This film, directed by the underrated Mario Caiano, just about succeeds despite many factors mitigating against it. There's a lack of true (young) star power, no black-gloved killer (apart from in an opening dream sequence) and a paper-thin plot-with one of the least likeable characters ever at its centre-which has pretty much run its course by the half hour point. Unlike films such as Play Motel, it doesn't even have copious sex scenes to fall back on to pad out the running time. However, unlike Play Motel, it does actually sustain interest right through to the end.

A young woman, Julie, wakes up after dreaming of the brutal slaying of her psychiatrist boyfriend, Luca. Discovering that Luca is nowhere to be found, she follows an oblique clue shouted by one of his patients and ends up in Maracudi, a remote village. There, she survives an assassination attempt and befriends a local gangster, Frank. After explaining that she's trying to track down her boyfriend, Frank advises her to visit a local villa where arty types hang out (psychiatrists being the artiest of arty types). Julie duly pays the villa a visit, and finds a bizarre collection of twentysomethings lounging around sunbathing, all seemingly under the thumb of Alida Valli's matriarchal Gerda. Despite mounting evidence that Luca had indeed visited the villa, all its inhabitants initially deny having seen him, so Julie decides to stick around to sunbathe topless, seduce Valli's toyboy, and occasionally ask questions about her missing boyfriend.

I don't blame her for not fully concentrating on the hunt for Luca-he's an absolute scumbag. He's a sociopathic, drug-dealing rapist, who even violates his doctor/patient boundaries by dating Julie, one of his patients. The monster! Julie takes the constant revelations as to Luca's true character reasonably well-as in, she doesn't really react at all to them-although the transference of her affections to sexy Louis, Alida Valli's toyboy, suggests that they may have had some effect. Or else she's just trying to blend in with the rest of the villa residents by being a shit.

This is one of those films in which pretty much everyone is a horrible, horrible person. It almost doesn't matter who the nominal 'killer' is (and there are actually 3 different killers, in a way); everyone is guilty to some degree. Adolfo Celi's Frank is one of the more likeable characters, his main sins apparently amounting to his being a gangster who was run out of America, and being unable to resist the occasional urge to hop on Julie. To be fair, he does take 'no' for an answer on the third or fourth occasion of its utterance.

The plot, as stated, doesn't really sustain itself for the length of the film. Once we get to the villa it's fairly certain that Julie has arrived at the end of her investigative journey, and all that's left is to narrow down the list of suspects. She proves less than adept at this, and over the course of the film you can almost feel her slipping from the driving seat of the investigation, to be replaced by Frank (which restores the standard male-at-the-helm giallo scenario). The film's reveal is one of those ones which might piss you off a bit (and it's one which Umberto Lenzi used a few years later and later claimed, in an out-of-character display of bombast, was a startlingly original type of ending), but it does just about stand up to scrutiny. 

One of the main reasons why the film is more-than-bearable throughout the final hour is the location. Rivalling The Sister of Ursula for the best giallo scenery, the villa and its environs are simply stunning. What's more, Caiano sure knew how to film them to maximise the impact. The film straddles the divides between several different type of gialli-the standard 'foreigner abroad investigating a possible murder' (a la Bird with the Crystal Plumage) segues into 'an isolated group by the sea' (a la 5 Dolls) which then morphs into an 'unstable young woman adrift in an evil world out to get her' film (a la Autopsy). These subtle changes of direction help to maintain interest, as we know 90% of what happened to Luca, but struggle to get a firm handle on the final piece of the puzzle. There's also a novel twist on the hoary old trope of 'character knows who the killer is; character doesn't immediately divulge identity of said killer; character dies before getting a chance to name killer'. Here's a tip: if you ever find yourself in a giallo, don't feel the need to impart such news face-to-face, shout it from the rooftops! Or just go to the bloody police.

A couple of other things to note are Sybil Danning's presence, playing a semi-virginal type (who still gets her baps out), and the reasonably progressive presentation of a transgender character, who is accepted for what she is by everybody (apart from that asshole Luca. Honestly, I'm glad he's dead). It also features some charming naif artwork which recalls that in Bird with the Crystal Plumage, down to the fact that the painting depicts a brutal murder. Its painter, a local simpleton, paints what he sees, in stark contrast to the arty types in the villa, who distort the world around them, taking photos of isolated body parts, recording natural sounds and re-editing them into music, and even changing their own gender. The film, which ultimately is also about distorting reality, won't blow your socks off, but no film ever made has had the ability to move socks.

