A young couple's life is thrown into turmoil when a pair of blackmailers kidnaps their young son in order to extract a large sum of money from them.
This Italian psychological thriller is somewhat obscure it has to be said. Irrespective of that, it is a film with quite a bit to recommend it. I would say its primary point of interest is with its leading actress, the extremely beautiful Marisa Mell. This sensual Austrian starred in a number of European genre flicks from around this period. Her most notable appearance probably being as the bad girl Eva Kant from Mario Bava's classic early comic book adaption Danger Diabolik (1968). She is consistently good value in all the films I have seen her appear in and this one is no different. She plays possibly the only sympathetic character in the entire movie, the traumatised mother of the missing boy. For what it's also worth, this is the most explicitly sexual role I can recall her starring in, seeing as she is coerced into posing for a set of nude photographs by the male photographer half of the blackmailing duo.
The story itself is quite straightforward but by the end there is a late twist that throws everything under a different light. This surprise development was a very good one I thought, with lots of clues laid out beforehand which only become clear in retrospect. It was a neat ending to what might otherwise have been a little too much of a routine affair. Like lots of Italian genre flicks from the time, it set its action in a different European country in order presumably to increase its commercial viability. In this instance the action begins in Paris but quickly moves to Stockholm in Sweden where the story proper plays out. This wintry location actually suits the story-line pretty well though and made for a very effective icy backdrop to events. In the final analysis, I would have to say that this quite rarely seen film is well worth checking out, especially if you are a fan of the lovely Marisa Mell but also if you like European thrillers from the period in general.
This Italian psychological thriller is somewhat obscure it has to be said. Irrespective of that, it is a film with quite a bit to recommend it. I would say its primary point of interest is with its leading actress, the extremely beautiful Marisa Mell. This sensual Austrian starred in a number of European genre flicks from around this period. Her most notable appearance probably being as the bad girl Eva Kant from Mario Bava's classic early comic book adaption Danger Diabolik (1968). She is consistently good value in all the films I have seen her appear in and this one is no different. She plays possibly the only sympathetic character in the entire movie, the traumatised mother of the missing boy. For what it's also worth, this is the most explicitly sexual role I can recall her starring in, seeing as she is coerced into posing for a set of nude photographs by the male photographer half of the blackmailing duo.
The story itself is quite straightforward but by the end there is a late twist that throws everything under a different light. This surprise development was a very good one I thought, with lots of clues laid out beforehand which only become clear in retrospect. It was a neat ending to what might otherwise have been a little too much of a routine affair. Like lots of Italian genre flicks from the time, it set its action in a different European country in order presumably to increase its commercial viability. In this instance the action begins in Paris but quickly moves to Stockholm in Sweden where the story proper plays out. This wintry location actually suits the story-line pretty well though and made for a very effective icy backdrop to events. In the final analysis, I would have to say that this quite rarely seen film is well worth checking out, especially if you are a fan of the lovely Marisa Mell but also if you like European thrillers from the period in general.
