AniInterview Sorry, this movie sucks

Steineded How sad is this?

Nayan Gough A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

Tobias Burrows It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

Bezenby Alfonso Breschia is infamous for unleashing no less than four Star Wars rip-offs on the world (and to confuse things, the IMDb lists five – Battle of the Stars and War of the Planets being one and the same film). I think I started my review of Breschia's Western Killer Calibre .32 the exact same way, so I'll shut about those damn sci-fi films now.I hope you like fairgrounds, because this film features one a lot! An old geezer goes onto a ghost train alone and comes out the other side with a bullet in his brain and the $600,000 in his pocket gone, and it's up to insurance investigator Robert Hoffman to get to the bottom of it. Does it have anything to do with that lengthy black and white prologue from the Second World War? You betcha!Robert sets his eyes on the dead guy's daughter Catherine (who looks like Kim Kardashian, without the fake arse) and starts putting the moves on her without telling her he's an investigator. Once she realises that he's probably not the weird person calling her up all the time, it's off to the sack they go, after a quick visit to the fairground.Catherine of course lives in a huge mansion with her crazy mother Magda and slutty sister Barbara. Magda's gone a bit nuts about the whole murdered husband thing, and Barbara buries her grief by having rough sex with the mute gardener. Robert spies on them at it and thinks Barbara's being raped, but when it becomes apparent she's not, he hangs on for a couple of minutes just to make sure. At some point you'll probably be wondering when the film will get round to actually having anyone killed, let alone having them naked and being found in a park. When that finally happens, the giallo element takes off and the film starts being enjoyable daft. My favourite bit was when the family, Robert and Adolfo were standing on the balcony of the mansion and Adolfo points out how wobbly the railing is, moving it back and forth and remarking that someone should have that fixed and of course someone takes a dive through it (or at least an unconvincing dummy does). That's not foreshadowing – that's blatant signposting. The twists are actually pretty good for a change and you can't help but love a film that locates its ending in a fairground. As far as Alfonso Breschia films go this is probably the best one I've seen so far. I think I said that about Killer Calibre .32 too.

BA_Harrison This early '70s giallo from director Alfonso Brescia does indeed feature a naked girl killed in a park. Prior to her untimely demise, the woman in question, rich bitch Barbara Wallenberger (Patrizia Adiutori), also sheds her clothes for a romp in the hay with her stable boy Günther (Howard Ross) and gets jiggy with insurance investigator Chris Buyer (Robert Hoffmann), who is on the scene to probe into the mysterious death of her businessman father Johan. Ladies' man Chris also gets to romp in the sack with Barbara's beautiful brunette sister Catherine (Pilar Velázquez), meaning that those looking for some T&A to go with their murder/mystery are more than catered for.But while Brescia delivers in the boobs and bums department, he doesn't do so well when it comes to the intrigue, the brutality, or the sense of style that is synonymous with the genre. His film is visually bland, the plot is mediocre at best, and the death scenes lack imagination (and gore), making this far from essential viewing for giallo fans. As is usually the case with such films, some fun can be gleaned from trying to figure out who the killer is, although the motive is so abstruse that correctly predicting the murderer's identity is unlikely (it's even harder to guess if watching the atrocious VHS-quality pan and scan version I originally found, which was not just missing most of the nudity, but also the all-important wartime prologue).

Coventry I won't argue that it's a lot more appealing to mention a naked dead girl in the title of a horror movie but, in all honesty, a far more accurate description would be: "Fully Dressed Guy Killed in an Amusement Park Ride"… The plot of this ultra-obscure Italian giallo merely revolves on this rich bloke who's found murdered on a theme ride, only moments after he completed a million dollar life-insurance deal! Instead of paying the amount right away, the company puts one of their best investigators on the case and he infiltrates in the victim's family by seducing the youngest daughter. There naturally is a naked girl found killed in the park, only that comes after a whole lot of family-intrigues and character introductions. The discovery of the naked girl in the park (anyone notice how I LOVE repeat the title all the time?) does herald the beginning of a series of inventive murders, insane plot twists and effective red herrings, so it isn't such a misleading title after all. The story of this film is more or less textbook giallo-material, but it's rather slow-paced and the visual style isn't all that impressive. The murders sequences are pretty tame (no original modus operandi here) and the movie doesn't feature any truly memorable suspense sequences. All this probably clarifies why "Naked Girl Killed in the Park" is still very unknown and incredibly hard to find out there in DVD-land. Also, the cast doesn't contain any famous names and director Alfonso Brescia isn't such a prominent giallo-deity as, say, Sergio Martino or Dario Argento. Still, there's plenty of stuff to recommend to well-trained giallo fans, like a fair amount of sleaze, good music and quite a demented climax…. And a downright fantastic title, of course.

rundbauchdodo There is a bunch of Gialli that tell a story about an inheritance. Most of them tend to be rather crime movies than Gialli in the classic sense.This film by Alfonso Brescia also tells a story about an inheritance that spreads murder, and in the first half of the film, only one killing happens (in the opening scene), and then the film goes on rather as a family drama than a Giallo. But in the middle of the film, the title happens (a member of the family is indeed found nude and killed in a park), and from now on, it's a typical Giallo. The bodies are piling up (the murder scenes are not very graphic, but there are some stylish moments), and towards the climax, there is the usual surprise as the identity of the killer is revealed. The revelation is as implausible as often with Gialli, but it works better than in other similarly mediocre ones.Brescia's direction is nothing special, the lead actors are only average, but there is some fine supporting cast lead by Adolfo Celi as the investigating Police inspector. So, the first half is a bit dreary, but the second half is surely capable of satisfying Giallo afficionados.