One of the first American quasi-gialli (I'll leave it to another day to draw up a definitive list and chronology of same), this film is an interesting intersection point-or, more accurately, divergence point-between the giallo and slasher film. Based on a story and script by John Carpenter, and released a couple of months before Halloween, it's a reminder of just how influential the little Italian flicks made by Mario and Dario had become by this time.

Famous, and controversial, fashion photographer Laura Mars specialises in fetishistic images of death. Specifically, dead women. Just as she's launching a big new exhibit and book, women-and men dressed as women-from her inner circle start dropping like flies. What's more, Laura, through some kind of second sight, sees glimpses of the killer's point of view as he stalks and slashes his way through her friends and colleagues. As the police 'investigate' (/ineffectually sit outside people's apartments), the killer turns their sights, and Laura's occasional sights, to Laura herself...

This film deals with a couple of fairly weighty issues: the fetishisation of violence in art, and the victimisation of women in both art and real life. At least, it pays lip service to these issues, but does it really get to grips with either? Before we get to that, I'll say that this isn't a bad film, but it's quite vanilla in giallo terms. There's very little gore, no real investigation, and minimal moments of baroque Argento-esque style. It's worth a look, though, and features some bigger names than you'd normally find in a giallo, if that's your thing (one of whom, Brad Dourif, pops up again fifteen years later in Trauma).

The story lends itself naturally to Layers. Layers of text and subtext; layers of meaning and depth. You have voyeurism and scopophilia, fetishisation and commercialisation of violence against women, and mirrors. Lots and lots of mirrors. This (mirrors) is an example of 'depth' in a film which is fairly redundant to me-seeing characters reflected in a maze of mirrors is an impressive technical achievement, and we can take it as a given that it's the film 'subtly' telling us that one or more characters have a fractured personality. And here, sure enough, the killer seems to be a bit schizo. It's a bit of a cul-de-sac in terms of opening up the film for discussion, though, much like having goodies dress in white and baddies in black in westerns. Sure, we can point out to our less cerebral friends that the director has colour-coded the characters to externalise their inner goodie- or baddie-ness, but there's not a whole lot more to say beyond this.

There's more to chew over elsewhere, though. I'm unsure of just how much Carpenter remains in the final product (allegedly not a whole lot), but the idea of Laura seeing the stalk and slash through the killer's POV did come from him, unsurprisingly given how he utilised first-person shots to such an extent throughout Halloween. Laura doubles as the film's audience during her vision scenes, observing events over which she has no control. This point is explicitly made when she tells Tommy Lee Jones' inspector "I can't see what's in front of me. What I see if that," and points at an image on a screen. And yet, by creating such images in her working life, she also doubles as the filmmakers; commercialising artistic violence. She attempts to explain away her career choice by saying that she seeks to depict "moral, spiritual, emotional murder." She says she can't stop murder, but can "make people look at it."

Does she really want to do this to remind people of how horrible the world is, though? Or is she merely seeking to justify her life choices by hiding behind a smokescreen of spurious and specious reasoning? Why exactly is making people look at murder preferable to the alternative (ie, not making them look art it)? Similarly, John Carpenter, and Irvin Kershner (to a far lesser degree), made money by making horror films. They can claim that they're making people look at murder with altruistic intentions, but are they really trying to convince us, or themselves? For the record, I don't think it's necessary to justify commercialising violence; murder existed before films were invented, after all. Even if a work of art inspires a copycat murder, the killer is obviously mental to begin with and would no doubt have figured out a way to commit heinous acts without artistic inspiration.* This is, nonetheless, something that any person who sends violent images out into the world must grapple with at some stage. Or, at least, should grapple with.

Making Laura a woman is an interesting move. A cynic might argue that it's simply efficient filmmaking, allowing one character to simultaneously open up the dialogue about representations of violence on screen and fill the woman-in-peril role. Similarly, is her second sight indicative of women being more in  tune with the world around them, or is it merely a way to film murder scenes in a disorienting manner while also keeping things relatively studio-friendly and bloodless? (Neither; it's almost certainly to allow for an exploration of the point of view, as suggested above.) 

