Films That Witness Madness

review

MY DEAR KILLER

Tonino Valerii's giallo, MY DEAR KILLER, is one dark little film. With the heinous murder of a little girl as it's central mystery and a plot that touches on greed, abuse, pedophilia and madness, the film stands as a firm reminder that, in it's early days, the giallo meant business and was more than capable of out-roughing the roughies. Released in 1971 - during what should be considered the "golden age" of the giallo film - it would butt heads with titles like WHAT HAVE THEY DONE TO SOLANGE?, THE CAT O' NINE TAILS, THE IGUANA WITH THE TONGUE OF FIRE, A LIZARD IN A WOMAN'S SKIN and COLD EYES OF FEAR and trump almost all of them in terms of outrage. This film is ice cold, a lurid thriller where the murderer isn't the only one guilty of perversion and crime.

It's exceedingly rare for a giallo to bump off it's amateur detective right from the get go, but that's exactly what MY DEAR KILLER does. No introductions, no how-do-you-dos, just a swift decapitation via a dredger. From that point on, we're in the arms of Inspector Peretti and his men as they try to crack the case. Peretti quickly learns that our late amateur detective was an insurance investigator hot on the trail of a murderer. The murderer was responsible for the deaths of a young girl and her wealthy father. In typical giallo fashion, Peretti soon finds that those people closest to the case are being knocked off by a killer who remains just one step ahead of him. He also finds that the little girl's family are not quite what they seem, each of them hiding their own personal demons, each of them capable of benefitting from the deaths of the young girl and her father.

The only well-adjusted characters in MY DEAR KILLER are those in the periphery. Everyone else is either devious, insane, a criminal, or a pederast. Peretti - a better than usual George Hilton - himself is in a relationship close to breaking. The feeling of misanthropy permeates the film. While Peretti is a likeable enough character, he alone is not enough to break the uneasy spell the narrative creates. Add to that the sheer ruthlessness of the film's killer - the murder scenes are all top notch and effectively brutal, especially the film's centerpiece: the murder of a young woman with a small circular saw - and the agonizing, heartbreaking flashbacks of a young girl's death and you have a volatile cocktail of disgust and distrust. The final reveal, while more than a bit unbelievable, is a strange occurrence. It's not that the killer doesn't provide a perfectly good motive. Rather, it's the fact that, of all the available suspects, the guilty party is revealed to be one of the few decent characters the film offers. In the little universe of MY DEAR KILLER, even the decent people are killers at heart.

Tonino Valerii was a director-for-hire with a smaller than usual filmography consisting of mostly action flicks and television shows. MY DEAR KILLER was his only giallo. He served as assistant director on a couple of high caliber films like FOR A FEW DOLLARS MORE and A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS before embarking on a career as director but never found much success. MY DEAR KILLER should have secured him many more jobs than it did. While not a very technically minded director - at least not from the scant work I've been able to track down and view - he managed to create a very capable film in MY DEAR KILLER. Looking through the early catalog of gialli, this film really does stand out. It might not be as good a film as BLOOD AND BLACK LACE, SOLANGE, THE SWEET BODY OF DEBORAH or any of the other major gialli but it is a solid piece of work by a man who clearly knew what he was doing. It will probably leave many giallo fans a bit cold - it is rather talky and contains very little kink - but, for me, it hits that sweet spot between "pulp" and "serious" and manages to evoke all the right emotions without resorting to cheap tricks or baseless audience manipulation. It's a keeper.

Recommended.

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