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Femmine Insaziabili
The Insatiables
Gli Insaziabili / Carnal Circuit / Exzess / Mord im schwarzen Cadillac / Perversion / Beverly Hills
Italy / West Germany 1969
produced by Edmondo Amati, Hans Pflüger for Empire Films, Hape-Film Company GmbH
directed by Alberto De Martino
starring Dorothy Malone, Robert Hoffmann, Luciana Paluzzi, Frank Wolff, John Ireland, Roger Fritz, Romina Power, Nicoletta Machiavelli, Ini Assmann, Rainer Basedow, Elena Persiani, Mario Chiocchio, Rosemarie Lindt
story by Alberto De Martino, Vincenzo Flamini, screenplay by Alberto De Martino, Vincenzo Flamini, Lianella Carell, Carlo Romano, music by Bruno Nicolai
review by Mike Haberfelner
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Paolo (Robert Hoffmann), an Italian journalist in LA, is pretty much
beaten to a pulp by two ruffians who want to find out the whereabouts of
someone he doesn't even know. And only when the two leave as they have run
out of ways to make Paolo talk does that unknown someone make himself
known to Paolo, and it's Giulio (Roger Fritz), Paolo's friend from back in
Italy who has made it big in the US as the smiling face of International
Chemicals - but apparently he has fallen foul of that company and now they
want to eliminate him. Paolo decides he wants to write about this, but
when he wants to meet with Giulio again for additional information, he's
informed that Giulio has been killed and burnt to a crisp in a car crash.
Only Paolo doesn't believe it was an accident, so he starts to investigate
... and soon learns the Giulio in LA hasn't been the Giulio he knows from
back in Italy anymore, back where he would be a good husband and father
and fight for workers' rights and stuff. No, the money International
Chemicals has given him for his services has corrupted him, and the
decadent society he was a part of in LA clearly left its mark on him and
made him one of its most decadent and ruthless enforcers. So while Paolo
questions Giulio's wife (Nicoletta Machiavelli), who has long separated
from him, a shareholder of International Chemicals (Frank Wolff), Giulio's
boss and lover (Dorothy Malone), that woman's promiscuous daughter (Romina
Power) and all sorts of people in between, he's more and more repelled by
the company Giulio kept and the monster he has become ... until he
stumbles over - Giulio himself, very much alive, who has only faked his
death to get away from International Chemicals, but needed to kill someone
to take his place in the car crash, then keep on murdering - including
Paolo's best friend and editor-in-chief (John Ireland) - to obscure the
fact that he's still around. Ultimately, Paolo wants to hold Giulio
responsible for all he did, but upon trying to make an escape, Giulio
falls to his death. But it seems the lure of LA money and decadence slowly
takes its grip on Paolo, too ... The Insatiables is a
little murder mystery that's not at all without its merits - the portrayal
of decadent LA certainly does hold one's interest for sure -, but in the
end, the whole thing's far too convoluted to properly work as a whodunnit
while the solution to the whole thing is far too easily guessable from
early on, plus in too many things, the film's quite the opposite of
subtle. Sure, the whole thing's still suspenseful at times, sexy at
others, and does feature some decent action - but that's not enough to
make it really good when the whole thing's let down by its story.
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