To return to Laura's dual function as both purveyor and potential victim of violence, why shouldn't she be allowed to be both? People who complain about woman being reduced to the role of disposable victim in films have a (generally) valid complaint, but the fact remains that, in real life, women statistically are far more likely than men to be victims of violent crime.  Female actors generally seem more physically vulnerable on screen than men, so it's easier to create a sense of danger and dread. The fact that Laura fulfils this role while also earning her corn by taking advantage of female vulnerability adds a delicious layer of irony to proceedings. You could argue that she's not a good female role model, but fuck it-why should she be? Non-white males in films tend to be viewed as being representatives of their gender/race/sexuality, which has always sat uneasily with me. In many ways viewing characters in this way has the opposite to the desired effect; the intention is to push for greater representation of and appreciation for 'marginal' groups, yet when confronted with an example of someone from such a group, their individuality is immediately tossed aside, and their personality is viewed as being representative of a whole. This is unfair on both the group and the characters themselves.

That Laura adds a veneer of sex and sexuality to her images is also interesting. Is photographing sexy women, and photographing imaginary acts of violence against sexy women, in any way offensive? Well yes, in that plenty of people in the film express outrage at Laura's work, which would undoubtedly have met the same response in the real world. And just look at the response to slasher films, and to Dario Argento's comments about preferring to kill beautiful actresses in his films. But, then again, the most inane utterance can cause offence (or faux-offence) in the Twitter age. I don't want to get all PC-gone-mad about things, so I'll say that the characters in the film, and IRL, have every right to protest Laura's work. But, at the same time, I don't think she's unequivocally crossed any line. As a woman, she's within her rights to interrogate and present female sexuality as she wishes (again, as long as she doesn't cross any lines). If you don't like it, don't consume her work! Feel free to protest it too. But just don't go calling it offensive; it's offensive and distasteful to you, not objectively offensive, and there's a difference.

The fashion backdrop also works as a reference (intentional or otherwise) to Blood and Black Lace, and the combination of fashion and second sight anticipates Nothing Underneath. The issue of the second sight is an interesting one; initially we're faced with the possibility that what Laura's actually experiencing are flashbacks to murders she herself has committed. This reduces the film to a very basic either/or scenario, so it's made clear reasonably quickly that the visions are real. This, of course, places the film at the edge of the supernatural subgenre, although the second sight is the only such element in the film. Its existence is never really addressed, and it basically functions as either a plot gimmick or subtext gimmick (or both), depending on your outlook.

Aside from the sexuality of the fashion shoots, there's also a slightly cloying post-coital scene, which is very much a Hollywoodised version of a typical giallo sex scene. The emotions expressed within it are fairly over-the-top and sugary, but the Italian gialli weren't immune to such flourishes either. As stated at the outset, there's very little visual style here, despite the possibilities opened up by the fashion shoot-setting and second sight murder scenes. One reasonably atmospheric sequence sees Laura running through a vast empty studio, and the moment when she realises the killer's identity features some classic Eurocult style-a push in on the killer's face followed by a zoom into the Eyes on Mars. 

Regarding the identity of the killer, there's no real investigation to speak of, with the police instead seeming to adopt an approach of waiting to happen upon the killer to presenting themselves 'in the act'. They spend much of the film functioning as ineffectual bodyguards, with two murdered characters meeting their demise while apparently having police protection. SPOILERS This may not necessarily be indicative of poor policing, though, depending on who exactly was providing said protection. END SPOILERS

The Big Reveal, replete with dolly and zoom, is one of those that comes about three minutes after anyone with half a brain would've figured out the identity of the killer for themselves. The film further tips its hat by having one of those classic 'disembodied voice' moments, when one character tells another that everything's OK now and the threat is vanquished. As I've previously noted, when the person doing the reassuring is heard but not seen, you can be reasonably sure that things are very much not OK, and the owner of the voice is, in fact, the threat. Here, there's no reason why they couldn't have shown the voice owner as he speaks the reassuring lines. I'm guessing that it wasn't such a clichéd trope in the 1970s as it is today. In fact, a huge amount of horror movie clichés go back to this time and this year, and this writer (the writer of this film; not me). This isn't the best 1978 John Carpenter-related film; it might not even be the second-best-I haven't seen his TV movie Someone's Watching Me (note the continued theme of eyes and seeing). But it's definitely in the top three.
​

El Fulcerino returns with a film which, while not among his very best work, is nonetheless a fascinating attempt to breathe new life into an increasingly stale filone. Unfortunately, because its innovations were of the cerebral rather than visceral variety, the film was not a success upon release, and left Fulci's career languishing somewhat in the doldrums. The next time he returned to the filone, he did so on the back of a run of gore-soaked epics, and delivered The New York Ripper, which is about as different a giallo from this film as it's possible to be.

