What Have They Done to Your Daughters?

Though the film's innocent, optimistic music score, serving it's title, which I really favor, will be one which will stay in my head, this Italian exploitation crime drama doesn't fare too badly, if not for a crappy and simple ending. It is a stylized effort, bursting with some nice graphic shock gore here and there, and a cool, anger driven cop character, heralding it. A full masked psycho on a motorbike, is the responsible killing hand, to a first initially thought suicide of a young girl, caught up in a schoolgirl prostitution ring, involving many a high up party of clientele. A great car/bike chase through the paved streets of our Italian city, some shock scare moments, some T and A and some kinky pimp talk via secret tape recordings, doesn't amount to a compact drama, where this one falls short, especially in the thriller, construction stakes. And yet again, we're still haunted by that music score. Cool frank movie poster, not the one illustrated on this IMDB page.

6.5/10

'What Have They Done To Our Daughters?' is an above average giallo directed by Massimo Dallamano, who was the cinematographer for Leone's spaghetti western classic 'For A Few Dollars More'. It's a kinda sorta sequel to 'What Have They Done To Solange?', which I haven't seen. But I have seen Dallamano's swinging De Sade 'Venus In Furs' and both movies have made me very interested in his work. The story concerns a police investigation into the shocking murder of a teenage girl which uncovers a prostitution ring. It stars Giovanna Ralli who was in another pretty good giallo 'Cold Eyes Of Fear' and Claudio Cassinelli who co-starred in the nunsploitation classic 'Flavia The Heretic'. It's also quite a surprise to see Farley Granger (of Hitchcock's classics 'Rope' and 'Strangers On A Train') in the supporting cast, though his performance is forgettable. Giallo fans will enjoy this one, but if you are new to genre try some Dario Argento (especially 'Tenebre') or Fulci's 'Don't Torture A Duckling' to see some of the best examples of this style of thriller. Still, this is a pretty good movie with some gruesome and sensationalistic touches.

While the original Italian title – THE POLICE ASKS FOR HELP – clearly pigeonholes this one in the then-popular (and incredibly prolific) poliziottesco genre, the English title under which it is better known around the world – WHAT HAVE THEY DONE TO YOUR DAUGHTERS? – implies a giallo in the same vein as Dallamano’s best-known film, WHAT HAVE THEY DONE TO SOLANGE? (1972). In any case, while both elements are effectively present – a hatchet-wielding murderer is the subject of the climactic manhunt – the police procedural themes are more prevalent.

The film deals with a teenage suicide which eventually uncovers a child prostitution ring which, as usual, includes not just the petty sleazy oddballs (here personified by Franco Fabrizi) but also high-profile professionals (a celebrated doctor) and high-ranking government officials (a Minister). The cast is surprisingly good for this type of genre effort: Claudio Cassinelli (as the investigating Police Chief), Giovanna Ralli (unusually cast as a female D.A.), Mario Adorf as the policeman who finds the first body and also discovers that his own teenage daughter was once a “victim” of these perverts, the afore-mentioned Fabrizi and Hollywood veteran Farley Granger in a smallish role as the first victim’s father.

As usual for Italian genre movies, the music score is an asset and here it is provided by Stelvio Cipriani whose motif, while simple and repetitive, is extremely effective given that it involves children singing gibberish (and thus commenting on the main theme of the movie itself even through its performers). Alarmingly, the end titles claim that every year in Italy, 8000 teenagers run away from home but only a small percentage returns to the fold – the majority are never found!

This movie's pretty blunt and straight to the point, so I can keep it brief.

What Have They Done to Your Daughters? Is an Italian crime/horror movie that follows a group of characters trying to catch a serial killer who's targeting teenage girls. It's the kind of premise that's been done to death, but it's the way it's done here that's interesting. It's fast-paced, surprisingly well-shot, memorably bloody, and also features some great music. In fact, it's the music that cancels out the bad dubbing, really, because while most Italian movies from this time don't have very good dubbing, this one kind of goes one step beyond, because it's really bad at points.

I can see these crime/horror/thriller movies from Italy in the 1970s being the next genre I hyper-fixate on, as I've done with kaiju movies, samurai movies, and martial arts movies. There's something really interesting about them (I'd call them Giallo movies, but I'm not entirely sure yet whether this particular movie counts as Giallo).

So overall, What Have They Done to Your Daughters? Isn't anything new when it comes to its story or characters, and it's kind of sleazy in parts, but it's well-made and consistently engaging, making it a pleasant surprise to watch, because I wasn't expecting this to be of a moderately high quality.

Second in Dallamano's schoolgirls-getting-killed trilogy, it's not as good as Who's Next? (Solange) but not bad in its own right. The killer is someone who rides a motorino (hey, it is Italy!) and never takes off his/her riding helmet, ala Magnum Force, the 2nd Dirty Harry film. This one's more exciting than scary, as the police hunt down this maniac. He's one of the cooler villains in film history though, because unlike the traditional drag-ass killer, this guy never speaks and just RUNS at you with a machete. He really SPRINTS at top speed, which is actually very scary, especially to a jaded horror buff used to the Michael Myers/Jason/zombie method of ambling on over to their victims, who usually have to trip in order to be caught. And there's one scene involving a light switch that will make you jump out of your undies. Stelvio Cipriani's score is again top-notch (he later reused part of it for Tentacles), the dubbing tolerable.