One of the few black and white gialli, this is also one of the least exciting. It's very much the product of a time before the giallo had properly taken form, with the murders, plot and style all being distinctly anodyne and of their era.

A series of 17 and 18 year old girls are disappearing around Venice, and young handsome reporter Andrea seems to be the only citizen who views this as suspicious, with the police seemingly happy to write it all off as a series of accidents. The murderer, who brings the abducted women to his underground lair and injects them with embalming fluid so they, and their beauty, will live on forever, keeps on a-murderin', and eventually the police concede that they may be dealing with a serial killer. They're still not able to do anything about it though, with Andrea and his new girlfriend Maureen ultimately forced to save the day by tracking him down. The film has an unnecessarily cruel ending, with one of the useless policemen proving that he's not completely ineffectual, and is as good as anyone at delivering, then immediately dismissing the impact of, news of the death of a loved one.

As you've probably gathered, the plot isn't exactly labyrinthine. In fact, the underground sewer maze which hosts the climactic chase, which consists of at least five rooms on a sound stage, beats it hands-down in the labyrinth stakes. There's no a whole lot to recommend the film, really-the middle part gets bogged down in interminable travelogue-style scenes as Andrea shows Maureen and her young charges around the city. These charges, a large group of schoolgirls who hit the sweet spot age-wise (from the killer's point of view) naturally lead to expectations of an upping of the murder rate, but if anything the killer seems bamboozled by the choice on offer. Your choices at this point are three-stick with the film in the hope that things will liven up, concoct and self-administer your own embalming fluid to release you from the pain of watching the film, or turn the film off. (I'd only recommend the embalming option if you're young and beautiful with nothing to live for; otherwise go for option three).

Despite being set in a city, Dino Tavella crams in as many gothic-style scenes set in dark passages, with characters wandering about holding candles while a spot light is shone on them. There's also a large krimi influence, with the killer's outfit (essentially some deep-sea diving gear, in which he flaps about the streets at night) veers towards OTT Edgar Wallace territory (and would reappear in Amsterdamned, over 20 years later). Not content with the diving outfit, the killer also wears a skull mask for the film's climax, which leads to by far the best moment of the film, when he blends into a room of corpses (stay with me) to give himself an opportunity to attack Maureen.

Given the prevalence of black-gloved killers in the filone, there are understandably several different schools of thought regarding how best to depict them in gialli. Argento's best films reduce the killers to a series of tight close-ups, with the body part on screen becoming the defining characteristic of the killer from moment-to-moment. For example, if you see a close-up of an eye, we're either about to be treated to the killer's point of view or a glimpse into their minds(/memory's) eye; if we see a close-up of a hand, we know that hand is going to inflict pain. On the other end of the scale, Blood and Black Lace isn't afraid to show the killer in full-bodied shots. Partly due to the ingenious costuming, and partly due to the wild kinetic energy bursting from the killer at all times, the sense of danger isn't diminished by being able to see the killer as a whole at work.

This is rare though; generally the more we see, the more the sense of danger recedes. Unlike the later slasher movies, giallo killers are resolutely grounded in reality, and lack the unrelenting drive of a Jason or Michael Myers. Giallo killers frequently run away when confronted, and are often lacking in physicality (one of the reasons why the Blood and Black Lace killer retains its menace is arguably because it largely targets stick-thin models). When we see the killer in The Embalmer rolling around the streets of Venice grappling with Andrea, while wearing robes and a skull mask, we're not exactly fearing for Andrea's life. Especially as we've just seen the killer spend several minutes trying to flee from Andrea; if anything, we're worried about his chances of surviving.

The reveal of the killer is flubbed slightly, with their face initially being casually revealed in medium-shot profile, before we cut in for a tight close-up. We're then expected to recognise who they are, with no dialogue or flashbacks to guide us. It's not a spoiler to say that the most obvious suspect, a hotel employee who liked to spy on guests through two way mirrors (and may have been the designer of the later Play Motel), was not the killer. It is a spoiler (kinda) to say that a character who is introduced for a five minute window early in the film, during which time they act in an exceedingly odd and creepy manner, is the killer.  Tavella had clearly hoped that enough time would elapse between their disappearance from the film and their unmasking for us to forget about them as a suspect, but then remember them and their previously odd behaviour when we see the face. We'd then presumably shake our head in wonderment at our own forgetfulness, while simultaneously fighting the urge to break out into spontaneous applause at the divilry of the filmmakers. We don't do that, though.

