A stripper (Susan Scott) receives threatening phone calls
from a killer with a robot voice. He
thinks she has some diamonds her late jewel thief father stole, and he claims
he’ll kill her if she doesn’t fork them over.
She doesn’t take him seriously until he breaks into her room and accosts
her with a straight razor. Thinking her
drunkard boyfriend (Simon Andreau) is the killer, she pops off to London with
an adoring fan, a rich married doctor (Frank Wolff), to escape his clutches.
There’s a plot twist halfway through that's worthy of a
Hitchcock movie. I wouldn’t dream of
spoiling it for you. I will say that as
a consequence, the alluring Susan Scott gets less and less screen time. Without her slinky presence, Death Walks on
High Heels loses a lot of its drive.
Taken on its own merits, the first act is a solid little
piece of exploitation filmmaking. It’s
in the second act that the film loses its way, big time. It’s here where it stops being a slightly trashy
thriller and becomes a dull police procedural.
During the finale, director Luciano Ercoli piles on twist after twist,
almost to the point where you’ll gladly take any conclusion as long as it makes
the movie end. All the endless twists wind up doing is jerking
the audience around,
which is a shame considering how well-executed the first half-hour was.
AKA: Death Stalks on
High Heels.
No comments:
Post a Comment