DEATH WALKS ON HIGH HEELS (1971, original title La morte cammina con i tacchi alti) is a giallo served up in two distinct halves. The first is by far the worst, a somewhat dawdling tale of a French woman who flees her no-good boyfriend and heads to England with a mysterious new suitor. There's a little back story about her jewel thief father getting murdered on a train, but overall the emphasis is on showing actress Susan Scott stripping as many times as possible. She even dons blackface and an afro for one of these striptease sequences. It's not good.
The second half is where things really pick up. There's a big twist halfway through, then some detectives enter the game, and it all turns into one big seaside puzzle. There are multiple suspects and bizarre characters, from the one-handed aide to the blind man. There's even some real-life eye surgery I couldn't bring myself to watch. The villain's contact lenses make him entirely memorable, and the ending takes the amount of twists to the next level. Not much gore, apart from one sadistic murder, so one for the bloodhounds rather than the gorehounds. Suffice to say I much enjoyed the second half and just wish the whole thing could have been of this quality, or maybe if they'd just cut 20 minutes out of the earlier part it would have worked better.
The second half is where things really pick up. There's a big twist halfway through, then some detectives enter the game, and it all turns into one big seaside puzzle. There are multiple suspects and bizarre characters, from the one-handed aide to the blind man. There's even some real-life eye surgery I couldn't bring myself to watch. The villain's contact lenses make him entirely memorable, and the ending takes the amount of twists to the next level. Not much gore, apart from one sadistic murder, so one for the bloodhounds rather than the gorehounds. Suffice to say I much enjoyed the second half and just wish the whole thing could have been of this quality, or maybe if they'd just cut 20 minutes out of the earlier part it would have worked better.