What Have They Done?

This week I took a shot in the dark and watched:

What Have They Done To Your Daughters? (1974)

Co-written and directed by Massimo Dallamano, this movie is labeled as a Giallo and Poliziotteschi combination. Personally I think the Giallo part is fairly minimal, and only really comes to play with a killer in black biker leathers, but technically the terminology stands.

What Have They Done To Your Daughters? opens with the police finding a young girl that has hanged herself. What puzzles the police is that she is completely naked. Inspector Silvestri (Claudio Cassinelli) is on the case together with assistant district attorney Stori (Giovanna Ralli). Soon they discover a sordid prostitution ring that pimps out teenaged school girls to rich old men. The biker in black runs around with a meat cleaver killing, and little by little, the case gets darker and more dangerous until certain unpleasant realities leads to a grim ending.

The subject matter is of course really unpleasant, but the movie handles it well. There is nothing seductive about any of it, not even the brief scenes of nudity that are scattered around the film. Speaking of nudity, the hanged body in the beginning is clearly a puppet, and a badly made one at that. I thought at first that they went with a prop to spare the characters actress, but she shows up in a flashback scene completely nude anyway, so I don't get the bad prop. There are many ways of faking a hanging without endangering the actor.

The director, Dallamano, has twelve directing credits on IMDB and 45 cinematographer credits so it is clear where his expertise lay. That's not to say that there is anything wrong with his direction, but that the entire movie has the look of someone who really knows and cares about cinematography. There are so many great scenes in What Have They Done To Your Daughters? that it becomes pointless to try listing them.

The actors are all really good, being mostly veterans. They know what they're doing and I have zero complaints on that score. The score is fine, and the effects are excellent. Speaking of effects, there isn't all that much gore here, but when it shows up it is There with a capital T. Because the blood is used sparingly, it becomes more shocking, which is nice.

What I found most enjoyable about What Have They Done To Your Daughters? is that I couldn't predict this movie at all. At this point I have seen a lot of both Gialli and Poliziotteschi movies and they, like so many genres, tend towards certain patterns. What Have They Done To Your Daughters? doesn't outright break the rules, but it circumvents a few of them very nicely. What is also really nice is that the villains, the people running the teens, make mistakes. They screw up and that is a refreshing experience. The tendency is to portray the people running conspiracies as infallible. Not so here, and on top of that, the cops are very competent.

So, do I recommend this movie? Oh yes, definitely! Despite the vile subject matter, What Have They Done To Your Daughters? is a top notch thriller that doesn't shy away from the nastiness but also doesn't glorify it. Thriller fans of all kinds should have a good time here, not just Gialli lovers. The movie hints at being based on a true story or at least based on similar events in real life. I don't know about that, but it does add an extra layer of grime on top of the existing slime.

That's that and all that. Join me again next time, and until then, have a great week!