In the wake of the success of Dario Argento's ground-breaking giallo "The Bird with the Crystal Plumage", numerous other directors stepped forward to try their hand at these lurid murder-mysteries. At the forefront was Sergio Martino (The Strange Vice of Mrs Wardh, Torso), whose sensual 70s thrillers starring Edwige Fenech and George Hilton are widely celebrated as some of the best the genre has to offer.
The final of Martino's six gialli, The Suspicious Death of a Minor combines conventional giallo trappings with elements of the then flourishing 'poliziotteschi' crime thrillers.
Claudio Cassinelli (What Have They Done to Your Daughters?) stars as undercover cop Paolo Germi, on the trail of a Milanese criminal outfit following the brutal murder of an underage prostitute. But a killer-for-hire is also on the prowl, bumping off witnesses before they have a chance to talk...
Also starring Mel Ferrer (Nightmare City), Barbara Magnolfi (Suspiria) and Jenny Tamburi (The Psychic), and featuring a script by veteran giallo writer Ernesto Gastaldi (All the Colours of the Dark, Death Walks at Midnight), this unique and lesser-known entry in Martino's filmography serves as an essential link between two different movements in Italian popular cinema.
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Death Walks at Midnight
Valentina - a model who, in the midst of a drug-fuelled photoshoot, witnesses a brutal murder in the apartment opposite hers. But when it becomes clear that the savage slaying she describes relates to a crime that took place six months earlier, the police are at a loss - forcing Valentina to solv...
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Death Walks on High Heels
In Death Walks on High Heels (1971), exotic dancer Nicole (Navarro), the daughter of a murdered jewel thief, finds herself terrorised by a black-clad assailant determined on procuring her father's stolen gems. Fleeing Paris and her knife-wielding pursuer, Nicole arrives in London only to discover...
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The Bloodstained Butterfly
When a young female student is savagely killed in a park during a thunderstorm, the culprit seems obvious: her lover. The evidence against him is damning... but is it all too convenient? And when the killer strikes again while Marchi is in custody, it quickly becomes apparent that there's more to...