One other thing worth noting, which I'll hopefully delve into in more detail on another occasion, is that most of the characters are dubbed into English by the same few voice actors. The killer has a distinctive voice, with the character, for those wild few minutes early on, speaking in the same voice. I haven't seen the film in its original Italian, but I'd wager that there would have been at least a cursory attempt to mask the similarity. Directors and producers were thus putting the fate of their films in the hands of the dubbers to some extent. Smaller films tended to have rushed production schedules, and the dubbing into various languages for export wasn't necessarily supervised (there are numerous examples ofdrunk/bored dubbers sneaking wildly inappropriate lines into Italian films). Therefore, if the dubbers went off-script, or brought their own interpretations to the voice of a masked killer, the effectiveness of a film's mystery could be greatly diminished. Evidence of the low-quality of dubbing can be seen by the fact that instead of rewriting the dialogue to allow for the fact that things generally take far longer to articulate in Italian, direct translations were used, with characters often repeating some of it to pad out the syncing process. Having said all of the above, given the effectiveness of the rest of the mystery here, it's entirely possible that the Italian version didn't attempt to disguise the killer's voice at all, and contained the same inane repetitive dialogue.

Not highly recommended.

This is one of those gialli which were made after the filone's popularity began to wane, when producers attempted to sell their product by combining exploitable elements. This led to the nunsploitation-meets-giallo Killer Nun, the true story docudrama-meets-giallo The Pyjama Girl Case, and the porn-giallo crossovers like Giallo a Venezia and this film.

Play Motel concerns a blackmail ring which is run out of the titular establishment, involving a two way mirror and prostitution ring which has links to a porn publication. A young couple, Roberto and Patrizia, come forward with evidence which suggests that the strangled wife of a prominent businessman, who was apparently killed during a botched robbery in the countryside, was actually murdered at the Play Motel. The local Inspector, who has recently left the Vice Squad, gives a clue as to why his career is floundering by pressing the couple, who are aspiring actors, into service as undercover cops, rather than using actual undercover cops for the job. Predictably enough, Roberto soon finds himself in a race against time to save Patrizia as they try to blow the case wide open.

It's not just the blackmail ring which is blown in this film, particularly if you watch the porn version.  Right from the first moments, we're thrust (oh!) into a world of flesh, desires and exploitation. Exploitation in the sense that we're very much watching an exploitation pic, but also one which deals in blackmail-a form of exploitation-and touches on the conditions which the prostitutes at the centre of the plot must endure. It doesn't exactly delve deep into the latter theme, but at least acknowledges that the women who work as photographic models and general bodies-for-hire mightn't necessarily enjoy the transactional nature of their work. Of course, being directed by an Italian, the film has its cake and eats it, with every single female character selling their own body to and performing nude scenes. (If you want a giallo which delves a bit deeper into the lot of a prostitute, check out Death Occurred Last Night.)

​'Sexuality' is often cited as one of the main giallo tropes, alongside black-gloved killers, outré scores and murder scenes, whodunnit plots, etc. I'd question this-there's a difference between showing sex and exploring sexuality. Most gialli, if they dip their toe in the sex waters at all, are happy to remain paddling in the former pool; the deeper, more interesting waters of the latter remain unbreached (Deep Red, which contains no nudity, is one of the most prominent execptions). Sex is primarily an excuse to show female nudity, which is typically depicted in a manner which both reveres and condemns the woman whose putting her wares on show.

Willy, the aptly-named photographer in Play Motel (both the film itself and the motel within it) succinctly embodies this approach, when Patrizia comes to him under the guise of an aspiring actress. After convincing her to drop her drawers (the producers won't be interested in her unless they see everything she has to offer, he tells her) he reassures her by saying that he sees countless naked women as part of his work. After a lengthy shoot, however, which fetishises and worships her body, he can't resist literally throwing himself at her. After she pushes him off, they both shrug off this attempted rape and agree to continue the shoot with some nice close-up shots. Willy's apologetic nature as he convinces Patrizia not to leave is the only deviation from standard procedure here; if he was truly the embodiment of the archetypal Italian film he'd instead condemn her for daring to bare and not be prepared to see things through to their 'natural' conclusion.

