Naked Girl Killed in the Park (1972)

Alfonso Breschia is infamous for unleashing no less than four Star Wars rip-offs on the world (and to confuse things, the IMDb lists five – Battle of the Stars and War of the Planets being one and the same film). I think I started my review of Breschia's Western Killer Calibre .32 the exact same way, so I'll shut about those damn sci-fi films now.I hope you like fairgrounds, because this film features one a lot! An old geezer goes onto a ghost train alone and comes out the other side with a bullet in his brain and the $600,000 in his pocket gone, and it's up to insurance investigator Robert Hoffman to get to the bottom of it. Does it have anything to do with that lengthy black and white prologue from the Second World War? You betcha!Robert sets his eyes on the dead guy's daughter Catherine (who looks like Kim Kardashian, without the fake arse) and starts putting the moves on her without telling her he's an investigator. Once she realises that he's probably not the weird person calling her up all the time, it's off to the sack they go, after a quick visit to the fairground.Catherine of course lives in a huge mansion with her crazy mother Magda and slutty sister Barbara. Magda's gone a bit nuts about the whole murdered husband thing, and Barbara buries her grief by having rough sex with the mute gardener. Robert spies on them at it and thinks Barbara's being raped, but when it becomes apparent she's not, he hangs on for a couple of minutes just to make sure. At some point you'll probably be wondering when the film will get round to actually having anyone killed, let alone having them naked and being found in a park. When that finally happens, the giallo element takes off and the film starts being enjoyable daft. My favourite bit was when the family, Robert and Adolfo were standing on the balcony of the mansion and Adolfo points out how wobbly the railing is, moving it back and forth and remarking that someone should have that fixed and of course someone takes a dive through it (or at least an unconvincing dummy does). That's not foreshadowing – that's blatant signposting. The twists are actually pretty good for a change and you can't help but love a film that locates its ending in a fairground. As far as Alfonso Breschia films go this is probably the best one I've seen so far. I think I said that about Killer Calibre .32 too.

Well, my relationship with Giallo thus far has been so good that I wouldn't hesitate to name this sort of film as my favourite - but I was bound to come up against a completely redundant one before long, and that's exactly what we have here. Naked Girl Killed in the Park is as uninspiring as its title, which is unfortunate as the plot itself is ripe for springing a good Giallo from. We follow the murder of a rich man whose body was found on an amusement park ride. The most intriguing thing about this murder is that the man has just completed a one million dollar life insurance deal! Naturally, the insurance company isn't too keen on paying out after such a short period of time, so they send out their best agent; who starts his investigation by infiltrating the family and seducing the youngest daughter. Director Alfonso Brescia continually fails to generate any suspense and/or intrigue - and this means that the resulting film is really rather boring. The music rarely fits what's on screen - and the film also seems bathed in the score, rather than having the two exist in harmony.The murders are far too tame, and while some blood wouldn't have saved the movie; it would have garnered it slightly more praise at least. The acting is mostly terrible, with Robert Hoffman (A Black Veil for Lisa, Spasmo) not doing brilliantly in leading a cast of unknowns with his under-wrought performance. The title of the film does come true as a naked dead girl does turn up in a park; but it's over half way through before that happens, and since the murder that kicks the plot off involves a rich man and a carnival, it makes you wonder why this title was chosen - probably to drag in more viewers. The plot is not very well handled at all, and I spent most of the film wondering what exactly was going on. It's not long before the movie starts to get boring, and it's that reason that is responsible for not even the rather good ending making any sort of impression on this Giallo fan. Overall, Naked Girl Killed in the Park is the worst Giallo I've seen so far - and while I don't doubt that there are worse films lurking in the wilderness of the Italian thriller, this one certainly isn't worth tracking down.

I won't argue that it's a lot more appealing to mention a naked dead girl in the title of a horror movie but, in all honesty, a far more accurate description would be: "Fully Dressed Guy Killed in an Amusement Park Ride"… The plot of this ultra-obscure Italian giallo merely revolves on this rich bloke who's found murdered on a theme ride, only moments after he completed a million dollar life-insurance deal! Instead of paying the amount right away, the company puts one of their best investigators on the case and he infiltrates in the victim's family by seducing the youngest daughter. There naturally is a naked girl found killed in the park, only that comes after a whole lot of family-intrigues and character introductions. The discovery of the naked girl in the park (anyone notice how I LOVE repeat the title all the time?) does herald the beginning of a series of inventive murders, insane plot twists and effective red herrings, so it isn't such a misleading title after all. The story of this film is more or less textbook giallo-material, but it's rather slow-paced and the visual style isn't all that impressive. The murders sequences are pretty tame (no original modus operandi here) and the movie doesn't feature any truly memorable suspense sequences. All this probably clarifies why "Naked Girl Killed in the Park" is still very unknown and incredibly hard to find out there in DVD-land. Also, the cast doesn't contain any famous names and director Alfonso Brescia isn't such a prominent giallo-deity as, say, Sergio Martino or Dario Argento. Still, there's plenty of stuff to recommend to well-trained giallo fans, like a fair amount of sleaze, good music and quite a demented climax…. And a downright fantastic title, of course.

The best thing I can say about this minor giallo is that there really IS a naked girl killed in a park. In fact, as per the Italian title there is a COMPLETELY naked girl killed in a park. (There's a couple other naked girls too, but only one of them is killed in a park). That's pretty much the highlight of the movie though.It starts off in a pretty interesting way with the first-person POV of a funhouse ride which turns out to be from the POV of a dead man!The dead man had just bought a million dollar life insurance, so an intrepid insurance investigator (Robert Hoffman) is called in. He dodges the police investigator on the case (former Bond villain Adolf Celli)and becomes involved with the man's two sexy but neurotic daughters as well as his sexy but neurotic widow (who judging by the looks of her must have given birth to her two daughters when she was about ten). More people die before the final revelation which, unfortunately, is pretty stupid and involves the guilty party delivering a ridiculous soliloquy to a giant portrait of the dead man. It ends back in the amusement park with yet another pretty dumb turn of events.The lead Hoffman is awful, but Celli is pretty good if underused. The women are pretty, but they're definitely not at the acting level of an Edwige Fenech, Rosalba Neri, or Erica Blanc, or even lesser lights of the gialli like Nieves Navarro or Femi Benussi. Pretty forgettable overall--except for the naked girl killed in park.