Bezenby It comes with great relief that I can just say right here and now that Telly Savalas is the murderer in this film. It's a different kind of Giallo, and made by Alberto De Martino, which usually means there's no cause to get too excited.This one starts with actress Anne Heywood arriving in Bruges to attend dress rehearsals for her new play. At the station, she pauses to make a phone call and suddenly makes eye contact with Telly Savalas, who seems to be stalking a diplomat. Anne faints and Telly high tails it, but something's going on for sure as when Anne wakes up she can't remember anything that's happened in the previous five years! Her sister, fellow actor Thomas, and husband George are a bit put out by this, even though it happened before when her boyfriend Peter died in a car accident five years previous. Anne can't remember nothing, not even being married as she thinks Peter is still alive and is taking part in MacBeth, not Lady Godiva as the theatre group are planning. It doesn't help that Peter's sister is in charge of everything and a total bitch. Of course, Telly realises that she may have witnessed him up to no good and resolves to take her out...Alberto De Martino is a competent director whose only fault is that his films are very slowly paced. For example, the first murder in this film occurs at one hour and seven minutes into the film! On the other hand, his films always contain scenes that kind of catch you off guard, like the goat rimming bit in The Antichrist or for a better example, the parts of this film where Anne has flashbacks that present her as a mad killer, or may just be parts of a play she starred in. This is quite effective to be honest as I hadn't a clue what was going on.Kojack is pretty good in this as he seems pretty bemused by the absurdity of the situation, and even shocks when he kicks a guy to death who had merely come to ask how he was getting on with killing that diplomat. Anne and Telly get involved in a pretty good cat and mouse situation at the end which results in a nasty end for Telly, plus further ridiculous revelations that can only occur in Italian films.

Coventry There were five main reasons why "The Killer is on the Phone" stood on top of my watch list, and they all add up to each other! Number one: it's an Italian giallo! This perverted and violent type of whodunit-thriller is my favorite sub genre of horror and it's my personal mission to track down every single and most obscure installment ever made! Number two: it's an Italian giallo from the magical year 1972! They heyday of my favorite sub genre was relatively short, give or take from the mid-sixties to the mid- seventies, but the early seventies were the best years and 1972 in particular with too many brilliant gialli to list ("What have you done to Solange?", "Don't Torture a Duckling", "Who Saw Her Die?", "The Red Queen Kills Seven Times" and about fifteen more). Number three: it's an Italian giallo from the magical year 1972 and directed by Alberto De Martino! Mr. De Martino perhaps wasn't the greatest cult director from Italy, but he did courageously attempt to cash in on every trend and his movies are always massively entertaining ("The Antichrist", "Blazing Magnum", "Holocaust 2000", "The Puma Man"…). Number four: it's an Italian giallo from the magical year 1972, directed by Alberto De Martino and starring Telly Savalas! That's right, the one and only Kojak and former Ernst Stavro Blofeld makes a rare giallo appearance here! Savalas was and forever remains a monument of 70s cult cinema and here in this movie he gets to do what he does best: stand around silently and look ultimately menacing! Number five: it's an Italian giallo from the magical year 1972, directed by Alberto De Martino and starring Telly Savalas, AND entirely shot on location in my native country Belgium! Admittedly that last little detail meant the cherry on the cake for me. For some unknown reason, they shot the film in Belgium instead of Italy and it's fantastic to see familiar places pop up in a giallo, like the Ostend ferry port or this beautiful park in Bruges. Hence there also was the opportunity for Willeke Van Ammelrooy, an actress only famous in Belgium and The Netherlands thus far, to receive a bit more international recognition. Of course, considering all the above points, you'd think that I'm extremely biased and couldn't possibly write a properly objective review about "The Killer is on the Phone". Not true, in fact, because even though I'm incredibly happy that I was finally able to watch this movie, I do reckon that it's merely just a mediocre effort that probably won't even make my giallo top 50. The main shortcomings here are definitely the slow pacing, the unnecessarily complex and illogical plot and – most of all – the lack of violence and perversity. Theater actress Eleanor Lorraine spots a bald and uncanny man at a drinking fountain and faints. This was the same man who murdered her beloved husband five years ago, but because of the shock she suffers from amnesia and doesn't remember anything that happened in the past five years, including the killer's identity. The killer – Ranko Drasovic – doesn't know Eleanor's memory is gone, so he starts stalking her and plans to get rid of the witness. Meanwhile, Eleanor's surrounding also face many issues. She doesn't recognize both her new husband and her lover, and she has forgotten all her lines of the stage play that premieres the next Saturday. The script surely has a lot of potential and features a handful of great ideas, but the elaboration is poor and implausible. Eleanor suffers from a severe case of amnesia, yet everybody allows her to wander around town on her own and hold private investigations without offering her help or support. The killer has numerous of opportunities to eliminate her quickly but prefers to observe her endlessly, instead… probably just to stretch the running time. Oh, and by the way, so much for the film's title, as the killer only calls her house once and that sequence is rather irrelevant because there isn't an actual telephone conversation going on… The last 10- 15 minutes feature a few suspenseful moments and typically absurd giallo-twists, including the chase behind the theater scenes and the truth regarding her husband's death, but it's not enough to save the film. Stelvio Cipriani provides a marvelous musical score, as usual, and furthermore this film only proves that Bruges is a beautiful city; 36 years before the blockbuster hit "In Bruges" did the same.

bensonmum2 Scenes from a Murder is a fairly rare giallo that I felt fortunate to have found in a used video store. The movie stars the uber-cool Telly Savalas as a stalker. The woman he's after has amnesia and has trouble remembering simple things like where she lives or that her lover died five years previous. For whatever reason, her family and friends allow her to wander aimlessly around the city. For the first 2/3 of the movie, that's pretty much all we get – a woman with amnesia stumbling around the city with the every present Savalas close behind. It's not very exciting and not very entertaining. It's not until the final third that anything really happens. The scenes of Savalas close on the woman's heels through an abandoned sound stage are effective but account for far too little of the movie. These scenes and the final revelation keep this from being a completely wasted experience.

rundbauchdodo This Giallo by Alberto De Martino, who made a very watchable and entertaining "The Exorcist" rip-off in 1974 ("L'Anticristo" aka "The Tempter"), boosts Anne Heywood in the female lead role as a woman that suffers amnesia after she sees the killer of her husband again five years after the murder, and Telly Savalas as the cold-blooded assassin who tries to kill her before she regains her memory.The idea is nice, but De Martino's direction is a little bit too slow and, especially in the first half of the film, the flow of the scenes sometimes looks hacked up in a way, so it's difficult not to use the fast forward button on one's VCR. The second half is better and the film becomes a passable thriller, while the climax itself with the uncovering of the person who contracted the killer five years ago remains the best moment of the whole picture.All in all a mediocre, rather anemic Giallo. Savalas also acted in De Martino's mafia actioner "I Familiari delle Vittime non Saranno Avvertiti" aka "Crime Boss" aka "New Mafia Boss" of the same year, which also doesn't belong to the best films of its genre.