Outstanding Giallo where the Giallo tag barely applies, every shot looks like it was painted by an Italian maestro, and Ennio Morricone's soundtrack just adds to the eerie disorientation.
The films starts with the dead body of Jean Sorel being found in a park in Prague, although as we can hear his thoughts, he's not quite as dead as he seems. After his initial horror at his predicament, and his futile attempts to communicate, Jean tries to figure out why he ended up in this situation in the first place - while laying out on a mortuary slab.
Way back before he was a faux-corpse, it turns out Jean was a groovy US journalist based in Prague and just about to move home with his Czech girlfriend, Barbara Bach. Obviously this is back in the communist era, so he's having to do a bit of bribery in order to get her out of the country. He attends a party where most of the high-ranking politicians are present, and ends up leaving Barbara surrounded by cooing strangers while he fends of the advances of his co-worker and gets bogged down in a pointless conversation with his other co-worker, boozy Mario Adorf!
The next day Barbara has gone missing, which leads Jean and Mario on a city spanning hunt to find out where she's gone. The police aren't much help, and Jean uncovers a history of young woman going missing in Prague that leads to a truth far more sinister than a mere black hatted-killer going around knifing folk for kicks. Of course, everyone who could actually help Jean ends up dead, but this film isn't all about body count.
And that's just the flashback portion of the film, because in real time Jean's being rolled here and there, tested for responses, poked, probed, and all the while screaming in his head for help. The two plot strands come together nicely in an ending that'll have you thinking: "This is an Italian film."
Just stunning to look at it (that means when you look at the film, you fall over your coffee table or just fall off the couch), jaw-dropping (which means your mouth just falls open for no reason), mesmerizing (you starve to death looking at the film). Watch out for the nightmarish visuals and the old person orgy! Recommended.
The 'Creepy Eastern European City' plot would return in the Spider Labyrinth, probably the last genuinely creepy Italian film ever made/
