A traveling salesman, in Okland for the annual Halloween celebration, fingers the sheriff as the leader of a gang that dressed up as saloon girls to hijack a stagecoach, rape his daughter, and kill a man four years earlier. The happily married lawman is innocent, of course -his evil twin's the real culprit- but that's not Okland's only cause for alarm because a masked murderer (looking like Claude Rains in THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA) plans to rob a local bank during the traditional masquerade on All Hallow's Eve...
IN THE NAME OF...yada, yada, yada is pretty much a cheapjack production, unexceptional at best, with one too many day-for-night shots and contrary to any internet buzz, there's no "giallo influence" despite a couple of POV stabbings done to conceal the killer's identity. With his thick blond mane and green eyes, craggy Craig Hill (on the far side of 40 at the time) was still a handsome man and he differentiates the twins by alternating between quiet resolve and maniacal mustache-twirling.
Sexy Ágata Lys as the ravished daughter is fourth-billed in the credits but on my DVD-R cover art she's top billed over Craig. The movie poster is obviously from a late-70s re-release after Ágata became a European pop star and the titular enigma in LA NUEVA MARILYN (1976) with nude layouts in men's magazines all over the world. And why not- when MM's early movies were re-released, she was also top-billed over the real stars in poster art, including ones for THE ASPHALT JUNGLE and ALL ABOUT EVE. Marilyn Monroe was big in the mid- 1970s; the same year Ms. Lys was invoking the iconic love goddess, one-time TV sexpot Misty Rowe was doing the same in Hollywood's GOODBYE NORMA JEAN (1976) and in 1975's TOMMY, Monroe's cult status finally achieved the inevitable.
