Death Walks on High Heels

Directed by Luciano Ercoli, this Italian giallo follows Nicole, a stripper whose father, a reformed thief, is murdered on a train, and who is then menaced by a masked assailant in black using a voice changer, because the diamonds from her father's old robbery are still missing. She flees Paris for London and a remote English village, but her pursuer follows. The film's most discussed formal feature is a rupture at its midpoint: the protagonist is removed and everything from tone to structure shifts, a Psycho like switch of lead. It has fewer murder set pieces than most of the genre, compensating with more plot twists than a mountain road and a great many red herrings. Spanish actress Nieves Navarro, who leads, was billed under the anglicized name Susan Scott in the fashion of the era, and married director Ercoli in 1972, just after the shoot. The pair made a second giallo a year later, Death Walks at Midnight, and the two films were eventually released together as Death Walks Twice. There is a dark footnote: lead actor Frank Wolff took his own life in a Rome hotel room at forty three, just twenty three days after the film's Italian release. Who it's for: Fans of 1970s giallo, intricate conspiracy plotting and Stelvio Cipriani scores. Who it's not for: Not for viewers wanting relentless violence and a high body count, since the tension here comes from the puzzle.