Beware the lady in black

Who Saw Her Die? (1972)

A young girl is murdered in a ski resort somewhere in France. The killer seems to be a lady dressed in black with a veil on her face. The story moves to Venice where one year later a daughter of a sculptor gets killed by the same lady. After the initial shock the parents start to investigate the murder and soon the killer strikes again. This is quite a typical giallo with very little surprises despite the guessing game of who the killer is. George Lazenby, most known for his role as James Bond in On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969), plays the sculptor father and does a solid job at it. There's actually another familiar face from the Bond franchise in it as well, Adolfo Celi, but he didn't really shine out in any way. Anita Strindberg is always great and the rest of the cast isn't bad at all either, so nothing to complain on that department. The music by Ennio Morricone is quite great, but it's used way too repetitively which is a shame as it works brilliant before it starts to annoy you. I have to give a special mention to the cinematography as this movie looks absolutely gorgeous. Franco Di Giacomo has captured the mood quite brilliantly on film. So there are many things right in this one, but unfortunately in addition to the thin story, the pacing is a bit off. The movie gets quite boring at times and even the beautiful cinematograpy with good music can't save it at those points. None the less this was well worth watching, but not too keen on watching it again any time soon.
55%

The Last Night Virgin Murders The Spring On The Left Train House

Night Train Murders (1975)

Sorry for the crazy title, the reason for it is that this movie is actually quite an interesting curiosity. It's exploitation in the second generation so to say, it exploits the idea of another hugely popular exploitation movie, Wes Craven's The Last House on the Left (1972), which in turn exploited a popular Ingmar Bergman's The Virgin Spring (1960). That's not really anything special as there are tons of movies that exploit other exploitation movies, but what makes this trio special is that both of the versions keep the moral dilemma from the original in them as well. Even though the story could have been told straight forward relying only on the shock factor, the main point of vengeance making the person commiting it no better than the one that deserves it is still very present there. And that's why I quite like this one. So it's basically the same story as in The Last House on the Left (1972) but this time it all happens on a night train. Two young women are on their way home for the Christmas on an almost empty night train when they come across two drug addict thugs and a nymphomanic woman. Well as the story follows quite closely Craven's film, I'm not going to say anything more about it so I don't end up spoiling 3 movies, even though the other 2 should be considered as general knowledge by now. I was expecting this to be an audio-visual update for the Craven's version, but the style was surprisingly straight forward with only a few quite stylish scenes. Even Ennio Morricone's score isn't shining out in any way and actually one of the strongest scenes in the movie has no sounds at all. And that's quite a shame as the movie really doesn't bring anything to the old story, but then again it luckily doesn't take away either. So it's basically the same story in a different setting, surely it's nowhere near as good as The Virgin Spring (1960) and not even as good as The Last House on the Left (1972), but still it's not a bad movie as it manages to keep the most important point of the story unlike many others of it's kind. The dubbing was horrible as in most Italian movies, so watch it with the original soundtrack if possible.
66%