The Police Are Blundering in the Dark

First, this movie was made years before 1975, but didn't get released until 1975, when long movie titles with "police" were trending, due to the popularity of eurocrime. This movie was meant to have been titled The Salad Garden or something, but they changed it. This however, is a cheap and poorly executed province giallo with at least one recognizable face, most other actors you probably rarely ever saw before - and for good reasons. I don't know where to begin, you need to see for yourselves, but the bizarre salad dinner scene has some of the most hollow dialogue and acting - and not to mention the overlong crazy scientist scene performing his arts on a regular home mixing table, randomly pushing knobs for what feels like several minutes. Good lord, how did Vinegar Syndrome even go the whole mile restoring and releasing this mediocrity, when there are real low budget diamonds waiting to be recovered?

A reporter agrees to meet a model friend at an isolated villa. Turns out she's been stabbed to death by an unknown assassin. The owner of the villa is a wheelchair-bound man who has invented a device for photographing thoughts. Typically for these types of movies, the house is also populated by a selection of other oddballs and eccentrics.

The Police Are Blundering in the Dark is a bargain basement yet extremely strange giallo. It opens with a half-naked woman being chased by an unseen assailant and then being stabbed to death with a pair of scissors. But from hereon in it just gets stranger. The very idea of a machine that photographs thoughts is of course ludicrous. Its nearest giallo equivalent would be the ridiculous eye device in Dario Argento's Four Flies on Grey Velvet. But that's where the comparison ends, as this flick is hardly on the same level as Argento's one. It is a somewhat bizarre entry in the giallo sub-genre it does have to be admitted and for that alone it deserves at least some recognition. But it's strictly a movie for Euro-trash connoisseurs, it's not even going to necessarily appeal to giallo enthusiasts as it's a little bit too clunkily offbeat for its own good.

The opening of "The Police Are Blundering in the Dark" features a brutal stabbing of a semi-naked young woman in the countryside.A journalist Giorgio D'Amato agrees to meet his friend Enrichetta at Parisi's villa,but when he arrives the model has been killed with a pair of scissors.Her presence at the villa was requested by the crippled owner of the villa who has invented a device which supposedly photographs thoughts.Helia Colombo's first and only movie is arguably the worst giallo of early 70's.It's cheaply made and deadly dull.There is some sleaze and nudity as all three victims are flashing their breasts during kill scenes.There is even a revolutionary camera that can photograph people's thoughts.My beat-up Super 8-sourced copy looks awful,the score by Aldo Saitto is annoying and the action often drags."La Polizia Brancola Nel Buio" is the last film of Polish-born actress Halina Zalewska,who died tragically in a fire in her Roman apartment in 1976.5 out of 10.

I guess, after having seen 140 genuine gialli and another 40 giallo-ish thrillers, I have to accept that all the really good ones are discovered already. The only ones that occasionally still float to the surface are obscure, low-rated and forgotten for a reason. The omens for "The Police are Blundering in the Dark" were quite negative from the start. Filmed in 1972 but not released until 1975? 1972 was THE most productive year for the Italian giallo ever! Dozens of gialli were released in this year, some of the best but also many mediocre ones, so how bad must it have been not to receive a release in '72? Three years later the gialli was as good as extinct, but this film still had to be released. You know what? The Poliziotesschi replaced the giallo in terms of popularity, so let's give it a new title with a reference towards the police. Minor problem, maybe... there isn't a police officer in sight throughout the entire film.

And yet, I'd lie if I said I didn't enjoy "The Police are Blundering in the Dark" at all. The script is really poor and hardly makes any sense, but the film features three extended and gruesome murder sequences, during which the female victims are largely naked before getting sliced with scissors, knives or letter openers! Isn't that the essence of gialli?

Moreover, and I just discovered this (thank you, Wikipedia), the name of writer/director Helia Colombo is a pseudonym of Elio Palumbo, and he happens to be the songwriter of - hands down - one of the most beautiful songs ever made; - namely "Tornerò" by the band "I Santo California". If you don't know it, look it up! Fascinating how the creator of such a pure and heavenly song, also made this sleazy and misogynic thriller.

(1975) The Police Are Blundering In The Dark/ La polizia brancola nel buio (In Italian with English subtitles) CRIME THRILLER/ MYSTERY/ HORROR

Written and directed by Helia Colombo that has a young lady driver stuck in the middle of the gravel road asking someone to help her change a tire. He pulls out a knife and manages to rip off her clothes before he kills her so that her bare breasts can be seen for the world to see, and of course viewers do not know who the killer is until the very end. The next scene has the servant/ chauffeur, we find out later his name is Alberto (Francisco Cortéz) as he is reading the daily newspaper that indicates about a fourth missing model from the same area with it also reads "The Police are blundering in the dark" hence the title. Alberto then puts the newspaper down as the bus pulls up a lady gets off by the name of Lucia (Gabriella Giorgelli) has accepted the job as housekeeper for the Parissi family household. And while Lucia is settling in, it looks as if Alberto may have had to do something and as he was coming in to the Parissi resident, Enrichetta Blond (Margaret-Rose Keil). And while Enrichetta was driving home, she was driving in the middle of the night while raining and storming real hard, except that her car goes out and she stops by a hotel/ inn to use the phone. Upon calling her boyfriend, Georgio D'Amato (Joseph Arkim) he is sleeping around with another lady, and promises to pick her up the following morning. Forcing her to rent the room and stay the night. She suddenly becomes the second victim and on the following morning when Georgio arrives she is missing. And at this point, he becomes the main star as we find out he is not just a player, but he also happens to be a journalist as well. And her body is nowhere to be found, it would eventually lead him to the other last place she was seen with was the Parissi family household. It is there he is introduced to Edmondo Parissi (Danny P. Gerzog) who is wheelchair bound and is impotent; his wife, Eleonora (Halina Zalewska) and their niece, Sara (Elena Veronese) who lost her parents from a plane crash and sometimes the family doctor, D. Dalla (Richard Fielding) who grows lettuce.

One of the downsides of jotting down set ups and plots of many Eruo slasher movies is that they are forgettable and sometimes hard to describe. The only reason anyone would watch them are the voluptuous nude scenes if the violence itself does not do anything for anyone, the reason why I am giving this one 5 out of 10. Viewers get to see four of the young actresses that count the most to be nude of breasts and sometimes their rear end. Anyways, the movie does not make a ton of sense as the only appearance the police made throughout the entire run is towards the end too little too late. The killer is already dead explaining the why that does not make a ton of sense either.