MOVIE: Plot Of Fear (1976)

Plot Of Fear

aka E tanta paura, aka Bloody Peanuts

Directed by Paolo Cavara

Starring Michele Placido, Corinne Cléry, Eli Wallach, Tom Skerritt

Centro Produzioni Cinematografiche Città di Milano/G.P.E. Enterprises 1976

On the same night, a female prostitute strangles her client, while a woman is battered around the head with a spanner on a deserted bus. The only link: at the scene of both murders, illustrations from a children’s book called “Shockheaded Peter” have been left behind.

When more murders occur, again marked with illustrations from the same book, the victims are linked back to an elite group calling itself Wildlife’s Friends. Inspector Lomenzo (Placido) is assigned to investigate.

There’s a decent giallo struggling to get out of this one, a frustratingly laboured effort from the director who just five years earlier had given us the rather good Black Belly Of The Tarantula (1971). The dialogue scenes frequently fail to sparkle and the attempt to liven-up proceedings with soft-core sex is all too symptomatic of the original cycle’s death throes. Even the murder scenes don’t quite hit the mark as they should. Things do improve considerably towards the climax, but even by the genre’s standards the denouement will take a bit of work to get your head around.

On the credit side, Michele Placido makes for an engaging force of law and order (at least when he manages to keep his clothes on), while Eli Wallach (despite being dubbed in both Italian and English versions by someone who sounds nothing like Eli Wallach) adds some welcome gravitas, as the head of a video surveillance firm who may or may not be helping the police with their enquiries.

By contrast, Corinne Cléry (fresh from a notorious appearance in The Story Of O (1975)) is mainly required to add titillation value and get naked on occasion. Tom Skerrit has very little to do and is likely just there to add another recognisable name for English-speaking territories.

Ultimately, Plot Of Fear is not without interest: it at least piques curiosity as a halfway house between the giallo cycle and the cop thrillers which would supersede it as an Italian cinema staple, but also highlights just how much the form was losing its way by the latter part of the decade.