Tied for the best movie I have ever seen

Sadly Over-hyped

It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Notable actors: Carroll Baker! Jean Sorel!I'm required by law to explain that the alternative title for this film is Paranoia, but that is the real title of Lenzi's other Giallo, Orgazmo, and that there's another Umberto Lenzi film called An Ideal Place to Kill too. Also, at least four Umberto Lenzi gialli star Carroll Baker, and additionally they are all generally of the 'bunch of people scheming against each other' plots rather than 'someone carving up Euro-babes' variety. Got that?*Absolute silence from the rest of the Universe*Right. This one starts off with Carroll Baker as a racing car driver who has some sort of brain fart while driving and ends up in hospital. Once discharged, she finds that she's been invited to the big fancy house of ex-husband/complete jerk playboy shag machine Jean Sorel, who previously mooched all of her money. Being a character in a film, she doesn't just throw the invite in the bin, but instead immediately packs her bags and drives off there.Once there, Carroll realises that Jean has remarried an extremely rich lady who owns oil fields. It also turns out that this lady is the one who sent the invite - but for what reason? To play footsie with her under the table while Jean is doing the same thing? This lady, Constance, wants to be Carroll's new special friend, but is it for the usual giallo reasons (i.e slow motion lesbian sex scene)? Much discussion of how men are bastards ensues. It's hard to write about these films without revealing the entire plot, and the twists are the highlights of the film, so let's be as vague as possible. There may or may not be a murder halfway through the film but a tremendous amount of obstacles suddenly present themselves that the killer (or killers) that they have to surmount to avoid being caught (that's if they murdered anyone, which they might have). Someone with a film camera may or may not have unwittingly filmed the murder which possibly leads to a hypothetical scene where everyone involved has to watch the film, plus there might even be the sudden appearance of someone else later in the film to throw a spanner in the works. Or perhaps not. What I will reveal is that Umberto Lenzi further cements his position as the top animal killer of Italian cinema by having a scene set at a pigeon shooting club. It isn't enough that the guy would go out of his way to kill animals in his cannibal films, but here's a giallo that racks up a few pigeon deaths for the sake of a film. LEEENNNNZZZIIIII!!!!!Just like his other late sixties Gialli, Lenzi has the whole film look amazing, keeps the camera angles fresh, but reigns in the psychedelics. He does include the old 'dancing in the club' scene that's a favourite from this particular era, including a band who wouldn't have looked out of place in the early nineties! Slow to start, but as usual Lenzi proves he can tell the same story, with the same actors, a different way, and have everything and everyone look like an ad for a holiday villa.And that's it - that's all the Carroll Baker gialli watched too, with the exception of some obscure psuedo-giallo called The Body from 1974. Carroll would later go on to star as the pushy mother of the bad guy in Big Arnie's Kindergarten Cop!

Another splendid gialli from the master of sexual intrigue Umberto Lenzi. Many say that this is inferior to his 'Orgasmo' (1969) but it many ways I find it to be of equal merit. Righteous lounge-core soundtrack and another winning performance from one of the true divas of gialli, Carrol Baker. Yet again, Baker suffers at the hands of a scheming; cock sure male; this time a particularly suave and dashing Marc Porel; a man seemingly born to wear pastel v-neck sweaters. His preference for Val Donican's wardrobe does little to mute his excellent performance as a Machiavellian, libidinous, uber-playboy, which is exemplary; making the twist-laden 'a quiet place to kill' a must see for Lenzi-Gialli-Baker fans.

To begin with, when I acquired this, I was under the impression it'd be the 1969 Lenzi/Carroll Baker giallo released in English-speaking countries as PARANOIA and originally given the lurid title ORGASMO; I watched that film, which was quite decent (and had a jaw-dropping final twist, to boot), during the 2004 Venice Film Festival – with the genial elderly director in attendance! This one, then, was released in Italy as PARANOIA and, to confuse matters even more, its English title was very similar to the director's follow-up effort (and which I'll get to presently), UN POSTO IDEALE PER UCCIDERE – translating to AN IDEAL PLACE TO KILL – which was itself retitled OASIS OF FEAR for export purposes! For the record, Lenzi made eight giallos in all: none would perhaps rank among the genre's finest offerings – though, with this, I'm only half-way through them (having checked out KNIFE OF ICE [1972] and SPASMO [1974] as well, the latter also at Venice as part of a night-long marathon!). Anyway, the film turned out to be something of a disappointment: the plot recalls Henri Georges Clouzot's classic DIABOLIQUE (1955) but, given rather indifferent treatment, it's not particularly engaging in this case. Incidentally, both stars – Carroll Baker again and Jean Sorel – would appear in a number of giallos over the years: the two, in fact, had already made THE SWEET BODY OF DEBORAH (1968) together and, while the former would make four for Lenzi alone, the latter appeared (among others) in two of Lucio Fulci's best films…one of which, ONE ON TOP OF THE OTHER aka PERVERSION STORY (1969), was also partly inspired by the aforementioned Clouzot thriller! Perhaps the most determining factors in PARANOIA's lack of stature are its positively underwhelming credentials (the film is an Italian/French/Spanish co-production); that said, the glossy look – particularly in the beautiful widescreen print I viewed – and Gregorio Garcia Segura's bouncy lounge score easily emerge as its most pleasing (and durable) assets.After a fairly dreary first half, the narrative gets pretty complicated, though the many plot twists aren't exactly surprising: one I liked, however, was when the scheme of playboy Sorel's two wives to get rid of him backfires, he's quick to take matters into his own hands and dispose of the current spouse (which would leave him tremendously wealthy) there and then! Even so, a third woman enters the picture soon after – the daughter of the deceased (gorgeous if perennially sullen Marina Coffa) who, then, conspires with him to oust his ex (Baker) by elaborately framing her for Sorel's 'murder'! The frenzied climax, in fact, sees the distraught heroine's car plunging from a cliff (she's being chased by the police when Sorel's phantom suddenly 'haunts' her) – but Baker has the last laugh after all as, in the search to find his 'missing' body, the corpse of Sorel's second bride literally turns up to incriminate him! Mind you, the film's still quite watchable – as much for the reasons already stated as for Baker's frequent nude scenes

Welcome to Umberto Lenzi's early 70's giallo/crime thriller "Paranoia" starring the unearthly beautiful Carroll Baker… Hey, wait a minute, haven't I watched and reviewed this movie a couple of days ago already? Oh right, that was the OTHER Umberto Lenzi early 70's giallo/crime thriller "Paranoia" starring the unearthly beautiful Carroll Baker, more commonly known as "Orgasmo". Confusing? Well, maybe a little, but rest assured these are two entirely different movies of which the stories & characters aren't linked to each other at all. The other "Paranoia" is also far superior to this one. That particular movie had tons of suspense, likable characters and convoluted plot-twists whereas this one is painfully boring. This film features TWO worthwhile scenes, both involving wild car accidents, one at the beginning and one at the end and everything in between is one gigantically uninteresting, predictable and overlong love-triangle between three characters. It all starts with Mrs. Baker stars as a rather free-spirited race car pilot who crash-parks her car on the circuit and ends up slightly wounded in a hospital. During her period of recovery, she accepts to stay at her ex-husband and his new wife's mansion. Two attractive women and one incomprehensibly handsome guy (really, Jean Sorel is way too good-looking!) in one house can only result in extended sequences of sexual intrigue, double-crossing and conspiracies to murder. It's all a lot less exciting than it sounds and only the good acting performances keep it endurable. The filming locations and music are stylish, but that's not enough in this case. Easily the most disappointing Lenzi-film I've seen thus far.