And suddenly, a new contender arises. . . and by that I mean for all-time great giallo titles. Evoking the very essence of the Italian genre, 1975’s The Police Are Blundering in the Dark, directed by one-and-done film maker Helia Colombo, may not have the sheer audacity of a title along the lines of Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key, or the more macabre imagination of Death Walks on High Heels, but it is murder mystery cool personified.
With the police only arriving for the final few minutes of the film (making it all a bit misleading). . . the title is actually in reference to a newspaper headline highlighting the incompetence of the fuzz in rural Italy. With four nude models having recently been murdered (by way of scissors or some other sharp instrument) – oh, the humanity!!! – all roads somehow lead to the Parisi estate.
One of the above mentioned models is Enrichetta Blond (Margaret Rose Keil), a, you guessed it, blonde who visited famed nude photographer Edmondo Parisi, disappearing sometime during the night along the desolate country highway (while eating a ham sandwich in the nude – could this be a cryptic clue. . . perhaps she was porking the baker). This leads a city journalist, Giorgio D’Amato (Joseph Arkim), and also Blond’s guy (though he’s got many a girl calling), to come looking.
What he finds at this rural estate is akin to an Italian Peyton Place, with Parisi being a wheel-chair bound, depressed eccentric (with Bob Ross-like hair) who is having some impotence issues – ironically, he is a rather stiff guy to live with; his wife Elenora (Halina Zalewska), a disenchanted, country-hating gal who satisfies her sexual frustration with her husband’s niece, Sara (Elena Veronese) – Edmondo completely oblivious to the tryst; a skulking valet, who is extremely possessive of the household maid, Lucia (Gabriella Giorgelli) – a young woman who has a nymphomaniac-like sex disease – any male that moves is good enough for her. There is also the local doctor. . . an avid gardener and frequent dinner guest (often bringing some of his fresh vegetables as a special treat) who cares for the sickly artiste.
Of course, this overabundance of females means that D’Amato will draw them in. . . Sara hoping for an escape from her trapped existence (with a little bit of non step-aunt romance – how eccentric), while Lucia is simply looking for someone to caulk the tub. Yet, something else is up. . . Edmondo has developed a new form of photography – the ability to snap an image of someone’s very thoughts (a rare giallo with a bizarre sci-fi tinge).
Starting as a fast paced murder mystery. . . from introductory psycho killing to sandwich stabbing, what follows is a rather lethargic pacing – a somewhat convoluted mess that was likely pieced together over a very short time (and on a very low budget). Yet, despite its copious flaws, this grungy narrative is still unusually alluring. Packed with plenty of unhappy (and unlikable) possible culprits (everyone quirky in their own unique way), damsels in much need, more sneaking and skulking than a church mouse, cheesy slash-happy violence, artistic nude photography (and less artistic forms of nudity), intriguing architecture, not one, but two amateur sleuths (a surprise second detective makes an appearance later into the feature), and some other unexpected treats, you’ll definitely be blundering your way through this quirky little mess.
A giallo that follows in the vein of the works of Dario Argento, The Police Are Blundering in the Dark is a sub-par version of those films, yet is still an entertaining middling effort for gialli fans. Leading you down a path to perhaps one of the more macabre, and outrageously entertaining final deaths seen onscreen, this movie is full of crazy and sometimes confounding surprises. Lastly, in a weird way, it also has an unexpected connection to The Secret Window – if you’ve seen both films, it should be easy enough to put the two together. So, it is up to you to decide if you want to treat this one kindly. . . or maybe you’ll just opt for the ham sandwich.
This film is Italian with English subtitles