Virginia Ducci has a form of second sight, which enables her, walking in the schoolyard of her Florentine convent, to see her mother's Don't Torture a Duckling-esque suicide leap from the cliffs of Dover.  Years later she's freshly-married to an Italian businessman, played suavely by Gianni Garko, but still prone to hallucinations and premonitions. She has one such vision as she's driving through a tunnel, blacking out but somehow managing to navigate the tunnel and pull in neatly to the side of the road. The vision apparently shows a limping, moustachioed man, a fifty-something woman with her skull smashed in, a smashed mirror, a lushly decorated red room and a body apparently being sealed behind an in-construction stone wall. Virginia travels on to one of her husband's properties, which she's never visited before but wants to renovate. Realising that one of the rooms was featured in her vision, she takes a pickaxe to a wall and uncovers the skeletal remains of a 25 year old model. Her husband Francesco, a former lover of the model, is initially suspected and arrested, but is released after evidence comes to light suggesting he was in America at the time of the murder. Meanwhile, Virginia is trying to reconcile the inconsistencies in her vision with the facts as they appear to be-why did she see the victim as being much older than she really was, and why does the moustachioed man, who she tracks down with surprising ease, not walk with a limp?

As I've previously stated, this film plays like an extended riff on the central conceit behind A Lizard in a Woman's Skin, specifically dreams as visions, as opposed to jumbled webs of nonsense and half-memories being spun by our subconscious mind.  It also begins with a reprise of the finale of Don't Torture a Duckling, with a dodge dummy tumbling down a cliff to its doom, albeit there are fewer sparks here when the dummy makes contact with the cliff, and the effect is less spatially disorientating in general. The eerie driving sequence, which manages to imbue a nondescript stretch of road and tunnels with an uncanny menace, may have also spawned future Fulci work, sadly, with Door to Silence featuring interminable stretches of John Savage driving through the American countryside.

In order to better sell the conceit of the dream vision, Fulci makes Virginia a patient of a parapsychologist, played by Marc Porel, who is predisposed to believe her seemingly outlandish claims. Saying that, he does toss the occasional large pinch of salt at her claims, and doesn't just swallow everything willy-nilly. He also hints at the possibility that this film takes place in a Tenebrae-like very, very slight alternate universe, asking Virginia at one point "Who didn't have a relative or friend who had dreamed of someone being run over, then the next day that person is really run over?" Speaking empirically, I'd wager that quite a lot of people would not know anyone to whom that description could be affixed.

Luca, Porel's character, also lays the groundwork for the film's big twist (SPOILAGE AHEAD), by pointing out to Virginia that the mounting inconsistencies between her vision and what apparently happened to the dead model suggest that she may have had a premonition, rather than a flashback. The precise nature of Virginia's second sight is never made clear, but we know from the film's opening she can witness events which are happening elsewhere in the present. She makes references to premonitions and calls herself a 'clairvoyant', both of which would suggest that she primarily does deal in seeing the future, not the past (although clairvoyance can also mean a general ability to experience things 'beyond normal sensory contact').

However, it's a fairly natural assumption to think that she's had an extra-sensory flashback when she recognises the room in Francesco's house from her vision, and finds a walled-in body in the exact spot where she'd had a vision of its having being sealed in. It'd be easy to dismiss the film for dealing in outrageous coincidences when you learn that the vision was indeed a premonition, and had nothing directly to do with the model's death. However, one must bear in mind that the second walling-in can only happen because of the discovery of the first one, which was itself sparked by the vision itself. In this way, the vision becomes a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy, and the double-Poe isn't egregious. Plus, if you've already killed and walled in one young woman, why wouldn't you do it again? (I mean, there are lots of reasons, so don't think about Garko's plan for dealing with Virginia too closely. At all.)

