Stateline Motel (1973)

Floyd (Testi) just out of prison arranges a robbery with an accomplice. They steal a huge amount of diamond from a jeweller's. Immediately they are chased by Canadian police but Floyd who has a powerful Ford Mustang, is able to shake them off. The two accomplices take different streets because Canadian government issued a warrant of expulsion to Floyd so he has to leave the country in 48 hours. He goes toward the border with an old Chevrolet but the street is frozen and he goes off the road. Walking he arrives in a Hotel called the "Last Chance". He gets a room and hides the loot under the bed. Michell (Andress) a beautiful hotel's owner hearing the TV notices about a robbery in the town, finds out that Floyd is one of the robbers. After a sex night with her, Floyd doesn't find the diamonds because Jack, Michelle's lover, has hidden them. He cannot leave Canada without recovering the diamonds so he threatens Michelle with death in order to force her to reveal the hiding place. After being mistreated, Michelle tells Floyd she hasn't the diamonds but Floyd doesn't believe her. He goes on to find the diamonds without results. In the meantime Joe the second accomplice, receives a telephone call from Floyd and not believing him decides to go to the hotel. Just arrived he orders a room and together Floyd begins to search in Michelle's room and again without results. Floyd realizes that he is suspected by Joe of an arrangement with Michelle, so he plans an escape. Michelle leaves the hotel by bus and Floyd catch her up later. When Michelle sees the Chevrolet (Floyd's car) jumps in but discovers the driver is Joe. He beat her up in order to force her to reveal where the diamonds are but he strangles her out of rage . Then he searches in Michelle's bag finding a puppet that contains inside the diamonds. Meanwhile Floyd comes and seeing Michelle dead out of the car, chase Joe and kills him. Unfortunately inside the puppet there are only some stones. The film ends this way. It's clear it is cut because is impossible for me thinks that the story doesn't explain where the diamonds are. Indeed looking up in some cinema books I discovered the film lasts 105 minutes while my personal copy (recorded by TV channel) is 97 minutes. It is possible that in those missing minutes it is told where the diamonds have ended up. By the way the film runs well with a good screenplay and good actors. I think this it is better than others Italian crime films. In a town that I cannot recognize (we cannot be sure the movie has been shot in Canada like the plot tell us) there is a long chase between a Mustang (Floyd's car) and three police cars. Watching well we can see a stuntman driving the Mustang while in the close ups backs Fabio Testi. There is Ursula Andress older-looking to tell the true, but always gorgeous, Massimo Girotti in the role of husband of Andress, Eli Wallach as the accomplice of Fabio Testi . Even if Testi has started as a stuntman is also a fairly good actor. The car used in this film are: a Chevrolet impala model 1962, a Ford mustang coupè and a Wolkswagen beetle of seventies. Sound strange but the film was shot in English language then dubbed in Italian. The dubbing is not very good especially for the synchronism. Why doesn't exist a copy in direct sound for the English market given that the actors speak a good English? What is the point of dubbing a film into Italian and delivering it for the foreign market dubbed again and badly, sticking to the public opinion written in IMDb?I give it 5.5 of 10

***SPOILERS*** Terribly dubbed into English Canadian movie where the actors look and sound like their a bunch of ventriloquists without having dummies to throw their voices at. Even the non-spoken sounds and noises in the movie aren't even synchronized to where they come across like far away echos.Floyd, Fabio Testi, is just released from a Montreal jail after serving six months for car theft and is given 48 hours by the Canadian Government to leave the country. Floyd is picked up by his criminal associate Joe, Eli Wallach, then in what seems like ten minutes the two of them hold up a jewelry store shoot one of the costumers, critically, and are chased by the police all over the city of Montreal. After all that they split up in two cars and head across the Canadian border to Newport Maine. They split up all right but for some strange reason Joe let's Floyd keep the entire amount of jewels that they just robbed, some $500,000.00 worth that they both agree to meet in Newport to split them up between themselves; why didn't they do it right there? Floyd driving on the icy and frozen highway like an idiot runs his car off the road and breaks it axle leaving him stranded at the "Last Chance Motel" just across the border from the state of Main in Canada leaving Joe in Newport left waiting for him and his share of the jewels. The unbelievable story goes on with Floyd stuck at the motel and not being able to get across the border to Portland to get to Joe with the jewels. This has Joe thinking that Floyd is trying to take off with the entire load of stolen jewelry. At the motel Floyd falls in love with the motel owners wife gorgeous Michelle Nolton, Ursula Andress, who's, unknown to Floyd at the time, a bit flaky. The local cops come to the motel to check out Floyd and anyone else there trying to cross the border in connection to the Montreal jewel robbery and are then told by the police radio that the two robbers were caught, obviously a false alarm. Earlier in the film Floyd and Michelle had a roll in bed and when Floyd comes back from the police and checks his motel room he finds that the jewels are missing! who took them? Michelle? Or was it the other half dozen or so people in the motel at the time? If Floyd doesn't find them and split them up with Joe who's getting a little restless waiting he'll end up with his head split in half.if it wasn't for the aforementioned bad dubbing the movie "Stateline Motel" would have been a pretty good crime drama. The fact that we see Ursala Andress undressed and nude in a really hot and sizzling love scene with Floyd was more then worth the rental coast alone. The ending was pretty bland but very unintentionally funny with the final confrontation between Joe Michelle and Floyd. The shooting of Joe by both Michelle and Floyd looked and sounded as if their guns went off some 5 to 10 or so miles away; thats how long it would have taken for the sound waves to reach the audience. But in reality the gun shots that did Joe in went off at point blank range no more then ten feet away from him.

Ursula's performance is definitely brilliant in this movie. She proves not only is she beautiful, but given the right role she can act the hell out of it.Fabio Testi looks good, but isn't the greatest actor, though he does try to hold his own.An interesting plot that keeps you interested to the end.

This Italian crime film is interesting at first, but the pace never picks up. Fabio Testi is a good-hearted robber stranded at the "Last Chance Motel", Ursula Andress is the beautiful (but somewhat stiff) wife of the motel's owner, and Eli Wallach is Testi's partner, who comes after him when the diamonds they stole somehow disappear. You'd expect that the appearance of Wallach would help increase the tension, but that doesn't happen. Some of the night scenes (including the sex scene) are so dark you can't see anything! (**)