PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *psychological*
SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS
I'm discussing the solution to this murder-mystery because its psychological complexities behind the killer's motives are more interesting than the whodunnit reveal.
The film doesn't start out with the naked murdered girl; she comes in later. The initiating victim is an old fellow named Wallenberger, shot in the head and propped in the seat of a "tunnel of horrors" ride at an amusement park. Technically, though, this murder is given a prologue holding clues to the solution. During WWII a Nazi officer is seen setting a bomb to do away with a bound young woman and her boy. The bomb goes off but we don't know who was killed, or why.
Since Wallenberger had just signed a major insurance policy, the company suspects hanky-panky, and sends an investigator named Chris (Robert Hoffman) to ferret out the truth. The police are represented by Inspector Huber (Adolfo Celi, the only "name" in the cast that a fair quantity of Americans would recognize), and he has no answers, though he hints that they don't know exactly where Wallenberger was during WWII. (Hence the prologue...) Chris starts off his investigation by chatting up Catherine, the youngest daughter of the victim, who's being stalked by a mysterious figure, seen once through a window, his or her face concealed by a dark hood. Chris eventually sleeps with her in order to garner an invite to the family estate. There he meets Barbara and Magda, Catherine's sister and mother respectively. He encounters a few obvious red herrings, one of whom is played by Howard Ross, who essayed a muscleman-hero in SAMSON AND THE MIGHTY CHALLENGE. Then Chris sleeps with Barbara-- though she's proven innocent of her father's murder when the mystery killer slays her and leaves her naked in the park.
I guessed the killer's identity by the fact that Chris so callously bumped uglies with Barbara, and didn't even apologize when Catherine walked in on them-- though to be sure Catherine barely noticed, being freaked out about her stalker. And when Chris let Madga come on to him as well-- though it may be significant that he doesn't sleep with her-- I was sure that Chris was the mastermind. Sure enough, he's the grownup version of the little boy from the prologue. The officer setting the bomb was Wallenberg, who was playing stepfather to the woman's child until he decided to get rid of them both in what would look like just another war-death. The mother died, but the boy escaped and later designed this complicated plan of revenge on Wallenberg's house. But Inspector Huber has not been twiddling his thumbs, and Chris receives rough justice in the end.
Chris has a long rant in front of his late stepfather's portrait that qualifies the young fellow for the ranks of "perilous psycho," not least because he claims that his "hands are clean" because he got pawns to do his dirty work. His crimes are not bizarre, though, and he's seen in his black hood only for a second, so that it doesn't stand scrutiny as an "outre outfit." Chris's obsession carries a vibe suggestive of Freud's "Totem and Taboo" theory, in which young men slay the tribal chieftain so that they can gain access to the women he keeps to himself.
The biggest surprise of the film is that it has a competent if not remarkable solution to its mystery. This is a little surprising since a lot of giallos prove careless about details of logic and motivation. However, it's even more startling that the director was Alfonso Brescia, known best to SF-fans for a series of nonsensical "Star Wars" flicks, of which STAR ODYSSEY may be the worst. NAKED at least demonstrates that Brescia wasn't utterly unable to make a decent genre film.
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