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A maniac is roaming Rome, killing women with (seemingly) no connection to
each other: a whore (Gabriella Giorgelli), an American artist (Marina
Malfatti), & Giulia (Uschi Glas), a young woman embarking on her honeymoon
with her husband Mario (Antonio Sabata), & the only connection between them
all might be that the killer leaves half-moon lockets with each of his victims. What
he doesn't know though is that his latest victim, Giulia, has actually survived
his assault, but police inspector Vismara (Pier Paolo Capponi) has declared her
dead to save her from another assault ... & while the police are still
doing everything to come up with nothing, Giulia & Mario start taking up
investigations on their own ... & soon come up with a connection between
Giulia & the other dead women: the women all stayed in a hotel Giulia once
owned at a certain time 2 years ago ... & there are 4 more women whom Mario
now tries desperately to save - but even becfore he can get to the next woman
on the list (Rossella Falk), a paranoid woman in a sanitarium, she turns up
dead too ... but at least this convinces the police that Mario's & Giulia's
leads are right, & the cops start guarding the other women, which doesn't
keep the killer from bumping them off one by one. Mario meawhile follows up
on a clue his wife has given him, about an American, Sanders, who had a
half-moon locket - like the ones found with the dead women - on his keychain
& who was staying at the hotel too, 2 years back. Mario goes out of his way
to find the elusive American, he even digs up Barrett (Bruno Corazzari),
Sanders' homosexual friend, who seems to have some kind of grudge against
Sanders ... but after more investigations it only turns out that Sanders has
been killed in a carcrash ... 2 years back, when all the women on the killer's
list were staying at Giulia's hotel. It turns out that Sanders was a raving
homosexual who had a relationship with Barrett, but then he found a woman he
fell in love with & ditchet Barrett. But then he & the (unidentified)
woman got into a car accident, & for some reason the woman just left
Sanders to die (even though he could have been saved). So Mario, Giulia &
the police come up with one of these typical giallo-plans to trap the
killer: Mario is arrested as the killer & it is revealed in the media that
Giulia is still alive. Now all Giulia has to do is sit ialone in her house
& wait for the killer to appear & itroduce himself - for the police to
then appear. The plan is however ruined when by breaking a window (don't ask
why he did that) Mario himself frightens Giulia enough to make her faint &
the killer, who was already in the house, has all the time in the world to make
a clean getaway. & then Barrett is found, obviously he has committed
suicide by hanging himself ... & for the police this is as good as a
confession. Only Mario is convinced that Barrett was not the killer, but the
killer is still out there. Obviously he thinks the only sensible thing to do in
such a situation is to leave his wife (who is next on the killer's list) alone
& follow up on a hunch ... as with Anna (Marisa Mell), there is another
woman who has escaped the killer (he confused her with her twin sister), &
she was actually Sanders' girlfriend from 2 years back & had left him to
die in the car accident as she was also a married woman & didn't want a
scandal. And the killer is (drumroll): Sanders' brother, who is actually a
priest (Renato Romano) who has actually helped M;ario in his investigations,
& who is by now busy trying to kill Giulia ... Of course, in the end Mario
can interfere & kill him, if only just ... By the beginning of
the 1970's, the interest in the German Edgar Wallace-adaptations had begun to
seriously wane, while the Italian giallo - actually a sort of violent whodunnit
that has its roots in the German Edgar Wallace series - was on the rise. So for
German production company it seemed only logical to co-produce its last
Wallace-movies with Italian procuction companies, & having them done in
giallo-style, with its flashy & stylish images replacing the certain (often
charming) stuffiness of earlier movies. In Sette orchidee macchiate di
Rosso / Das Rätsel des silbernen Halbmonds, there is very little left
(namely Uschi Glas) to suggest it part of the series, & above all, it can
be considered as a competently made & stylish, if not all that original
giallo, with the typical over-convoluted plot that is not quite as incoherent
though as in other similar productions & the production values are quite
decent. Maybe director Umberto Lenzi's best-looking film.
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