THE POLICE ARE BLUNDERING IN THE DARK (1975)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological*

Though filmed in 1972, when many of the great giallos were produced, this movie didn't make it to Italian theaters until 1975. In addition, POLICE's writer-director Helia Columbo never made another movie. Of the cast-members, actress Halina Zalewska probably has the greatest number of genre movies, but two or three main actors have, like Columbo, no other credits but POLICE.

Just today I also viewed and reviewed another long-delayed giallo movie from the seventies, CRAZY DESIRES OF A MURDERER. I criticized it for "dull characters" with "pointless eccentricities," but at least I could follow what was going on. POLICE has both dull characters and an erratic narrative that I could not follow in the least. At least with DESIRES, there were a few standard Gothic devices to hold my interest.

I suppose that if I were trying to nail down which of the boring characters was the main one, I suppose it would be the "scissors killer," who provides the only motive force of the narrative as he goes around killing beautiful women. Columbo doesn't know how to leave clues, even the erratic ones expected in a giallo, so the killer's motives are never suggested, merely summarized in a quick wrapup.

The gore murders are extremely derivative, and Columbo even manages to make a long sequence with a completely nude woman boring. I suppose there's some curiosity value in the fact that a professor character invents a device that can record people's thoughts, which the murderer tries to destroy. The film started with a different title, and IMDB claims that the official one may have been conceived to appeal to fans of police drama, even though there are no police characters to be found. FWIW, the subbed version of the film does insert the words "the police are blundering in the dark," which may or may not be present in the Italian original.