CinemaSerf

Alida Valli appears but sparingly in this, but she does steal the scenes in an otherwise rather hammily performed plod-thriller. It's all centred around "Julie" (Rosemary Dexter) who is perplexed about the disappearance of her psychiatrist boyfriend. She doesn't want to involve the authorities, so alights on the dubious "Frank" (Adolfo Celi) and that leads her to a beautiful seaside palazzo inhabited by an eclectic group of misfits. Almost immediately after she arrives, the guests start dropping like flies. Is she safe? Is she the culprit, even? Well, we have to wait for the fuse on this to burn, and it takes it's time. It's very wordy, and to be honest - not a great deal goes on for the first forty-five minutes. It's only at the villa does the action, such as it is, hot up and we start to feel a little sense of peril as we can gradually piece together what is, admittedly, a decent denouement that isn't quite what you might have expected. It's terribly over-scored with that early 1970s busyness that I found quite intrusive into the dialogue that really could have done with a better script editor. Standard fayre with a mediocre cast that passes the time but a film you will almost certainly never remember.