There are some clues as to the twist in the cinematic language of the flashback, although it'd be a fool's errand to attempt to guess the twists in films which engage in dreamlike imagery by analysing said imagery with cold logic. Nevertheless, it's worth pointing out that the old woman's face is shown as viewed by another person's (/a camera's) perspective, whereas the shots of the sealing-in are all first-person. What's more, this first-person is clearly still alive. Also, the fact that we can clearly see the woman's dead face suggests that she's not been walled-in (unless the killer fitted the makeshift grave with a light source), or at least couldn't have been the person who's watching themselves being entombed. And, if I had to guess who the person through whose eyes Virginia sees was, I'd have to go out on a limb and say that it was probably herself. However, as I said, it's all well and good to employ such rigour on a third or fourth viewing of the film, but when you're dealing with fractured dream visions it generally wouldn't pay to be so logical in your interpretations when first watching it. Although, as I've just shown, it would pay here. But not always.

Anyway, such a reading of the film's images depends on a correct interpretation of certain images and conventions. And what Fulci is really interrogating here is the inherent truth, or untruth, of images. (Bear with me...) One of the main innovations Dario Argento had brought to the genre was to imbue his films with intellectual concerns,  Bird... being a perfect example, with its questioning of gender roles and interrogation of the reliability of subjective vision. Fulci (for the most part) removes the subjective from his images here, instead presenting them as disembodied fragments. These images do not necessarily mean anything on their own, but can be interpreted by us, and Virginia, to mean certain things. As the film progresses, and we're privvy to more information, the original interpretations are shown to be erroneous. The very nature of the vision, originally assumed to be flashback, is shown to be wrong, but there are also more specific errors.

As an example, we assume that the limping man is Gabriele Ferzetti because he's the only man who appears recognisably in the vision. And Virginia assumes the dead person is the fifty year old woman, again because she 'sees' no-one else. What's crucial here is context; when we're first presented with the images we attempt to construct a coherent straight-line narrative from them, even with a paucity of concrete information. Then, with the accumulation of knowledge, we're able to fill the gaps between the images, allowing us to recontextualise and reinterpret them, and getting one step closer to the 'truth', if such a thing exists (it does here, because it's a mystery genre film, but does it in life?? OK, I'll leave it there). On a purely cinematographic level, the Ferzetti assumption, as an example, displays the suggestive power of editing, and shows how keen we are to make associations and connections between things in order to make sense of them.

Speaking of Ferzetti, he's prominently billed here, but has a very contained, and temporally-short, role in the film. The nature of the plot is such that he's required to assume the role of assumed-killer when he does appear, in a kind of drawn out version of the red herring moment which is afforded most characters in a giallo. This, of course, leads the experienced viewer to discount the likelihood of his actually being the killer, and to look elsewhere for suspects. And, apart from Porel's whiter-than-white character, who could adopt a Julia Durer-esque tactic of taking advantage of having Virginia's confidence by enacting her visions IRL (in real life, you fuddy duddies) but never really gets close to being a suspect, there aren't many other possibilities. Other than the actual killer, of course. 

Having a seemingly obviously guilty character like Ferzetti handy gives said killer, Gianni Garko's Francesco, a clear acting choice (assuming that Fulci didn't drag performances of his choice from his players, which, by all accounts, is a safe assumption to make)-he can try to blend into the background, unobserved by those searching for clues and suspects, or he can play up his sympathetic qualities, the better to highlight the dark and untrustworthy nature of Ferzetti. This latter option can't be too hammy, though, or it'll attract suspicion by virtue of its seeming overabundance of virtue. Anyway, although Ferzetti does bring some nuance and hints that there's more to his character than meets the eye, he-like Garko-is extremely constrained by the general demands of the role, and turns in a performance which isn't too difficult from the classic Jean Sorel or George Hilton.  It's easy to criticise actors for being too bland (which I've done recently with Sorel's reactions to his daughter's death in Lizard), but bear in mind that they're constantly making choices, and sometimes the choice which best serves the film, and plot, is to downplay their reactions, thus keeping their motives obfuscated and obscure.  Obviously.

The final half hour here, once we establish that the vision was a premonition rather than a flashback, is rather too devoted to depicting every single piece of the puzzle slotting into place. I've only watched the English dub, which may well be more sledgehammery than the Italian version, but the running voiceover flashbacks which emphasise how we need to reinterpret previous events and statements are slightly too prevalent. There's no need to show every little part of the puzzle slotting into place; give us a general overview and trust us to complete the final few pieces ourselves. Fulci was likely proud of the visual and plotting complexities, but it shows its hand just a bit too much. On the other hand, the film ends very abruptly, eschewing a happy-ever-after coda, not even showing the moment the killer is properly taken down. Fulci's happy to let us extrapolate here, probably because the extra couple of minutes would've been no different to what we'd seen in a hundred other gialli.

