Wonderful character development!

Just perfect...

everything you have heard about this movie is true.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

Art expert Ray Fontaine (George Sanders) and his assistant Karen Williams (Shirley Jones) travel to the Amalfi villa of Count Paolo Barbarelli (Rossano Brazzi) to appraise his collection and the unworldly Karen soon begins to fall for the suave Count's Continental charm. Unfortunately for their budding romance, Paolo's got a jealous mistress who doesn't want to be discarded and a crazy daughter who insists she's his wife. Obviously someone's lying about something but for what dark purpose?Troy Haworth's new book on the Italian giallo, SO DEADLY SO PERVERSE, contains an entry for this film but Adrian Luther Smith's "giallo bible", BLOOD & BLACK LACE: THE DEFINITIVE GUIDE TO Italian SEX AND HORROR MOVIES, doesn't so is it or isn't it? Well, like Mario Bava's THE GIRL WHO KNEW TOO MUCH, it's got an American abroad free-falling into a vortex of mystery, intrigue, and murder but that alone shouldn't be its only qualification. If it were, then why isn't Doris Day's MIDNIGHT LACE or Jean Seberg's MOMENT TO MOMENT considered gialli as well since they also use European locations as a scenic backdrop for a "Hitchcock Lite" mystery from an American director using actors just past the cusp of their Hollywood stardom. As entertainment, DARK PURPOSE is the weakest of the three and capitalizes on Rossano Brazzi's SUMMERTIME romancing of tourist Katharine Hepburn but with completely different results this time out.Despite an Oscar, Shirley Jones isn't much of an actress but handles her "lady in peril" role as well as can be expected and George Sanders has little to do besides wander around the villa dispensing caustic comments. Sophisticated Micheline Presle is also on hand but doesn't have a whole heck of a lot of screen time, either. 6/10 ...and giallo geeks beware.

**MAJOR SPOILERS** Traveling to Naples Italy to appraise Count Paolo Barbarnelli's, Rossano Brazzi, vast and very expensive art collection the appraiser world renowned museum curator Raymond Fontaine's, George Sanders, secretary Karen Williams, Shirley Jones, is taken under the spell of the dashing and handsome, as well as a bit mysterious, Italian nobleman.In fact the first meeting between Karen and Paolo wasn't exactly that romantic with him having to call off his German Shepard guard and attack dog Gallo from tearing a terrified Karen to pieces. It later turned that the vicious Gallo wasn't the only one who was a bit overprotective of his master Count Paolo. Paolo's somewhat mentally unstable 19 year-old daughter Cora, Giorgia Moll, also had a strange and unnatural attraction towards him. So strange that she was capable of murdering anyone, like Karen, who tried to take Paolo away from her.Were, as well as Karen, are later informed by Paolo that Cora has suffered a serious head injury while skying in Switzerland two years ago. That accident, skiing head first into a tree, has caused Cora to lose her memory of everything that happened in her life up to that time!Paolo for his part wasn't really interested in starting up a love affair with Karen who was young enough to be his, like Cora, daughter. He was already involved with local boutique owner Monique Bouier, Micheline Presle,who in fact he set up, by financing, in the clothing business. It soon turns out that Karen whom the Count fell heads over heels for has two, not one, persons in his life who are out to get her for trying to take Paolo away from them: His daughter Cora and lover Monique.***SPOILER*** We first get an inkling of just what Paolo is really up to when he's spotted at a swanky Naples restaurant, that he took Karen out to dinner, by American tourists Midge and Marvin Thompson, Matailda Calnan & Charles Fawcett. Even though Paolo told Keren that his wife died on him some fifteen years ago Midge insisted that she, together with Marvin, had met him and his old lady just two years ago While they were vacationing at St. Moritz! In fact the two couples, the Thompsons and Barbrelli's, spent the entire time at St. Moritz dancing dinning and conversing with each other! So it just couldn't have been a case of mistaken identity on Midge's part in her and Marvin knowing Paolo and his late wife some 13 years after she supposedly died!Very upset Paolo, in an uncontrollable rage in his secret being discovered, rushed out of the restaurant with Karen, who's now a bit confused about his intentions with her, tagging along. It's later when, with the help of Cora, Karen discovers the Count's deep and deadly secret that he then plans to do her in! This before the truth about Paolo's secret life becomes public with him ending up being arrested for grand larceny and murder! And with his secret being exposed everything that Paolo worked connived and killed for, like his multi-million dollar art collection, is in danger of going together with him down in flames or up the river.Alone and locked in Paolo's villa with nowhere to go in order to get away from the crazed Count Karen is now not only under attack by her former lover but his vicious attack dog Gallo as well. ****ANOTHER SPOILER ALERT**** It turns out that Gallo in trying to get to Karen, as she and Count Paolo were struggling at the foot of of a water fountain, miscalculated and missed his mark! This mistake on Gallo's part turned out to be a very very lucky break for Karen but not for his master the the maniacal Count Paolo Barbarelli.

Turner Classic Movies is broadcasting this bizarrely loopy international production as "Dark Purpose." It is full of secret passages, loonies in the attic, marital deceptions, fits of hysteria and mysterious deaths -- plus some slavering dogs. The TCM print is gorgeous-looking, but, alas, the soundtrack is horrendous, rendering a good half of the film unintelligible. Wonderful locales and interiors, but abysmally ham-fisted direction by George Marshall and Vittorio Sala. Doris Hume Kilburn wrote the novel that has lifted elements of women in domestic peril from most of the genre from "Jane Eyre" through "Midnight Lace." A very nice performance by Shirley Jones is sadly undone by an over-the-top George Sanders, a poorly scripted Giorgia Moll and a lazy Rossano Brazzi.

In this American-abroad-in-peril the quite breathtakingly beautiful Shirley Jones plays a young secretary who arrives in Italy with Britton insurance agent George Sanders (noless!) to evaluate the stunning estate of Count Paolo Barbarelli (played with merit but without real imagination by Rossano Brazzi). She soon finds herself more interested in the clichéd aristocrat charms of the Count than in his art collection. However all is not as it seems, and sneaking around the house is the Counts eerie daughter, allegedly traumatized after the death of her mother in an accident a few years back. Questions mount and plot thickens as Shirley pursues a friendship with the girl, and roams around the big estate where a mystery seems hidden within the architecture it self. All in all this is an entertaining romp for those with a taste for stylish Hitchcockian thrillers of the 60's, and what it lacks in originality it makes up for in the charm of the cast, good paced direction and lavish imagery.