I got duped with this movie.
You look at the poster for it. What do you think?
It's Italian, it's got a cat, it looks dramatic.
I was hoping for this kind of artsy-fartsy movie with lots of Italian drama and maybe a cat. Perhaps the cats was the centrefold of the entire movie, maybe it's not.
But instead what we get is this cookie-cutter detective story involving a blind guy, a man who works for the paper and a psychopath who suffers with Down-syndrome.
Okay A little context for that last bit. A good chunk of the movie revolves around the idea of certain people in Society having an extra chromosome.
As they stated, it's XYY (Or YYX?) chromosome. And by their definition; it may be a possible cause a psychopathic tendencies within certain people. Now I don't know anything about Down-syndrome or extra chromosomes. So I'm not going to talk about the accuracy of that. It's just kind of strange that a movie in 1971 brings this up as its focal point as to why a person is a murderer.
I'm assuming they got the medical conditions wrong; possibly they have the whole thing right and I just don't know anything about the subject matter.
Or there's the third (and possibly most accurate) auction that the entire scenario is completely fictitious and has no bearing on reality. I'm kind of hoping for the last one.
Okay so putting all that aside, we have a typical mystery in where a bunch of people are getting murdered for some mysterious reason and one reporter has to figure out the reason why.
He's aided with the help of a blind man who overhears one of the victims talking with the murderer And discussing some weird black mail that has to be dealt with.
It's the old Hollywood cliche of a man who has no visual sense somehow possessing super hearing. Because several times throughout the movie this man will magically come across a plot point or discover a mystery with the aid of his above-average ears. And even by the 1970s this was long considered a cliche.
In fact, everything in this movie feels a little tired and overused. From the standard character interactions, down to the bait and switch who's the murderer scenario.
There's nothing particularly wrong with any of that. It's just isn't all that interesting.
It's also not helped by the very average English dub. Now that's not a problem in itself either.
The dub does a good enough job of orchestrating the points that the characters need to get across. It just doesn't have any flavor or Enthusiasm. However I suspect that the actual Italian actors aren't giving it their all either.
The biggest problem I have with this movie is it's forgettable. I'm sitting here now trying to rethink of the plot, trying to think of something interesting to say. Maybe even to say a few positives about the film.
But nothing about the movie sticks out. It goes in one ear comes out the other. Then you move on with your life.
It feels a little unfair to say because there's nothing wrong with the movie. It has a bit of a pacing problem, about two-thirds in. I think 20 minutes could have been cut off of this film to make it a little bit more streamlined and accessible but otherwise it's perfectly adequate as a mystery film.
There's a fairly comedic part of the film where our protagonist is getting a shave and The Barbers relating the news to him and talking about how the serial killer couldn't possibly be a barber.
Because if it was he would have cut up the victim in a very particular way.
The Barbers relaying this information while shaving this guy's neck. So as you can imagine it gets a little uncomfortable for him.
He ends up leaving halfway before it shaves even done claiming that he'll come back tomorrow.
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