Un Posto Ideale Per Uccidere

Trading pictures.

Sometimes, being a fan of cult cinema can be a pain in the ass. Even in the days of the "all you can download" syndrome there are some films that are way too obscure to be found. Hence, the motto of the S.P.A.M. Alternative team: "To uphold the legacy of the films whose qualities have taken them to obscurity"

Such is the case  of today's magnificent entry but, before we get into details let me say that from this week on we'll be checking some of the most interesting films ever made by the number one Italian bombshell of all times: Ornella Muti. Like Christina Lindberg, Ornella Muti spend her film career displaying her sexiness  and acting talent like no other Italian actress has done to date. However, comparing Muti with Lindberg may be a little unfair towards the latter since Ornella could act really well.

Un Posto Ideale Per Uccidere, is a 1971 film directed by Umberto Lenzi and starred by Irene Papas, Ray Lovelock & Ornella Muti. Outside Italy the film is known as Oasis of Fear, AKA  Dirty Pictures. However, the correct translation is "An Ideal Place To Kill". The film had long been available only in the VHS format, until Shameless Pictures released it on DVD in 2011 if I'm not mistaken. Anyways, the following review was made in its entirety after watching the original Italian VHS (no dubbing, no english subs)

Hi, dirty old man, enjoying the view?

Orgasmic beauty.

It's ironic sometimes how a film doesn't turn out quite like its director intended, but the end result still outshines much of his other work; Lenzi reportedly wanted to make something akin to EASY RIDER(1969) but producer Carlo Ponti requested "the usual giallo" – besides, the drug-trafficking angle was changed to an even more lurid (and commercial) one involving pornographic material (hence, the alternate title DIRTY PICTURES)! Anyway, this is an atypical {sic} – thus interesting – effort from the genre's heyday: for once, too, the tone isn't overly glum (Bruno Lauzi's score, in fact, is infectiously upbeat most of the time) while being, as ever, a very stylish film.

The plot concerns two English kids (Ray Lovelock and under-aged Ornella Muti) traveling through Catholic Italy selling uncommon 'brochures' (Muti is perhaps too Mediterranean-looking to convince as an English girl, but she's sexy and generally delightful all the same). Being reckless, they never save what little money they make – when it's not stolen by those who 'befriend' them along the way (including a real-life motor-cycle dare-devil, dubbed "Crazy Tony", popular at the time!) – so the couple are forced to keep up the act…until they're betrayed to the Police by a potential customer who run them out of town. However, on the way, their car (stolen, of course) runs out of gas and the only nearby 'oasis' is a secluded villa they at first believe to be uninhabited; it transpires that rich American(!) Irene Papas (a curious presence in this type of film which, to my mind, definitely works in its favor) is inside and she catches them in the garage just as they're transferring petrol from one of the cars within into their own vehicle.

Ray Lovelock, the lucky one.

I'm in love!

The woman's first reaction is to send the kids away, but she soon changes her mind and they're invited to feed and even stay the night. The couple's freewheeling antics seem to liberate the stiff lady of the house, too, and before the night is out, the trio are having themselves a party (cue some crazy zooms on the dancing participants) for which Muti also contrives to dress up in exotic fashion. Papas and Lovelock spend the night together but not before she's sent him to the garage to fetch her some cigarettes: looking in the glove compartment of her car, he finds a gun and instinctively picks it up. This, as it turns out, was a deliberate move on her part as the young man now has his fingerprints on the weapon – when the kids first arrived, Papas had been acting strangely and we soon discover why: her husband's body (whom she herself shot, being in cahoots with a lawyer who's intermittently seen trying to make contact with her) is stashed in the boot of the car! To add more conviction to her fabricated story – that the kids assaulted the household – Papas feigns an attempted rape…

Typically, the picture is filled with solid suspense touches and clever narrative twists: when the Police finally arrive, as Papas had predicted, it's her they believe; the kids, thinking otherwise (having drugged the woman and 'planted' the gun in her hands) take it easy as they're reaching the border, even deciding to go for an impromptu swim. However, as they're departing once again, the Police bars their way and, it all ends with the kids running the car off the road and tumbling to their death – still, the director gives the whole a cynical conclusion this time around (accentuated by the reprise of the jaunty theme tune) as there's no redeeming last-minute stroke of irony here! 

You gotta make a livin' y'know.

Tit Selfie! Take that Instagram!

This film is labelled as a giallo by many, although I'm not sure I necessarily agree that it is. It's more of a crime-thriller than anything else. It basically boils down to a cat and mouse game between three people. It feels relatively restrained for an Umberto Lenzi picture. It isn't very violent at all, although it does have some quite frank sexual scenes. Although it is a thriller, it does feel very much more a product of the end of the counter-culture. It's pessimistic ending recalls Bonnie and Clyde and Easy Rider, while it's hippies gone bad is in line with the post Charles Manson massacre that in many ways put an end to the flower power movement.

It's all-in-all a good enough genre picture, although not a great one. Lenzi himself has made much more entertaining flicks. It's probably fair to say that Un Posto Ideale Per Uccidere is a minor film but not one without interest, I mean, Ornella Muti looks magnificent in it and that is reason enough to give it a look.

Here's the movie trailer from the remastered DVD edition: