Indagine su un delitto perfetto (1978) User Reviews

"Toodle Pip There's a Killer on The loose, What"

[Bezenby · 6/10 · 9 November 2018]

Here the upper classes of England get in on the giallo act. When the CEO of 'the company' is killed in an aircraft explosion, three people are up for the job: grumpy old Joseph Cotton, grumpy old Adolfo Celi, and young arrogant Leonard Mann (a rich play boy who is also a race car driver). They all want the job and all three will stop at nothing to get it. Let's look at the details.

Cotton is getting it on with a young lady called Polly (played by Gloria Guida) who is also getting it on with Adolfo, so Cotton wants Gloria to kill Adolfo with a poisoned needle. Cotton has a pacemaker that he imagines is causing him problems and someone seems to be stalking his estate with that in mind. Adolfo also has his wife Janet Agren to attend to - she's the one with the money and she's been getting it on with Leonard, and many other people to put. Last of all, Leonard takes a header off a cliff while driving his car and his cousin is the policeman brought in to investigate the accident. The drama!

If, unlike me, you hadn't had the twists ruined for you by the IMDB description of this film, you'll still pretty much be able to figure it all out anyway. It's nice to see another giallo set in England, but the very society that director Rosati focuses on is so reserved that everything is very repressed. There's not much gore either, save for one nasty bit that comes out of nowhere. Actually, the film might be worth watching for that bit alone.

You can't go wrong with a bit of Adolfo Celi either when I think about it. This isn't a bad giallo but you'd expect, this late in the game, for it to be a lot less predictable. Gloria Guida sure is pretty though.

very disappointing

[christopher-underwood · 5/10 · 18 October 2013]

I found this very disappointing. Seemingly set in London this proceeds rather woodenly like some minor Agatha Christie. But it is not London and apart from some travelogue footage to suggest so, most was shot in Italian studios. This I think added to the film's problems as there seems to be a lack of belief in the material and also necessitating so many sequences to be shot in the dark so as not to give things away. I had a false belief that if all else failed there would always be Gloria Guida to look at but she is all but wasted here. Joseph Cotton does his best as does a rather stuck up seeming, Janet Agren and we get unintentional or not humour from the butler and his English accent. As for the tale of various directors competing for the number one job, it all gets a bit silly and we are left wondering why the Agren character puts up with her ancient and yet philandering husband if she has all the money.

Wild

[BandSAboutMovies · 6/10 · 24 January 2024]

CEO Sir Ronald Selmer's plane has blown up in flight, which brings together the Vice Presidents of his company - Sir Arthur Dundee (Joseph Cotten), Paul De Revere (Leonard Mann) and Sir Harold Boyd (Adolfo Celi) - to discuss who will take over the company. The company pretty much runs the world, so each of them wants to be in charge, which means that anything can happen. And by anything I mean murder.

The smart money is on Selmer's racecar driving nephew Paul - who even has a Keane painting in his office! - but someone sends his car off a cliff which brings in another family member, Superintendent Jeff Hawks (Anthony Steel), to solve the murders - yes, many murders - at the behest of Lady Clementine (Alida Valli, Suspiria).

There's all sorts of wild moments along the way, like Sir Harold's wife Gloria (Janet Agren) leaving a snooty fox hunt to be the roast beef in a man man sandwich in the stables, Sir Arthur trying to seduce and kill Sir Harold with one of his ladies - Polly (Gloria Guida) - and Sir Arthur's pacemaker being short-circuited with a magnetic murder device.

Director and writer Giuseppe Rosati has a big cast and instead of making this an upper crust Agatha Christie thriller - she does get name-dropped - remembers that he's Italian and that this whole movie should be sleazy. Well done! He directed this movie using the name Aaron Leviathan which is the best Italian Americanized name of all time. Giuseppe Rosati also made Those Dirty Dogs, Silence the Witness and The Left Hand of the Law.

The amazing Italo-Cinema points out that while this is set in London, it's filmed in Italy, so if you see the graveyard from Antropophagus - which is set in Greece, I feel like I'm a world traveler - and some of the buildings from Suspiria.

