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Pursued by the police, a man climbs the Eiffel Tower (not a good escape
route, since the only way is up), & when he finally is done climbing
& has nowhere else to go, he hurls himself down to his death (told
you). Faced with the dead man, the inspector (Humphrey Bogart double
Robert Sacchi) recollects the events that led to this ... Antoine (Peter
Martell) was a small time crook, madly in love with Francine (Barbara
Bouchet), but Francine was a whore, working in Madame Colette's (Anita
Ekberg) brothel - much to his dismay, which he expresses in occasionally
beating her up. & after he had visited her once (& beaten her up),
she is found dead by writer Randall (Renato Romano), a regular at Madame
Colette's house. The inspector soon comes to the conclusion that Antoine
is the only logical suspect, has him arrested, tried & sentenced to
death by the guilottine, even if during the whole trial Antoine insists
he's innocent, & after the conviction, he promises to come back from
the dead & have his revenge ... but even before his execution he
manages to escape ... but meets a fatal accident that leaves him beheaded
(ironically quite according to his sentence). ... but by now (a little
late), the inspector has serious doubts about Antoine's guilt, & he
continues to investigate (even if the case is closed). He soon has quite
an array of suspects: Madame Coleete of course, sleazy writer Randall,
Antoine's ex wife & nightclub singer Marianne (Rosalba Neri), her
current lover, bar owner Pepi (Rolf Eden), even the coroner professor
Waldemar (Howard Vernon), who shows an unhealthy interest in Antoine's
head & even gets hold of it, Waldemar's assistant Roger, who shows a healthy interest into the
professor's daughter Leonora (Evelyne Kraft) but is just too cleancut to
be innocent, elusive whore Alice, ... But soon the inspector's suspects
die like flies, first it's Madame Colette, then the judge who convicted
Antoine, then Pepi & Alice, with whom he had a secret affair, then all
at once Randall, Marianne & another prostitute ... But the inspector
has found out something: Professor Waldemar's daughter Leonora might not
be quite the angel she has appeared to be, as she might have worked at
Madame Colette's club at one point as well, & soon it comes out that
professor Waldemar did indeed have a rather incestuous passion for his
daughter, & was a regular at Madame Colette's house (but he was always
masked, thus noone could recognize him), & the inspector can interfere
when he's just about to rape the girl. By now Waldemar has gone
totally bonkers though & claims the dead eyes of dead Antoine's dead
head (which was in his possession) made him do it, but mad or not, he
still manages to get away
though, but rather foolishly climbs the Eiffel Tower to escape the police
... A mix of crime film & giallo, with a few mad scientist-
(especially in Howard Vernon's role) & (bogus) supernatural horror-elements
(Antoine promising to come back from the dead) thrown in, which
stays to enjoyably wild throughout, with a few explicit gore scenes &
pseudo-psychedelic murders only adding to the enjoyment. Now I don't
mean to say it's a good film as such, not even a better giallo (on an
objective quality level), but it's still an entertaining film, in a trashy
sort of way.
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