Who Saw Her Die? / Chi l'ha vista morire? (Italy, 1972)

Much like sometimes the thing most needed in the morning is the rare slice of cold pizza, sometimes there is nothing more fun than the occasional late night giallo. (If you need a translation of that Italian term, please go read some other blog.) This film — the third feature film made by Aldo Lado, the Croatian-born Italian director best known for his 1975 über-violent revenge "classic" Last Stop on the Night Train (trailer), which gained some infamy in the 1980s when it was banned in England as a "video nasty" — was chosen as the late-night giallo due to its cast: aside from the Swedish cult actress Anita Strindberg (Lizard in a Woman's Skin [1971 / trailer], The Antichrist [1974 / trailer] and so much more), Who Saw Her Die? also features the mostly forgotten 2nd James Bond George Lazenby (in his third feature-film role) as well as the cult redhead child actress Nicoletta Elmi (Andy Warhol's Frankenstein [1973 / trailer], Deep Red [1975 / trailer], and Demons [1985 / trailer]). With a cast like that, the film just has to be good, right?
Well, actually, no...
But first, the good things about the film. It has a truly unforgettable and beautiful but unnerving score by the great master Ennio Morricone and is set in Venice — a run-down and somewhat grimy Venice at that, one which correctly reflects the look of off-season Venice but lacks the tourists still normally found there even then. (As a result, the city has an interestingly depressing aura that is well-suited for the film.) As appropriate to the time the film was made, absolutely no silicon is seen in the entire film even though not one of the adult females in Who Saw Her Die? gets away without doing a nude scene. Lado also tosses in a few interesting directorial bonbons, such as a point-of-view-shots seen through a veil, a murder in a cheap movie cinema and a well-shot scene of four people playing cat and mouse in a deserted warehouse. (In general, the cinematography is commendable, but the cropping and transfer of the ancient VHS that this review is based on obliterate most of it.) But with that, the nice things that can be said about this almost totally forgettable movie have all been listed.
Not to say that there aren’t other truly memorable aspects of the film, it’s just that they aren’t things that actually make the film good. The sex scenes have got to be some of the most un-erotic ever filmed and lend a good argument for becoming asexual. Likewise, George Lazenby is unbelievably repulsive: according to imdb he lost 35 pounds to play the role, and the result is that, combined with his 70s-style walrus moustache, he looks a lot like an early Castro District AIDS sufferer (and that almost a good decade before GRID — gay-related immune deficiency, as the sickness was originally called — was even officially "discovered" [research has since shown that people died of AIDS as early as 1959, possible earlier]). The given characterization of the rather unsympathetic main leads are often illogical and unconvincing — one might feel sorry for Franco, but one doesn’t like him; as for Elizabeth, she wants to get over it and move on rather too quickly for a loving mother — and their second-rate acting does little to make them believable. The identity of the murderer is not only much too obvious but is outed less by detection than simple dwindling numbers, and the final line of the film (uttered by the fat reporter friend [Piero Vida, victim number four in Stage Fright (1987 / trailer), if you count the orderly as #1] who at one point is briefly made to come across as a would-be child molester—as is every male in the movie, for that matter) is ridiculous, inconsequential to the whole plot, totally unnecessary and does little other than destroy any vestiges of good faith the viewer might still have in the movie.
And the plot? Well, Who Saw Her Die? is very much an early tract against free-range kids. It opens in the French Alps with the brutal murder of a little girl by a veiled "woman" dressed in black before moving on to Venice, where the sculptor Franco Serpieri (George Lazenby) lives; his wife Elizabeth Serpieri (Anita Strindberg) and daughter Roberta (Nicoletta Elmi) live in London. Roberta comes to visit, most of the possible suspects and/or future dead are introduced, and then while Franco is busy wetting his wick one evening his unattended daughter disappears from the local square, only to show up the next day floating in the Grand Canal. The police are typically incapable — as one of Franco's friends says to the inspector, "You couldn't even catch pneumonia!" — so the guilt-ridden Franco takes up the investigation himself against the advice of his friends and wife, the latter who has come to Venice for the funeral and to have sex with him. Following the lead of a similar murder that occurred the previous year, all paths lead Franco back to people within his immediate vicinity, and any that seem to be willing to offer him help die violently. Franco suddenly figures it out — a virtual flash of realization — just as his wife becomes the next intended victim...
All the trappings of a typical giallo are there, including the bad dubbing, fake blood, gloved hands, red herrings and violent deaths, liberally peppered with an aura of pedophilic sleaze. Combined with Lado’s cinematography, Who Saw Her Die? should have been a good film. Too bad it isn't...
For the sake of fairness, and because reading his very well written review made me feel like we saw different films, here is a review by someone who liked Who Saw Her Die? found at So Sweet, So Perverse.