A QUIET PLACE TO KILL (1970)

Helen (Carroll Baker) is a race car driver who is badly injured in a crash. She is invited to rest and recuperate with her ex-husband Maurice (Jean Sorel) at his seaside villa. Being out of commission and in debt thanks to the crash, she accepts his offer, but when she arrives, she is surprised to find that Maurice has a second wife, Constance (Anna Proclemer). Helen is even more surprised to learn that Constance is the one who invited her, and also made sure that Helen's outstanding debts have been paid. But there is a catch: Constance wants Helen to help her kill Maurice, mostly, it seems, because he's a serial philanderer (both women agree he's very good in bed) and she suspects he's about to leave her. In the past, Helen did try half-heartedly to kill Maurice, which we see in flashback, so she's got a leg up on Constance. The three go for an outing on a boat and the plan is for Helen to kill Maurice with a spear gun, but things go awry, partly because Helen slept with Maurice the night before. When the time comes, she hesitates and Constance tries to get ahold of the spear gun. In a three-way struggle, Constance winds up dead and Maurice and Helen tie her body up with weights and throw her in the lake, then tell the police that she fell in during a windy squall. However, two things complicate their plan: a friend was filming them from up in the hills, and Constance's daughter Susan arrives from boarding school and becomes immediately suspicious of things. Twists and tricks follow.

This is usually considered an early entry in the giallo genre (a murder mystery with lots of sex and blood), though it's got less sex and blood than most giallo fans would expect. But it is a nifty psychological thriller which is well acted, nicely shot in vivid color largely on location, and has fun twists, some predictable, some a little less so. Carroll Baker was a Hollywood starlet of the 50s and early 60s (BABY DOLL, THE CARPETBAGGERS, HARLOW) who went to Europe in search of better work. The rest of her career was mostly in B-films and television, but she made four of these giallo-ish thrillers in Italy with director Umberto Lenzi in quick succession and they have become cult favorites. (The other three are available as a Blu-ray boxed set and I'll be covering others eventually.) She is not the most demonstrative actor, but her somewhat distancing tone works here. Jean Sorel (pictured with Baker) is very nice-guy handsome, and even as he plays a not-so-nice guy, we're kept in his corner at least sometimes. He is boyishly good looking with hints of decadence creeping in. Anna Proclemer (Constance) and Marina Coffa (Susan) and fine. All the main actors do good jobs at keeping us on our toes about motives and character backgrounds, which is part of what makes this movie work so well. The color-solarized opening is quite trippy but is not indicative of the movie's overall visual style which focuses on the natural outdoor backgrounds and the interiors with their attention to money and possessions. Quite good. Originally released in Italy as PARANOIA. [Blu-ray; also on Amazon Prime]