The Iguana with the Tongue of Fire

The Iguana with the Tongue of Fire 

Genre: Giallo

Original title: L' iguana dalla lingua di fuoco

Director: Riccardo Freda

Year: 1971

In Dublin, a young woman is brutally murdered in her home by a maniac that throws acid in her face and then slits her throat with a razor. Her mangled body is later discovered in the boot of a limousine owned by the Swiss Ambassador

A giallo, set in Dublin? An interesting concept & I do enjoy seeing different cities from back in the day unfortunately the following piece of information tells you all you need to know about this picture.

"When the German Co-Producer Artur Brauner saw the finished film, he decided to skip a theatrical release in Germany, just due to the quality of the film which he wasn't satisfied with." 

This sums the entire film up in a nutshell. 

Director Riccardo Freda, who had made a couple of semi-successful gothic horrors in the late 50s to early 60s (The Horrible Dr. Hichcock, The Vampires) really failed to ignite any kind of spark with The Iguana with the Tongue of Fire, its poorly put together with shoddy editing, a terrible script & remains completely uninteresting throughout. 

In its defense I did see a pretty shoddy print of the film which was terribly dubbed but I can't imagine a pristine copy of this film being able to prevent pure boredom.

There were a few positives, the Stelvio Cipriani score was pretty solid & the amount of gore was surprisingly high (even for a giallo) but then you could argue that it was only inserted to try and cover up the fact the film has zero suspense. Then there was enough talent in the cast from Dagmar Lassander to Werner Pochath & Luigi Pistilli (playing an Irishman!) that it perhaps should of been a decent film but everything is so poorly executed that all their performances feel redundant. 

It's not very often I really struggle to finish a film, even the bad ones I usually find some sort of enjoyment value from but this is a case where the film drags on for what feels like an eternity & you ask yourself afterwards why you even bothered to finish it. 

Rating: ★½

Paddy Pistilli