces

Italy 1972

D: Osvaldo Civirani

P: Osvaldo Civirani for Cinescalation (P Manager: Graziano Fabiani)//St & Sc: Tito Carpi & Osvaldo Civirani//DP: Walter Civirani//E: Mauro Contini//M: Stelvio Cipirani//

Cast: Carroll Baker, George Hilton, Lucretia Love, Luciano Pigozzi, Daniele Vargas, Franco Ressel, Carla Mancini, Gianni Pulone, Roberto Messina, Maria Ricotti, Ivano Staccioli & Stephen Boyd.

After attending a late night party, Judy Harrison is attacked on the way home. Her twin sister Mary calls and tells her that she was involved in a diamond robbery and is now in trouble. Race car driver Tony Shane, a friend of Dave's meets Judy and is instantly attracted to her. When two thugs attack them at Judy's place one night looking for the diamond, they decide the criminals must be mistaking Judy for Mary. Judy goes into hiding and waits for Mary to send her the diamond for safe keeping. The owner of the house where Judy is staying turns up dead, yet no one but Judy saw the body. Tony goes to the retrieve the diamond from an out-of-town post office (his race car driving skills come in handy as he escapes the people trailing him for the diamond) only to discover it is a fake. He slaps Judy around and reveals he's in league with ones threatening her. He is about to beat the truth out of her when the original thugs show up and shoot him. SPOILERS AHEAD! 

They kidnap Judy and take her to an abandoned windmill where they plan to have a little fun before extracting the diamond's location from her. A wounded Tony reappears and wipes out the gang and is about to kill Judy when she runs him over with a bulldozer.

Here's yet another crime film hiding behind the Giallo label. The title of the film is totally unrelated to the goings on in this rather ordinary caper about the aftermath of a diamond heist. Carroll Baker is quite good as the put-upon-Judy (whom we eventually discover, is not what she appears to be) and like all of her Italian film appearances, she dubs her own voice which adds immensely to her performance. George Hilton's standard role of initially coming across as the hero of the piece, only to show his true colors before the film's denouement is in place for this one. Stephen Boyd may have not had much of a Hollywood career, but he never let that affect his European acting roles. Here he plays a lawyer, which automatically makes him appear guilty, that you just don't trust until the end, then you discover he's not so squeaky clean after all! Looking over Osvaldo Civirani's career as a director (his brother Walter always photographed his films), the dullness of The Devil Has Seven Faces should come as no surprise (Civirani began his directorial career in 1962 with the Mondo film, Sexy Proibito). I do give the producers credit for using the film's exotic location of Holland to good effect, as the climatic sequence that takes place in a windmill and is all the more effective for it. When it's all said and done, the deception involving the film's perceived genre versus its actual one, makes this effort a waste of time.