The Police are Blundering in the Dark (1974)

The Police are Blundering in the Dark is a 1974 Italian feature written and directed by Helia Colombo and it appears to be his only film credit. It’s easy to see why. This movie could have been called The Director is Blundering in the Dark. Despite its flaws it is morbidly fascinating and it has some definite oddball features that make it worth a look.

Incidentally the IMDb claims that Helia Colombo was a woman which is totally incorrect. Almost everything in this movie’s IMDb listing appears to be wrong.

We start with a woman getting a flat tyre on a lonely country road. She then gets butchered by an unknown assailant.

There’s a young couple, Lucia and Alberto, who have just been engaged as servants at a villa owned by a wealthy artist named Parrisi. Lucia and Alberto have an uneasy relationship. And the atmosphere at the villa is unsettling. Parrisi is confined to a wheelchair. His wife Eleonora (Halina Zalewska) is obviously sexually frustrated. Fortunately she is able to satisfy her sexual urges with their niece Sara. There’s also Dr Dalla, who spends a great deal of time at the villa when he’s not tending his gardens.

Another young woman, Enrichetta Blonde (a fine name for a character in a giallo), also has car trouble. She finds a roadside inn and rings her sleazy journalist boyfriend Giorgio (Joseph Arkim). He can’t come to pick her up because he’s busy in bed with another woman. By the time he arrives next morning it’s too late for poor Enrichetta Blonde.

At this stage Enrichetta’s body has not been found so Giorgio thinks she’s just gone missing. An entry in her diary leads him to Parrisi’s villa where he becomes a house guest. And finds himself in the middle of all kinds of weird psycho-sexual dramas. Giorgio is not a man to let opportunities slip by so he figures he might as well seduce both the housemaid and the niece.

As the movie progresses it becomes more incoherent but also much weirder. There is even a possible science fiction element.

Obviously there’s a psycho killer loose but there’s no point in suspecting characters who seem possibly crazy or sexually twisted because every character in this movie seems to be at least somewhat crazy and sexually twisted.

There’s the halfwit son of the old couple who run the inn. There’s Parrisi, whose artistic interests focus on the female nude. He’s eccentric and probably sexually dysfunctional. There’s his wife who is bedding his niece. Eleonora is also a diagnosed erotomaniac. The two servants, Lucia and Alberto, are shifty and seem at least slightly depraved. Lucia is a nymphomaniac so no man is safe with her around. The doctor is obsessed with flowers and is a bit of a worry. And Giorgio himself is an inveterate and amoral womaniser.

And did I mention the guy who has found a way to photograph people’s thoughts?

Colombo attempts a couple of spectacular murder set-pieces, with mixed success. Overall the violence level is fairly moderate. There is no shortage of bare breasts.

The movie has a very low-budget and slightly amateurish feel. Colombo’s inexperience as writer and director is painfully evident. At times this is an asset - he makes odd unexpected choices. Sometimes the choices are misguided but sometimes they’re weirdly interesting. The script is very slapdash. It has some very good ideas but their potential is not fully exploited. Most of the cast and crew, with a few exceptions, were also very inexperienced.

One thing this film has in its favour is a claustrophobic hothouse atmosphere of sleaze, kinkiness and sexual dysfunction.

The science fiction element (the thought photography machine) isn’t just thrown in to add a bit more strangeness. It plays a pivotal part in the plot.

Parrisi, the wildly eccentric artist, is the one character who really makes an impression.

This movie was shot in 1972 but not released until 1975. It made little impression at the box office.

The Police are Blundering in the Dark has to be considered a failure but at least it fails in interesting ways. Despite its flaws I found myself enjoying it. Tentatively recommended.

It’s included in Vinegar Syndrome’s Forgotten Gialli volume1 Blu-Ray boxed set, along with Trauma and Javier Aguirre’s disappointing The Killer Is One of Thirteen. The Police are Blundering in the Dark gets a reasonably decent transfer (to be fair it’s a movie that probably never looked all that great). The only extra is a short but informative audio essay by Rachel Nisbet.