best movie i've ever seen.

As Good As It Gets

There are better movies of two hours length. I loved the actress'performance.

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

What Have They Done to Your Daughters? (1974) *** (out of 4)A teenage girl commits suicide and at first the two inspectors (Claudio Cassinelli, Giovanna Ralli) think it's just a random case but soon more bodies begin to appear. After questioning a peeping tom the police learn that there's a group of teenage girls being kidnapped for a prostitution ring and a maniac on a motorcycle willing to kill to keep it a secret.This is the second film in the "schoolgirls in peril" giallo series, which started with WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO SOLANGE? Both that film and this one were directed by Massimo Dallamano but whereas the first went for a good classic mystery, this second film is pure exploitation and offers up plenty of nudity and some graphic death scenes. This film certainly isn't a masterpiece but it's slightly entertaining.The best thing the film has going for it is the direction, which includes one terrific sequence inside a parking garage where one of our inspectors is stalked by the maniac dressed in black. The entire sequence is well-directed and really contains some nice tension. The film also benefits from its rather naughty story-line and there's no question that it has a rather perverted feel for the teenage girls and the prostitution ring.The film also benefits from a nice cast who certainly help keep the picture moving. This includes Ralli as the female investigator as well as a supporting bit by Farley Granger as a victim's father. The cinematography is quite good throughout and we're also given a nice score.WHAT HAVE THEY DONE TO YOUR DAUGHTERS? is a rather sleazy entry in the giallo genre and while the mystery isn't the greatest ever written, there's enough here to make it worth watching.

As is probably obvious by the lurid title, Massimo Dallamano returns to the same teenagers in peril themes he explored two years earlier in his giallo What Have You Done to Solange. Only this time around the focus is more on the police procedure than the blood and sleaze that is associated with the giallo. What remains the same though is the classy visual style and the mystery aspect.The discovery of a young girl hanged in a run-down attic leads the police to an underground prostitution ring. The story lacks the myriad red herrings of the giallo but it retained suspense and mystery well enough to keep me glued on the screen. Dallamano however throws a black-clad killer in the mix and punctuates this police proceedural with a couple of very well done gore scenes (hand decapitation, machete in the head, screwdriver in the belly; take your pick). As a testament to Dallamano's style, the killer is always shot close-up with wide-angle lenses that adds a reality distortion of sorts.Add to that a sterling score by Cipriani that is equal parts suspenseful and subtle and some well handled action scenes and car chases in the poliziottescho mold (although it lacks the rampant energy of one, so I wouldn't classify it as such) and here you have a movie that is definitely worth the time of ANY fan of 70's Italian crime cinema. I shouldn't forget to mention that the copy I saw had surprisingly good dubbing too.

The lifeless body of an attractive teen girl is found in a dusty attic. She's hung and everything points in the direction of a suicide. Closer investigations, however, points out that the girl has been murdered elsewhere before dragged into the attic. The discovery of the corpse slowly unravels a network of teen-prostitution in which several eminent civilians are involved. This hardens the police investigation while the killer (on a motorcycle and carrying an authentic butcher knife) is still on the loose. `What Have They Done to Our Daughters' is kind of like a sequel to `Solange' (or fully entitled: What have you done to Solange'). The stories don't follow each other but they handle about similar events: young schoolgirls caught in a web of unsettling and sleazy affairs. Both films are above average gialli, with an incredibly high tension-level and killer musical scores. Even though `Solange' upholds the mystery longer and more efficiently, this film contains a little more action. Best example to state this is the extended police car versus motorcycle chase through the beautiful streets of Italy. The budgets, however, are low so don't expect blood-soaked murders like the ones featuring in Dario Argento gialli.

From the director of the excellent what have you done to Solange, Massimo Dallamano, here is a strange Italian giallo, more a police procedural (an a really lurid tale, a ring of teens used as prostitutes by people in very high places - that was the time, in Italy, when several directors and scripwriters tried their hands on very hot subjects, like this one) than an Argentian thriller (but it is scary enough in a few places and also very gory). It starts with the false suicide of a very young girl, hanged nude under a roof and then proceeds with a lot of cars and bikes chases (the killer is always covered by a motorcycle helmet until the very end - it is possible that the director of Night School took from here the idea of the killer masked with an helmet), almost always running without pauses. Tense and scary enough, good almost till the end (a lot too Dillenger for my tastes).