Naked Girl Killed in the Park (1972)

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

Alfonso Breschia is infamous for unleashing no less than four Star Wars rip-offs on the world (and to confuse things, the IMDb lists five – Battle of the Stars and War of the Planets being one and the same film). I think I started my review of Breschia's Western Killer Calibre .32 the exact same way, so I'll shut about those damn sci-fi films now.I hope you like fairgrounds, because this film features one a lot! An old geezer goes onto a ghost train alone and comes out the other side with a bullet in his brain and the $600,000 in his pocket gone, and it's up to insurance investigator Robert Hoffman to get to the bottom of it. Does it have anything to do with that lengthy black and white prologue from the Second World War? You betcha!Robert sets his eyes on the dead guy's daughter Catherine (who looks like Kim Kardashian, without the fake arse) and starts putting the moves on her without telling her he's an investigator. Once she realises that he's probably not the weird person calling her up all the time, it's off to the sack they go, after a quick visit to the fairground.Catherine of course lives in a huge mansion with her crazy mother Magda and slutty sister Barbara. Magda's gone a bit nuts about the whole murdered husband thing, and Barbara buries her grief by having rough sex with the mute gardener. Robert spies on them at it and thinks Barbara's being raped, but when it becomes apparent she's not, he hangs on for a couple of minutes just to make sure. At some point you'll probably be wondering when the film will get round to actually having anyone killed, let alone having them naked and being found in a park. When that finally happens, the giallo element takes off and the film starts being enjoyable daft. My favourite bit was when the family, Robert and Adolfo were standing on the balcony of the mansion and Adolfo points out how wobbly the railing is, moving it back and forth and remarking that someone should have that fixed and of course someone takes a dive through it (or at least an unconvincing dummy does). That's not foreshadowing – that's blatant signposting. The twists are actually pretty good for a change and you can't help but love a film that locates its ending in a fairground. As far as Alfonso Breschia films go this is probably the best one I've seen so far. I think I said that about Killer Calibre .32 too.

Fun but hard to find Giallo. Contains spoilers. The movie has a decent cast and is directed by an excellent director, Alfonso Brescia. The movie features all very attractive actors in the leading roles. The male lead is Robert Hoffman who has starred in many excellent Giallos including Death Carries a Cane, Sergio Martino's Spasmo, and many others. Robert Hoffman is an excellent leading man. He is hired to meet up with a beautiful daughter of a man who just died 1 day after taking out a 1 million dollar insurance policy. The beautiful daughter is played by Pilar Velazquez who starred in several excellent films of the time including Churchill's Leopards with Klaus Kinski and the exciting Fernando Baldi spaghetti western Forgotten Pistolero. Pilar Velazquez has a beautiful (and young looking) mother played by Irena Demick and a sexy sister played by Patrizia Adiutori. Irena Demick is best known from movies like These Magnificent Mmen in Their Flying Machines, The Visit with Ingrid Bergman, and The Sicilian Clan starring Alain Delon. Irena Demick is very attractive and she makes a play for Robert Hoffman, who is dating her daughter, Pilar Velazquez. The other sister is played by Patrizia Adiutori who looks really nice but can't seem to keep her clothes on. She is shown having soft core sex with her boyfriend. She then has a romp with our leading man Robert Hoffman (the lucky guy) and then is found dead lying outside nude. She is the title of the movie The Nude Girl in the Park. There are several twists at the end of the movie. I don't want to ruin them for you. I would recommend the movie for fans of Giallos. The movie is nothing to write home about but it isn't bad either. The good cast including Adolfo "Thunderball" Celi as the police inspector, is definitely solid and above average. The women all look great and the movie has a fun feel to it. I have only seen this available as a bootleg on DVD-r. I would really enjoy seeing an official release of this.

The best thing I can say about this minor giallo is that there really IS a naked girl killed in a park. In fact, as per the Italian title there is a COMPLETELY naked girl killed in a park. (There's a couple other naked girls too, but only one of them is killed in a park). That's pretty much the highlight of the movie though.It starts off in a pretty interesting way with the first-person POV of a funhouse ride which turns out to be from the POV of a dead man!The dead man had just bought a million dollar life insurance, so an intrepid insurance investigator (Robert Hoffman) is called in. He dodges the police investigator on the case (former Bond villain Adolf Celli)and becomes involved with the man's two sexy but neurotic daughters as well as his sexy but neurotic widow (who judging by the looks of her must have given birth to her two daughters when she was about ten). More people die before the final revelation which, unfortunately, is pretty stupid and involves the guilty party delivering a ridiculous soliloquy to a giant portrait of the dead man. It ends back in the amusement park with yet another pretty dumb turn of events.The lead Hoffman is awful, but Celli is pretty good if underused. The women are pretty, but they're definitely not at the acting level of an Edwige Fenech, Rosalba Neri, or Erica Blanc, or even lesser lights of the gialli like Nieves Navarro or Femi Benussi. Pretty forgettable overall--except for the naked girl killed in park.

There is a bunch of Gialli that tell a story about an inheritance. Most of them tend to be rather crime movies than Gialli in the classic sense.This film by Alfonso Brescia also tells a story about an inheritance that spreads murder, and in the first half of the film, only one killing happens (in the opening scene), and then the film goes on rather as a family drama than a Giallo. But in the middle of the film, the title happens (a member of the family is indeed found nude and killed in a park), and from now on, it's a typical Giallo. The bodies are piling up (the murder scenes are not very graphic, but there are some stylish moments), and towards the climax, there is the usual surprise as the identity of the killer is revealed. The revelation is as implausible as often with Gialli, but it works better than in other similarly mediocre ones.Brescia's direction is nothing special, the lead actors are only average, but there is some fine supporting cast lead by Adolfo Celi as the investigating Police inspector. So, the first half is a bit dreary, but the second half is surely capable of satisfying Giallo afficionados.