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The Case Of The Scorpion's Tail
[No Shame]
1971; color
Directed by: Sergio Martino
Starring: George Hilton, Anita Strindberg, Alberto de Mendoza, Ida Galli & Janine Reynaud
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The Case Of The Scorpion's Tail is a well-paced, albeit somewhat predictable Giallo from director Sergio Martino. Starring genre regular George Hilton as an insurance investigator on the case to make sure the woman who's the beneficiary of a million-dollar policy payout after her husband's mysterious death is on the up and up. The widow is by no means a prim and proper housewife; on the contrary, she's in bed with her lover when she gets the tragic phone call and we see a model 747 cheaply exploding against a black backdrop. Her newfound single stature doesn't slow her down one bit, in fact she quickly makes a beeline for the insurance company's home office in Greece to collect. And no sooner does she get said million dollars in neat banded wads of hundred dollar bills (which she puts into a little travel bag), does she make immediate plans to meet with her lover on Tokyo. Nothing's as easy as it seems however because, no sooner does she call for a taxi, is she slaughtered in her room and relieved of her cash by clad-in-black, knife-wielding assailant. The insurance investigator, who had plans to meet with her later, is first on the scene and soon becomes a suspect until an Interpol agent who's also on the case verifies his reasons for being there. As the film unfolds, more and more people associated with the woman and her husband end up getting slashed, leaving the police, Interpol and our humble insurance guy (and his new reporter / photographer girlfriend) stupefied. Cracks begin to emerge in the story eventually, and some of the murder math begins to not add up, which re-focuses suspicion on one of the remaining lead characters. Once the murderer reveals himself, and one of the most convoluted needlessly complicated schemes ever, it's only a matter of time before a hail of police bullets silence him for good. Martino seems practically on auto pilot for this one, especially in comparison to his other Gialli like The Strange Vice Of Mrs. Wardh and All The Colors Of The Dark, with the lack of red herrings (the only one here is the dead husband) and the abundance of unexplained partial subplots which are nothing more than gimmicks to tie the murders together and ramp up the body count. Still, I enjoyed the film and wouldn't object to seeing it again.
—Giallo Biafra
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