Filmmaker and poet Eugenio Martin directed this Italian-Spanish co-production, a labyrinthine British-set giallo starring Michael Craig as Arthur Anderson, who finds the nude body of his dead wife Gladys floating in his swimming pool. After he and his housekeeper dress the corpse and call the police, it seems as if the determination will be that Gladys accidentally drowned, but the police open a murder investigation on the day of her funeral. Like the clever black widow in the later Dutch thriller De Vierde Man, it appears that Arthur has had three previous spouses die under mysterious circumstances. Fortunately for him, his housekeeper lies at the trial and gets Arthur off the hook. That's when the beautiful Julie Spencer (giallo veteran Carroll Baker) shows up in his pool late at night, leading to an instant romance and rapid marriage, but Julie has secrets of her own. Laced with a Piero Umiliani score reminiscent of Riz Ortolani's work in so many popular gialli, and Guglielmo Mancori's standard tightly framed cinematography, the film is a solid, if undistinguished addition to any Euro-completist's genre library. Marina Malfatti co-stars with Jose Luis Lopez Vasquez and Manuel Gallardo.
by Robert Firsching
synopsis
