Seven Murders for Scotland Yard (1976)

You won't be disappointed!

Fresh and Exciting

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

Someone is jabbing the life out of hookers in London and Scotland Yard are up to finding out who is responsible. It seems that Jack the Ripper has come back from the dead, but the police actually suspect hard drinking, limping, fat tiny Spaniard Paul Naschy for the murders.Paul plays Pedro, a retired trapeze artist with a bum leg whose hooker wife is murdered early on by our douchebag killer, who also frames Pedro, who can't seem to go anywhere without dead hookers turning up.A certain inspector is out to catch the killer, and has some suave mate whose wife he might be in love with. It's all like EastEnders only with murders and translated through a Spanish eye. It doesn't have the style of an Italian giallo (hence the accusations of it being drab and flat) but it does have a good pace and plenty of sauce.It also has plenty of cheeseball moments, from when a hooker has a speech about how all men are bastards or the various moments when members of the British public try and avoid the camera that has no doubt appeared undeclared right in front of them! This film also has a fairly high body count so I'm a bit unclear on how it can be boring. Cheap looking, yes, but entertaining throughout.Also, I went to London a few days ago, all jazzed to see Piccadilly Circus the way it appears in this film, and they've replaced it with a giant TV screen! What a let down.

7 Murders For Scotland Yard? There might have been… to be honest, I wasn't keeping a tally of the killings; instead, I was counting down the minutes to the end of this dreadfully dull Spanish giallo starring Iberian horror icon Paul Naschy as Pedro, an ex-trapeze artist (sh'yeah right!) with a manky leg who is suspected of committing a series of grisly London murders in which the young female victims have their organs surgically removed, Jack the Ripper style.With way too much in the way of boring police procedure, repetitive killings that deliver minimal (and unconvincing) gore, and very little of the style to be found in many Italian giallos, about the only thing that the film really has to offer fans of '70s Euro horror are a few reasonably attractive women in various states of undress (although there's no actual nudity, quite the rarity for this kind of film) and some authentic location work (that said, the scene where Naschy has a knife fight with three men clearly wasn't shot in London—we don't have crickets chirping loudly in the evenings).3.5 out of 10, generously rounded up to 4 for the hilarious scene in which a victim's severed head is delivered to a police inspector, and then casually passed around the station so that everyone can take a look.

The giallo was an Italian invention; however, there were several Spanish movies that are accepted entries in the genre. Seven Murders for Scotland Yard is a pretty typical example of this sub-genre of the sub-genre. It stars Iberian horror icon Paul Naschy in the lead role. In it he plays medical student turned acrobat who is the chief suspect in a series of prostitute murders in London. The killings recall the work of Jack the Ripper.This is a pretty routine murder-mystery. It's hampered a bit by its low budget. It lacks the sense of style that most of its Italian counterparts had, so it comes across as somewhat more rough-edged. The murders themselves have pretty crude gore effects, while there is a distinct lack of nudity. The latter is clearly as a result of the Spanish origins, seeing as this was made in Franco's Spain and film nudity was a bit of a no-no – Spaniards like Jesus Franco had to make films in France and West Germany in order to ramp up the sex. The mystery itself isn't bad as such but the small cast means that there really aren't a lot of suspects to begin with. Still, it's certainly an entertaining enough flick, just don't go into it expecting too much.

A Jack the Ripper-style killer is doing his thing in modern day London; cutting up tart streetwalkers with medical precision, removing their body parts and tauntingly sending some of those parts to the Scotland Yard detectives trying to crack the case. Top-billed Paul Naschy plays Pedro Dorian (the character name in the dubbed version I watched), a med-school dropout turned acrobat (!) turned booze swilling vagrant whose career in the circus ended after a high-wire fall left him with a bum leg. He understandably becomes chief suspect in the murders because of his medical knowledge, the fact his hooker wife is murdered and the fact he's seen fleeing a SECOND crime scene after he wakes up covered in blood and finds ANOTHER of his lovers dead in bed right next to him. Some guys just have all the luck, don't they? Not only do they find themselves in the wrong place and the wrong time on more than one occasion but they also have to star in films with scripts that rely on a ridiculous amount of sheer coincidence to keep the ball rolling. And sometimes they even write them!Pedro (who the police usually refer to as "that Spaniard") isn't the only suspect, though. There are two more. The first is Scotland Yard's Commissioner Campbell (Renzo Marignano) himself, who one little girl claims she saw at a victim's apartment prior to her murder. The second suspect is muy guapo schoolteacher Winston Avery (Andrés Resino), who has lots of money but just as many relationship problems. For starters, he's impotent. Somehow the police also know he's impotent and that's because the commissioner may be Winston's wife Sandy's (Orchidea de Santis) lover! See what I mean about that sheer coincidence thing? Winston also makes uncomfortable passes at Rosemary, one of his female students, and tries to blackmail her into breaking up with her no-good boyfriend. Rosemary turns up dead with her throat cut, but the cops never say anything about Winston being a suspect. Winston's wife is then found dead, which ties him to just as many dead women as Naschy's character, but the cops never say anything about him being a suspect. Instead, they let him go on a vacation!The film basically centers around the three men I just mentioned above. There are plenty of women on the payroll too, but none of them really have a character unless you count taking off your clothes, saying one bitchy line and then getting killed as being a character. The only one worth mentioning is a hooker named Lulu (Patricia Loran), who believes Pedro is the killer and organizes a posse of punks to attack him with switchblades. That backfires, she realizes Pedro may actually be innocent and then tries to help him implicate the Commissioner in the murders. For the finale, Pedro, the Commissioner and Winston all end up in the killer's top secret laboratory (where he stores his collection of body parts - hands, hearts, etc. - in jars) for the big reveal, which actually isn't a big reveal at all when you take into consideration one clumsy clue about the origin of the killer's weapon of choice. But hey, you do get to see Naschy leap off a staircase at one of the other suspects while screaming "You dirty keeeeeler!" I guess that's something.From a technical standpoint, the cinematography, music and locations are all blandsville. The direction isn't particularly stylish either, and the script and acting are both mediocre. Naschy fails to impress much and doesn't register much emotion as he hobbles around on London streets dragging his leg behind him, though he does get to have three separate fight scenes here. The film does a fair job of getting you to question your choice of who the killer is at a few points and adds a couple of OK twists here and there. Like another reviewer, I also saw the release from TeleVista under the title 7 MURDERS FOR SCOT LAND YARD. The print doesn't look too bad, it's dubbed (by a very snooty-sounding British cast) and it's "clothed." As was customary at this time for international productions, two different takes were done with most of the female victims for different markets, one with nudity and another with victims merely in their bras and panties. The TeleVista release uses the underwear scenes, so if you want T&A you'll have to find another cut of the film. There's a little gore, with some bright red blood and knives going into badly mocked-up torsos and backs that look like someone stabbing into pantyhose filled with lard.