The killer gets away with it! Come on! How many times have you seen that in a giallo? I kind of loved this but any time I see Joseph Cotten and Adolfo Celli in a movie, much less Janet Agren and Cloria Guida, well - I'm pleased.

Not good but fun

[lazarillo · 3 January 2007]

I can't say this is exactly a good movie, but I can't say I didn't enjoy it either. It is an Italian-produced, faux-British movie like "The Killer Wore Gloves" that has some British locations, but was obviously mostly filmed in Rome's Cinecitta.

The basic plot involves a bunch of English business types fighting over the control of a company after the chairman is killed in a (obviously model) airplane explosion. Although all the characters are supposed to be British, the actors are either washed-up American stars (Joseph Cotten), seasoned European character actors (Adolf Celi)or alluring Eurobabes (Janet Agren, Gloria Guida). Nevertheless, Cotten is adequate, and Celi and Agren are actually pretty good as a bickering couple. Celi, a James Bond villain in "Thunderball" and a regular in these kind of films, gets to bed Gloria Guida, who was young enough to be his granddaughter. (In an earlier film I saw of his he also gets to bed Erica Blanc--I wonder if he even asked to be paid for these type of roles?). Guida has a rather ridiculous part as the Celi character's mistress who he is using to give Cotten's character a heart attack by injecting him with a poison (if you've ever seen Guida naked, you know she doesn't need poison to give a guy a heart attack). The end is even more ridiculous, but it is certainly a surprise.

The movie has the absurdity but little of the visual style of an Italian giallo. It also kind of tries to be a staid English murder mystery along the lines of Agatha Christie, but it's too illogical and ridiculous (and Italian)to make it as that either. It kind of falls into a gap between genres, but that doesn't mean there is no fun to be had here.

Rather a classic crime story than a giallo

[rundbauchdodo · 3/10 · 10 April 2001]

Although this rather lame crime story is labeled as a giallo in most books, it lacks almost everything that makes a giallo a great thriller. This film looks like a classic Agatha-Christie-like murder mystery that came about 12 years too late (would it have been made in the Mid-1960s, it would at least have gone through as a rip-off of the British Miss-Marple-mysteries starring Margaret Rutherford, although no comparable character is delivered here).

The want-to-be British style crime story (almost everybody involved in the film uses English pseudonyms, director Rosati's alias being the most obvious of them all) can't convince at all, except maybe for the illustrous cast of veterans of the Italian giallo/police film genre. The only remarkable scene has Joseph Cotten's character trying to cut out his own pacemaker - which he succeeds in vain because he dies anyway (it's not as gory a scene as it sounds).

All in all rather disappointing (including the final twist). Rosati's own police thrillers of the Mid-1970s are more enjoyable.

After all a perfect crime it's possible

[stefanozucchelli · 7/10 · 1 February 2022]

I confess I was surprised by the ending. It is a good movie in which nothing is taken for granted and the culprit turns out to be decidedly unsuspected. A chain of crimes unfolds in front of the spectators for the vile money and no one seems to be safe from it.

VERY underrated classic

[lordnikolascepanovic · 8/10 · 15 May 2018]

Many people say this film disappointed them, but for me it's a great film, and i gave it 8 stars. I think it's a very interesting giallo/crime story with a classical chlice (mysterious black gloved killer). Film has a cast of great actors and actresses (Sweet little Gloria Guida, Leonard Mann, Citizen Kane's Joseph Cotten, Thunderball's Adolfo Celi, gorgeous Janet Agren and good old Alida Valli).

People say it has predictable ending, but it doesn't. It has good mystery and it really has a perfect plot, since the killer isn't caught at the end (because he has an accomplice). It's interesting, fun little classic with suspense and you're not sure who the killer is at the end at some point. I also like this film because the characters are British noblemen, and it has a lot of old fashion, fancy clothes. Better said, this is a very fancy giallo. The motive is just old fashioned money, nothing else. I would add three more candidates (2 chairman's friends and his wife). But still it's good even if it lacks in gore, nudity and J&B. Unfortunately, it's very underrated by many people. However it's a solid giallo for a classical giallo fan, and i recommend it to giallo fans but i think this isn't a good film for giallo starters (but it's still good).