And this film is different to other gialli. It's not necessarily a thrill-a-minute adrenaline ride, but it's a very neatly conceived and executed film, and, as with all his pre-Zombi gialli, would serve as an excellent rebuttal to anyone who dismisses Fulci as a talentless gorehound. Elements of his later work can be seen here, with another example of his fondness for his blown-out crime scene photography, and a hesitant attempt at the zoom-driven pick-axe action which would recur in the Gates of Hell trilogy. But it's the elements which gradually, and sometimes suddenly, disappeared over the years-the plotting, the subtext and the graceful camerawork and editing-which make this film what it is, and leave you wondering what might have been if this had been his global smash instead of (the still excellent) Zombi 2...

This film was Lucio Fulci's third, and probably best, giallo. It's a film where his ever-increasing technical standards were very much in evidence, as was his growing rage against the machine that was Catholic Italy of the 70s.

In Accendura, a small town in Southern Italy which is connected to the rest of the county by a modern motorway, someone is murdering young boys. The local simpleton is initially suspected, after he's found to be behind an attempted blackmailing of one victim's parents. However, it turns out that he merely came across the child's corpse and, sensing a money-making opportunity, buried it before making the call. The town's attention then turns to local witch, La Maciara, who has been missing for over two weeks. The police manage to track her down and she confesses to the crimes. However, it turns out she was merely using voodoo against the three children, and didn't physically kill them. After her release, she's brutally set upon and murdered by the fathers of the deceased. Reporter Andrea Martelli and recovering drug addict Patrizia, meanwhile, form an alliance to try and get to the bottom of the murders, even as the film does its best to push Patrizia as a suspect. Patrizia then sees the decapitated head of a Donald Duck doll which she bought for a deaf and dumb girl placed among the tributes for the killer's latest victim. Using some fine extrapolation skills, she and Andrea concoct an explanation for the girl's proclivity for dismembering dolls which also points the finger at a suspect for the murders. They're not quite right, but enough in the ballpark that the real killer is outed, just in time to fall to their death in a shower of sparks and crushed papier maché.

If you haven't seen this film, you should probably stop reading here, as most of what I'll be discussing will be spoilerific. Starting now. The main concerns of the film on a thematic level are the superstition and insularity of small-town Italy, and the power, and abuse thereof, of Italian institutions, especially the church. This is, as far as I can make out, the second giallo in  which the killer is revealed to have been a priest, after Who Saw Her Die?, which opened after principal photography had begun on this film. It seemed to open the floodgates, with many, many more religious killers appearing in future films, suggesting that Fulci (and Aldo Lado) was articulating what a lot of artistic types were thinking.

It's difficult to discern who bears more of Fulci's scorn, the townsfolk or the authority figures. It's difficult to even know if he sympathises with Patrizia, one of the nominal leads, given that she's trying to extricate herself from a world of drugs and partying, and enters the film lounging naked and (mostly) jokingly trying to seduce a child. She's certainly shown in general as possessing, for the most part, good intentions, but, then again, she's also highly foregrounded as a suspect. This could be Fulci's way of admonishing her for her licentiousness. Likewise, Andrea isn't exactly the most driven investigator; he's motivated as least as much by the thoughts of getting a scoop as by any need for justice to prevail.

And is it even justice? (Yes, it is, but I'm asking a rhetorical question here.) The children who are murdered aren't exactly cherubic innocents. They smoke, they spy on people having sex, they slag off the local simpleton for doing exactly the same thing, and they generally seem like Normal Kids. It's actually refreshing to see such a portrayal of children, which is far removed from their troubling representation in Dallamano gialli, for example. And, unless I'm very much mistaken, I believe that Fulci intended to present the children in such a realistic manner, the better to act as a mirror to highlight the flaws and vices of the grown-up characters.

What I mean by this is that the way the adult characters view, and treat, the (normal) children tells us everything about their own personae. Patrizia sees the kids as burgeoning sexual beings, and is clearly something of a sex-fiend herself. The local priest, who steadfastly ignores Patrizia's flirting, sees the kids as loci of purity and innocence, at risk of corruption from the wider, wilder world. He proudly boasts to Andrea of banning certain publications from the local newsagents, as part of a fight to protect the town from said wider world. La Maciara believed that her deceased child was the spawn of the devil, and seems to hold a similar opinion of most adolescents, showing her general superstition.

