A Black Veil for Lisa
Genre: Giallo / Crime
Original title: La morte non ha sesso
AKA: Death Has No Sex
Director: Massimo Dallamano
Year: 1968
An aging policeman is investigating a string of murders. He is also suspicious of his beautiful young wife, believing that she may be cheating.
A Black Veil For Lisa is Massimo Dallamano's second picture & his first dip into the Gialli genre. Like his most popular gialli What Have They Done To Solange? the film has much more depth than your standard Giallo mixing euro-crime elements into the mix. Also being an early entry into the genre the film concentrates on a complex script rather than giving us any of the gore & sex you'd expect from later entries from the giallo cannon.
It stars the well respected English actor John Mills, a man who was in everything from Great Expectations, to Mr Bean, to Ghandi! Its not often that you'll find a 'Sir' in Italian genre cinema thats for sure. He plays Inspector Bulon, a man investigating a string of murders but isn't fully committed to his job as he constantly has one eye on his younger wife Lisa who's played by former Bond girl Luciana Paluzzi. Surprisingly, the murderer is revealed early on in the picture, Max Lindt played by Robert Hoffmann who's best known for his part in Umberto Lenzi's Spasmo plays a cold blooded assassin. So instead of the classic 'whodunnit' story we are presented with three well written characters which become more complex as the film progresses with its noir style themes.
It's a film where its best to go into completely cold, the IMDB plot Synopsis (shamefully) pretty much gives the entire film away. All I'll say is that the three lead characters paths cross in different ways throughout the film to create a really tense crime picture that gathers momentum as the plot thickens. In some ways it reminds me of Alfred Hitchcock's Frenzy which would come out four years after this picture.
The print I saw had a hissy English soundtrack which cut into the Italian soundtrack at times, presumably because the English dub was originally cut in places so with the scenes which had been put back in had no English dub available but it was no big deal.
This is a hugely underrated Massimo Dallamano film, his Gialli were unlike anybody else's with so much emphasis put on the actual crime & police procedure. Visually it doesn't match some of his later work but in terms of a brilliantly written characters with & thrilling story you can't go very wrong with seeking this gem out.
Rating: ★★★½