The ambivalent attitude of Italian films towards women can probably be linked to the prevalence of religion in their society, with the uncertain attitude towards bare flesh being one step removed from a madonna/whore complex. Religion is a topic which is addressed (again, fleetingly) by Play Motel, with the characters in its Red Room engaging in role-playing and fancy dress, with religious garb apparently de rigueur. Another consequence of the dress-up action is that the film depicts sexuality as much as sex, with old-fashioned missionary action superseded by the exploratory and boundary-pushing Red Room action. Notably, the nominal heroes of the film, Patrizia and Roberto, enjoy a sex session which is as experimental and, frankly, odd as almost anything enjoyed by the other characters.

I say 'almost anything', because one sexcapade does stick out from the rest-a hypocritical banker who, when he's not preaching the virtues of piety to his assistants and hosting cardinals for parties in his house, reads porn mags. Through the pages of the blackmail ring's mag (he's not aware of the blackmail bit) he arranges a Red Room meet-up with a hooker. This sex session, which begins just like all the rest, takes a bit of a turn towards the end with the introduction of a champagne bottle (to the lady's ass).  This character would appear to function as a quasi-mouthpiece for the filmmakers, embodying a form of societal hypocrisy towards sex. The fact that Patrizia and Roberto are open about their own sexuality, making no attempt to hide their motive for visiting the Motel from the police, suggests that they represent the filmmakers' ideal-a healthy, open appreciation of sex.

The film does fall in line with established representations of sex and human bodies-full frontal nudity galore from the females, none from the males (apart from those who participate in the hardcore inserts*)-which means that it's not exactly trail-blazing. At least it does have the balls to position itself squarely in a world of sex and nudity from the very beginning, which means it doesn't need to make flimsy excuses and pretences for its carnal indulgences; the plot revolves around sex, so the film can too. It's also worth noting that Ray Lovelock's Roberto  contributes almost nothing to the investigative process, with Patrizia leading the way (a woman having such agency is extremely rare in gialli). The fact that she uses her body to get ahead does makes sense given the themes and subject matter of the film (that her sense of excitement at being part of the investigative process  is undiminished by the rape attempt is a bit odd though). Making less sense, however, is the Police Inspector who's guiding her through the investigative process.

As stated, the use in the first place of Patrizia and Roberto as investigators is highly questionable. It does pay off, however, with the couple having the case 90% cracked after some Motel sleuthing, thanks in part to a nifty fake moustache which in no way disguises Ray Lovelock's face, yet which somehow fools the Motel's receptionist. The  problem is that there's about half of the film remaining at this point, which gives the filmmakers two options. The first is to add another dimension to the plot, and incorporate further twists and turns. The other is to have the police put off taking those final few steps necessary to crack the ring, and just show some tits instead. No prizes for guessing which road was taken.

It's a shame that the film takes this route (not that seeing loads of tits is necessarily a bad thing, up to a point), because for the first half it's actually a near-excellent giallo. The T&A-fest does drag it down, though, in a manner redolent of The Cold-Blooded Beast (albeit this film scales far higher heights before the sex takes hold). The sex is far less gratuitous here, and the addition of a bit more plot could have put this film towards the top of the late-70s giallo tree. One consequence of the lazy attitude towards plot is that you may feel that the film's adopting a similarly-lazy attitude towards the solution to the mystery. Don't fall into this trap-the solution is actually quite clever, and does stand up to scrutiny.

I've been writing about Play Motel, as I do every film, as if the filmmakers are responsible for, and have consciously chosen, everything that ends up on screen. It would be remiss not to return to something mentioned in the opening paragraph: namely that producers wielded most of the power in Italian genre cinema, unless an Argento, Bava or Fulci was at the helm, and as such Mario Gariazzo's hands were likely tied by the salacious demands of his producer. (One wonders if Armando Novelli, the producer in question, had a taste for champagne.) Even operating within whatever strictures were imposed upon him, Gariazzo has crafted a flawed but very interesting film, which is well worth checking out. If you like warbly disco songs, so much the better.

This is a curious film, which pays lip service to any number of gothic and giallo tropes without really allowing itself to cut loose and have fun. It was made after the heydey of the gothic film, and just before the giallo exploded, and it ultimately ends up as a sub-par example of both.