The witchcraft practised by La Maciara and her 'mentor' Francesco is apparently closely related to religion (even though the local priest doesn't seem to have any real relationship with them). This seems reflective of Fulci's wider view of religion, which he saw as hypocritical and nothing but dressed up superstition. And, even though the murdered boys haven't been sexually abused,  the film does seem to be quite prescient about the misuse of power in the church which would be exposed over the following decades. La Maciara is one such (tangential) victim of this power, having been brought to the saint-obsessed Francesco for an exorcism as a youngster. She became pregnant as a result of his rituals, eventually losing her child (whom she considered to be the spawn of Satan). Everything in her world goes back to children-she's murdered because of her supposed role in the local murders of children (the fact that the townspeople still consider her guilty because of her witchcraft also showing their own superstition and small-mindedness), she became a witch after the exorcism incident in her childhood, which led to her own deceased child. The last thing she sees is a car full of children driving by on the new motorway, a symbol of familial unity which is forever out of her reach.

​The authorities, represented by a local and regional police force who combine to tackle the murders, don't exactly come out of the film in credit either. The local policemen, while possibly being less superstitious than the average townie, are very much complicit in having allowed the insular nature of the area to flourish. They seem extremely tolerant of the mob mentality which prevails in the town, and ultimately prove clueless when attempting to solve the crime. Even the out-of-towners fare little better, being reduced to ciphers through which we get to see the strange ways of the locals.* For the first two thirds of the film the police do play a prominent role in proceedings, partly to give us an insight into the ways of the town, and partly (I reckon) because the investigative plot wasn't beefy enough to sustain more than a few minutes of Andrea and Patrizia poking around late on, so instead we're presented with the repeated failures of the po-po.

To return to Patrizia, her opening scene is worth discussing in further detail. Her behaviour towards young Bruno is certainly predatory and paedophilic in nature, but she seems to be acting more to amuse herself than possessing any designs towards actually seducing the child. It's still undeniably creepy (and a bit sexy, when it's just her on screen), and possibly does give some weight to Don Alberto's views of the wider world being corrupting; Patrizia having been born locally but reared in a big city, where she came into contact with drugs and sex and rock and/or roll. Either way, although Bruno spent his last night on earth drawing naked women on his copybook, it's not as if he wasn't a horny little kid before meeting her, so Patrizia has merely given him food/fodder for thought; she hasn't changed the course of his life irrevocably. Not like a certain religious nut does.**

The mystery is serviceable, although it clearly wasn't Fulci's main concern, with the end deductive process being hurried and stretching credulity somewhat. The fact that this is  (again, to the best of my knowledge) the second giallo to feature a priest killer would certainly have given the end reveal added punch for contemporary audiences. The film's cinematography is extremely stylish, albeit with one or two clunkily-shot dialogue scenes, but for the most part it looks gorgeous.   Fulci's economy as a director is in evidence in several shots which combine zooms with tracking, with constant reframing to keep the action moving. It's the cinematographic approach which allowed Jess Franco to be so prolific around this time, but here it's executed far more smoothly and stylishly. The soundtrack is magnificent, and Fulci's love of dogs, and use of their barks and growls to menacing aural effect, is very much in evidence.  He also uses very ballsy editing and framing to heavily hint at the identity of the killer (check out a track through the church after Bruno's mother shouts that she knows the killer is there), presumably banking on the audience's reverence for the church to preclude them from having any suspicions towards it. 

Fulci's extreme lack of such reverence, also evident in The Eroticist and Beatrice Cenci, drives this film. It's a powerful film borne of powerful feelings, and one that anyone who dismissed him as a gore-obsessed hack should be made to watch on repeat, until they can't take it any more and throw themselves off the nearest electrified cliff. Or until they admit they were wrong, whichever.

*There's also a strange interaction where the head of the investigation, upon being told that La Maciara's child was rumoured to have "lived for a couple of years... kept hidden away, because it was the son of the devil," responds by saying, seemingly without irony, "a natural assumption." I think the line reading may have been deficient here, otherwise the implication is that the sophisticated big city policemen are just as susceptible to superstitious nonsense as the locals.