A Quiet Place to Kill

PARANOIA

A QUIET PLACE TO KILL

Italy 1970

D: Umberto Lenzi

P: Bruno Bolognesi for Tritone Filminstria & Medusa Distribuzione//St & Sc: Rafael Marchent, Marcello Goscia, Bruno Di Geronimo, Marie-Claire Solleville//DP: Guglielmo Mancori//E: Enzo Alabiso & Antonio Ramirez//M: Gregory Garcia Segura//Art D: W. Buran//Makeup: Mario Van Riel

Cast: Carroll Baker, Jean Sorel, Luis Davila, Alberto Dalbes, Marina Coffa, Anna Proclemer, Liz Halvorsen, Hugo Blanco, Jacques Stany, Rossana Rovere, Calisto Calisti, Manuel Diaz Velasco.

Helen (Carroll Baker) receives word from her ex-husband Maurice (Jean Sorel) to join him at his villa in Majorca, Spain. When she arrives, she finds out that it was actually Constance (Marina Coffa) who summoned her. It seems she knows that Helen attempted to kill Maurice when they were married and she wants to enlist Baker's help in knocking him off again. The tables turn on Constance when during the attempt, it is she that is killed instead. Constance's daughter Susan (Anna Proclemer), arrives to discover her mother's fate and instantly suspects Helen and Maurice of foul play. The joke turns out to be on Helen as Maurice and Susan are actually lovers and it was they who planned Constance's and now her death (in a car crash). Just when these two think they have pulled it all off, Constance's body (wrapped in chains and tied to an anchor) is found.

Here's a film that never shuts up. The US released version is an edited TV print and so spends all of its time trying to be clever and forgets about the exploitation items, like nudity and violence, that makes this genre unique. Fortunately, the unedited export version has come to light and it contains the exploitation goodies. This is more reminescent of a TV episode of COLUMBO, where you spend the first half of the show setting up the murder, and the last half involving a detective who solves the crime. We are also stuck with all that sixties baggage—bad fashions, crappy rock and roll music score and set design by Target. Sorel and Baker were sleepwalking through their parts—she comes across as innocent and Sorel as the bad guy, only to reverse their positions by film's end. Camera angles consist largely of static, talking-head shots, doing nothing to relieve the audience's boredom. Part soap opera, part travelogue of Majorca, A QUIET PLACE TO KILL is just that, too damn quiet.