Knives In

THE WEEKEND MURDERS has a more elaborate, giallo-like Italian title: CONCERTO PER PISTOLA SOLISTA, and what it is, is a fusing of the giallo to the country house cosy crime whodunnit. And it’s a comedy. Which is three genres, probably one too many for a commercially-viable mix. Like, John Landis’s INNOCENT BLOOD wasn’t ever going to replicate the success of AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON because it’s a vampire-mafia-comedy, which is too many genres. I say this as the director of a WWII-scifi-horror-spy-comedy. You should see where I live.

BUT — I really enjoyed this movie. Sergio Donati, who worked on most of Sergeo Leone’s scripts, co-wrote the ingenious and funny story. Michele Lupo directed, or overdirected. I want to see more of his stuff now (he graduated from peplums to spaghetti westerns to eurospy and caper films, with this as his only giallo) but he’s amazingly ill-served by the DVD industry. He goes mad on this one, cramming it with Dutch tilts, crash zooms, ECUs, everything he can think of, all at once. That whooshing sound is an approaching kitchen sink.

I didn’t know many in the cast, but the Scotland Yard man is Lance Percival, previous enjoyed here in DARLING LILI — Blake Edwards should have kept him on salary. The first twist is that the apparently dopey local constable turns out to be smarter than the professional, so they form a sort of Jeeves & Wooster team. Or Dangermouse and Penfold, Hong Kong Phooey and Spot, you get the idea. The one who is supposed, by class distinction, to be smart, is an idiot. He recognizes that his underling is disturbingsly smart, but can’t quite get his head around the fact that he himself is dumb.

The very good news is that Sgt. Aloisius Thorpe (!) is played by Gastone Moschin, Trintignant’s comedy fascist sidekick from THE CONFORMIST, a terrific physical actor who gets into marvelous sync with Percival’s playing, despite them acting in different languages.

The supporting cast of red herrings include some memorable grotesques, including Georgie, a superannuated schoolboy fond of staging death scenes in HAROLD AND MAUDE fashion, which so exhausts everyone that the first real murder is received with a shrug. There’s also a fun narrative device wherein, after a body is discovered in the sand bunker of a gold course in scene one, Moschin suggests to Percival that they re-enact the events leading up to this… the film proceeds into flashback and wends its way back to this point, so that we get Moschin making his suggestion a second time. At which point Percival shuts him down, saying we’re certainly not going to do anything of the sort.

As a fusion of two related genres, it actually favours the traditional country house murder mystery more, despite a splash of nudity and gore. I haven’t really seen a comic giallo that still felt like a giallo, come to think of it. Have you?

Typical. Just when I was considering a New Year’s resolution to avoid schlock and see more of the Important Works of Art I’ve neglected, along comes a really fun piece of trash and I’m weakening before I’ve even resolved.

THE WEEKEND MURDERS stars Lucia di Lammermoor; Persephone; Fanucci; Dr. Charles Livingstone; Dr. Richard Timberlane; Sergeant Mellish; and the voice of Old Fred.