After one of the most baffling and disjointed pre-credits sequences in history, we follow Elizabeth Balljanon (?) as she returns to her deceased uncle's castle for the reading of his will. Her fiancé Jack (the word's worst reporter) accompanies her, and they're joined by two friends who presumably had an offscreen disagreement with either the lead characters or the producers, as they barely appear in the film. Elizabeth, who was extremely close to her uncle, inherits the entire estate. The Governess, Carol, insists that Balljanon had been planning to sell the castle to a neighbour. She then spends the rest of the film casually discussing the castle's history of murder and hauntings, which is in no way intended to convince Elizabeth to sell up. As the murders kind-of pile up (there's a body count of two before the climax), a local girl starts snooping around the castle, and Elizabeth's fiancé finally begins to believe her claims that she's the victim of a dastardly scheme to purchase her property at slightly below-market-value rates.

As far as I can ascertain, that is indeed the motive which drives the murderer(s).  Given her impending nuptials, her fiance would presumably stand to inherit the property if she went completely loco and/or died, although it's unclear whether the murderer has the financial resources to actually purchase the property. There are ample opportunities to just do away with Elizabeth, and before she's married too, which would probably preclude the fiance from having a claim on the castle, but the aim seems merely to bump off characters of less consequence, and scare her up a bit.

But anyway. As I said, the film contains a lengthy checklist of ingredients from both gothic films and gialli, but the resulting broth is exceedingly mild. There's nudity, albeit mostly artfully framed or covered with strategically-placed limbs. There's a black-gloved killer, albeit one who kills two people. Two people are killed, albeit off-screen. There's a torture sequence, albeit one which involves only tastefully-framed whipping. There's a twist ending involving an unmasking, albeit one which makes no sense.

To briefly consider this ending; it's not giving anything away to say that the aforementioned dastardly scheme is being driven by an established criminal, who has assumed a new identity. This criminal isn't working alone (you may have an inkling of who their partner is from the above synopsis [and that's not a spoiler, the film makes it as blatant as I did]), but even so, he doesn't seem to be very good at crime. 

One murder in particular, which happens prior to the beginning of the film (there are two such murders, which bump up the body count to four if you're feeling generous), leaves the door wide open for the later unmasking. The logic seems to have been that the murder in question will allow the criminal to assume the victim's identity and get close to Elizabeth. Given that his accomplice is already mighty close to her, though, this seems pointless. If the intention was to obscure the original identity (and face) of the criminal, the fact that they, at one stage, converse with an undercover police office using their original face (this'll make sense once you see the film) renders the identity-assumption utterly futile. And, while I'm on the subject, why didn't the police just arrest the criminal after that conversation, given the fact that they were on his tail? Clearly logic wasn't at the forefront of Ferruccio Casapinta's* thoughts when he was constructing the plot (which proved to be the only one he ever did construct); all he wanted was a twisty ending. On top of all that, the early shots of the criminal mastermind, which consist of identity-obscuring fleeting glimpses of his hair and body, clearly feature a double who doesn't really resemble the character he's supposed to be playing. This  muddies the water to an unforgivable level when it comes to playing the accusation game.

*According to David Del Valle and Derek Botelho's commentary track, Casapinta was a fan of gialli who was awarded a grant to make the film. They quote the actress who played Elizabeth as saying that he wasn't very competent, to say the least,  and left most of the actual directing work to the AD and DP.

A widower, Berzaghi, reaches out to Chief Police Inspector Lamberti to find his missing child, after his local police force prove inadequate in searching for her. Donatella Berzaghi was twenty five, but had the mind of a three year old, and disappeared one afternoon while her father was at work. Lamberti, in consultation with his slightly-longer-than-average-haired sidekick Mascaranti, decides that Donatella has most likely been sold  into prostitution, and they enlist a former pimp to help them scour the city's brothels. They eventually get a lead, which leads them to a recently-demolished building where Donatella had been working.

Then, out of the blue, her charred remains are discovered in a country field.

Stricken with grief, Berzaghi throws out all of her toys. He notices her favourite toy, a tatty bear which disappeared from his apartment on the day of her abduction, on the dashboard of the rubbish truck. The binmen tell him that they found the bear among rubbish which was taken from his own apartment block a month previously. Meanwhile, Berzaghi and Mascaranti have unearthed a new lead, which takes them to a country hotel. The hotel's owner reveals that his cousin was Donatella's pimp, having bought her from friends of Berzaghi.

Berzaghi asks around his apartment block, but-surprisingly-no-one admits to having thrown Donatella's bear out. His next door neighbour drops her bag of shopping when she sees the bear, though, which alerts him to her possible guilt.

The police arrive back in town just in time to discover Berzaghi surrounded by the corpses of the people who took his daughter from him. Lamberti castigates him for administering his own justice; Berzaghi is trapped in a nightmare from which he may never emerge.

