This is an absorbing Italian crime thriller with horror overtones from writer/director Piero Regnoli (or Pierre King, as he's called on the American tv print), who is best known to genre fans for the kitschy but effective "The Playgirls and the Vampire". The plot concerns three young hoods who conspire to rob a jewelry store, killing a guard in the process. Walter (John Drew Barrymore, at the beginning of his Eurotrash period) is a hotheaded beatnik, Al is the debonair brains behind the heist, and Sam is a dreamer who wants to buy a plot of land in Israel with his share. They high-tail it to a wilderness cabin where they plan to lay low and divvy up the take, but after Walter taunts Sam with anti-semitic remarks, they start to tussle, and Sam falls into quicksand and succumbs. Later, a sexy drifter (Eva Bartok) who is looking for work shows up, causing tension between the two remaining gang members. At the same time, subtle clues begin to convince the increasingly paranoid Walter that Sam is haunting him.
Although the horror elements are not presented with much conviction, Regnoli holds the viewer's interest with admirable camera work and clever editing, and eventually there's a nice twist to the story. Although most of the film is done in the typical realist style of the time, he manages to insert a couple of sexy dance numbers (which seem to be his trademark), and the murky swamp scenes are suitably creepy. As the mentally unstable Walter, Barrymore emotes with enough flair and intensity to do his name proud -- his technique is a lot more "method" than his ancestors, but he's just as hammy, and his hatchet face is lit to great effect. The underlying racial tensions are reminiscent of the tough noir "Odds Against Tomorrow", and the haunted crook plot is quite similar to the clever contemporaneous British programmer "The Man in the Back Seat".
Although the horror elements are not presented with much conviction, Regnoli holds the viewer's interest with admirable camera work and clever editing, and eventually there's a nice twist to the story. Although most of the film is done in the typical realist style of the time, he manages to insert a couple of sexy dance numbers (which seem to be his trademark), and the murky swamp scenes are suitably creepy. As the mentally unstable Walter, Barrymore emotes with enough flair and intensity to do his name proud -- his technique is a lot more "method" than his ancestors, but he's just as hammy, and his hatchet face is lit to great effect. The underlying racial tensions are reminiscent of the tough noir "Odds Against Tomorrow", and the haunted crook plot is quite similar to the clever contemporaneous British programmer "The Man in the Back Seat".
