Who Saw Her Die? (1971)
Shameless DVD (region 2)

d. Aldo Lado; pr. Enzo Doria; scr. Francesco Barilli, Massimo D’Avak, Aldo Lado, Ruediger Von Spiess; ph. Franco Di Giacomo; m. Ennio Morricone; ed. Angelo Curi; cast. George Lazenby, Anita Strindberg, Adolfo Celi, Dominique Boschero, Peter Chatel, Nicoletta Elmi (90 mins)

Popular Italian cinema in the 1970s saw the influx of a large number of lurid, sensationalistic thrillers, known as giallo, inspired by cheap paperback crime fiction.  The paperbacks often had yellow covers, as do the new collectible series of giallo releases by Shameless DVD: including the film here under review: Who Saw Her Die? directed by Aldo Lado and starring Australian male model turned actor George Lazenby in a film he chose to do after refusing to return to the screen as James Bond after playing him in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. 

Winter; Francia; 1968.  A nurse plays with a little girl in the snow.  The girl runs into the woods to play hide and seek.  A black-gloved hand grabs the girl’s mouth, pulling her aside where the killer clubs her head with a stone.  The killer buries her in the snow, dead little redhead girl in a pink sweater.  As the nurse continues to play hide and seek, the title card asks the question: who saw her die?  After the credits, it is now four years later in Venice as the film takes up the story of father Lazenby with his daughter, about the same age as the murdered girl.  He plays with the girl, as would any father.  But there are other eyes on her: eyes that see her not as innocent play, but as lure: innocence as come-in.  This is the attraction of children to child-murderers and it is this taboo attraction that director Who Saw Her Die? examines within a context of predatory perversity.  Lazenby leaves the girl unattended as he sees a lover for a sexual encounter.  On returning, he cannot find the girl.  Blaming himself, he hurtles into a guilt-ridden investigation into the predatory masculinity that took advantage of his negligence, focusing on a lawyer suspected of child molestation.

Children are viewed through a predatory, questioning gaze throughout this movie.  Every moment of seeming innocent child play is shot through with a sinister voyeurism, probing the process of the sexual fetishization of children.  Director Aldo Lado is initially just as interested in film’s sexualization of children as he is in the plot exposition.  The way men view and touch children is under intense scrutiny in a film that stages the stalking of little girls to lulling music by veteran film composer Ennio Morricone.  Who Saw Her Die? has some intriguing glimpses into the way society considers men who molest and/or kill children and uses the stylized point of view work so prominent in giallo as a genre to dramatize the child killer’s gaze, almost obsessively in the opening third of the movie before it focuses on Lazenby’s investigation and sexual sub-plots concerning prominent people and underground bondage pornography.

Who Saw Her Die? is a frequently stylized detective-style murder story.  However, other than its murder scenes with their combination of extreme close-ups and disorienting point of view, this film is dreary.  It is competent but anonymous, finally afraid to follow through with its initially captivating concern for predatory masculinity and too cautious to be as provocative as it could be.  Sadly, unlike many of the better films from the giallo cycle, Who Saw Her Die? is entertaining without ever really taking risks.  Black-gloved, knife-wielding child-killer point of view shots set to dreamy Morricone music have automatic appeal to any true gorehound though.  Shameless DVD knows this and supply the film in a fully uncut, remastered transfer; though the DVD lacks special features beyond trailers.

Wider Screenings DVD Attractions Trailer
(courtesy of YouTube embedded video)

Wider Screenings DVD / Book Safe Purchase
(in affiliation with Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com)

  

Spaghetti Nightmare Eurosleaze