Ducio Tessari-who, along with Mario Caiano, is probably the most under-appreciated of the Italian genre stalwarts-made this film, his first giallo, in 1970. Compared to that year's other gialli, Death Occurred is far more serious, and less playful, with fewer murders and a greater emphasis on characterisation and psychology.

The film covers ground similar to that which would later be covered by What Have They Done to Your Daughters?, namely the apparent statistic of 'thousands' of girls who went missing every year in 70s Italy. (Although, saying that, What Have They Done doesn't actually deal with that at all, it just includes an end title card which refers to the 8000 teens who go missing every year.) Death Occurred also deals with mental illness, and society's willingness to banish anyone with such a condition to a hospital (God help them if they get sent to the one from The Cold Blooded Beast). 

It touches on many, many other socially-relevant issues-the struggle to survive for those less well-off; the lack of alternative options for young women once they get on the game; the secrets and omitted truths which exist in all households; the corruptibility of the human spirit. It even, through a series of conversations between Frank Wolff's Inspector Lamberti and his photographer girlfriend, interrogates the position that art occupies in a downtrodden society, as well as the need for, and sense of existential futility of being a part of, a police force. This explains Lamberti's rage at the film's climax; Berzaghi has rendered him impotent and useless by assuming his role as the meter/metre of justice.

​The film is grounded in realism to a far greater degree than other gialli, thanks largely, no doubt, to Tessari's background in documentaries. His next giallo, The Bloodstained Butterfly, also strove for verisimilitude, with a police forensics squad thanked in the end credits. This film doesn't have the style of that later effort; with frequent handheld and long-lens shots prioritising a sense of authenticity and location over style. There are no classic murder set-pieces; the only on-screen murders occur towards the end, and are appropriately gritty-a pimp is shot in the back, and Berzaghi brawls his way through his daughters' captors in an extremely crude, but effective, manner.

Berzaghi, brilliantly played by Raf Vallone, is given far more space than is usual in which to grieve. Whereas most films zip along from murder to murder, with the only consequence being the redoubling of determination on the part of the police/amateur detective to catch and punish the killer, here we witness a man in the depths of despair; almost a meditation on grief and loss. We see a man who, after his wife died, had positioned his daughter at the centre of his world, and seeing him come to terms with the sudden loss of this focal point is harrowing. We can fully understand why he acts as he does at the film's climax; his earlier promise to stay alive for a thousand years, if that was how long it took to catch the killer, succinctly describes his outlook after the loss of Donatella. She was his everything, and, after losing her, witnessing justice enacted is his everything. His 'life' ends when she is avenged, and we know that he may well see out the remainder of his days in prison for the three murders, thus fulfilling his own prophecy.

His passionate administering of justice, which angers Lamberti so much, perfectly encapsulates the argument for a transparent legal mechanism to objectively try and convict those guilty of crimes. If you're emotionally involved with the victim, you cannot approach the subject of punishment with a clear and open mind.  There's a sense, though, that Lamberti feels powerless to do any real good in the world he inhabits; for every crime he solves, for every missing girl he finds, there are a dozen more cases which require his attention. It's tempting to see his anger and frustration as being directed at the world, rather than Berzaghi, as he comes upon the massacre at the film's climax.

There's not much to the film in terms of plot; the first half basically involves Lamberti and Mascaranti-who sports a Torso-esque neckerchief, and a frequently commented-upon haircut which seems to be part of set-up for a final scene pay-off which never comes-asking prostitutes if they've seen Donatella. Once her body is found, the police and her father conduct divergent investigations, with the convergence coming just too late for the police. These investigations aren't complex, however; they're strictly of an A-B-C nature.  

As previously stated, Death Occurred contains no great stylistic flourishes, apart from a love of an idiosyncratically-scored montage. It also introduces a whodunnit aspect late in the game, in terms of producing suspects from who we can guess the murderer(s). Indeed, for much of the running time, it feels as if we may be presented with an indictment of a system, a la What Have They Done to Your Daughter?, rather than a guilty party. The script also contains some odd bits of dialogue; Mascaranti comes off particularly poorly in his early exchanges, and Lamberti tells his girlfriend, after she complains about the commotion in their apartment, that a woman who moves in with a man needs to come to terms with the consequences of his job. Then, about 8 seconds later, as he gets out of bed, he himself sighs and laments the lack of peace and quiet.