The Killer One of 13

This is the full review cut into parts on my Letterboxd account.

The butler actually did it! That alone popped me. A button pulled from a coat, caught in the death grip of a victim strangled via barbwire garrotte…this, you just know, will be the gotcha to call out the killer. Naschy sort takes a “stepdown” role as the driver of the widow (Patty Shepard) gathering thirteen “associates of or adjacently associated with” at a vast idyllic Spanish estate she believes could have tied (or actually responsible) to her husband’s plane crash into the English Channel while on his way to London.

If you are someone reluctant to watch a film flagged with giallo as a tag, this particular film does have some violence but no nudity. While watching this, I did feel this has been edited and whatever was cut out is no longer available. There were sharp cuts as nudity was about to happen (stripping) and the gore (ax to the head, knife stab to the torso, needle stab to the torso, aforementioned wire garrotte to the throat, and wrench to the forehead) is brief with just a bit of blood and some momentary gushing wounds. So this might actually be more accessible to fans of murder mysteries. However, this film is so dedicated to lining up each and every tie to Carlos and his death that a dinner scene with all the suspects seems to last for 30 minutes. 

You get art forgery, “ashamed waitressing”, “travelog gigolo”, international (marital) affairs, 10,000 francs missing, drugged drink, “heroine powder bottle”, thirsty advances, sexy goings-on in the pool house, exposed corrupt business practices, marital spats galore, and the accusations fly to get to the bottom of…COLLLLD BLOODED MURRRRRRDERRRRR.

I found this quite relaxed in its pacing and plot / character developments, so that screams to many who might read this: SLOW AS FUCK. I actually didn’t mind spending time in this film since these characters have so much going on in their lives, many of whom had facades unveiled at the dinner table. You get this mother and son relationship that is just ick…she berates him, orders him around, gossips constantly about others to him, and consistently denigrates him, while he has lots of magazines and content of a particular variety the butler discovers, later communicating back to Shepard. The film has a very tall, dark, and handsome butler Shepard enlists in spying on and giving her details about her “invited guests”.

The twist at the end won some brownie points with me. I LOVE the irony of Shepard corralling these characters to her home in the hopes of luring out a killer only for the very one she puts her total trust in being the ex husband of one of the victims and the murderer of her husband and three of the visitors seen as suspects!

There are these moments in the film certain to bring on the yuck such as Francis, who always says, "Yes, mama." There's a fantasy strangulation where Francis chokes out his mother near a fireplace. Another scene has Francis watching Naschy and a maid making out in the popular pool house. A third has Francis making advances to an industrialist's estranged (and broke) daughter, who rejects them while at a card table. And this waitress, slapping recognizable character actor Jack Taylor when he "joke insults" her, eventually finds romance with the struggling artist who cops to art forgeries (to earn a living since his own works fail to turn a profit). I think those walks together out of the house are sort of a reprieve from the oppressive confines inside the house where everyone has anxieties.

The wife of a tuna fish businessman tries her luck with Andreu's hard-working gigolo and the butler, rejected by both, often taking her hubby to task for being too "vulgar". I loved watching these two for shits and giggles. Oh, and Shepard sleeping with the butler and how he tells her about loosening bolts in the steering of the car of a drug dealer who has no way to brake, eventually dying when going off the road and down a cliff sort of come out of nowhere near the end. I think that might be the tale of the tape, so to speak...a lot of the good stuff takes a bit to get to.