In short: Web of Violence (1966)

Original title: 3 notti violente

Walter (Brett Halsey), has lost his job as a journalist because he tended to dig a bit deeper than politically wanted. As the film shows it, this has turned him into a bit of mope, driving his girlfriend Lisa (Irán Eory) into the arms of rich and rather old Dr. Fassi (Julio Peña).

Walter does get out of his mope zone when Lisa suddenly disappears without a trace, and he learns that she was trying to contact him directly before. The shock clearly lets his old newshound instincts kick in again. Soon, he and Lisa’s best friend Christina (Margaret Lee) – of course madly in love with Walter and often acting so suspiciously she just has to be innocent – have to make their way through various mysteries and secrets surrounding Lisa’s hidden life. On the way, they encounter suspicious cops, mysterious horse-faced guys, feuding gangsters, and a secret drug running mastermind.

I have seen Nick Nostro’s mid-60s termed a giallo, but unless you feel the need to identify every Italian thriller with an amateur detective as one, I don’t see much use in that genre term applied to this film. This is really a rather straightforward Eurocrime thriller that mostly uses the more traditional mystery elements in its plots to get its main character into trouble. Aesthetically, it isn’t giallo-esque at all. Nostro mostly prefers more straightforward techniques, juggling merry 60s style action scenes – a particularly simple yet fine car chase being a stand-out – and Walter’s investigations rather well, and then add a touch of post-Hitchcockian suspense via certain sense of paranoia where really nobody seems completely trustworthy. The film is really rather good at creating a bunch of suspicious pulp characters for Walter to drift between, leading our hero not just from one fun and exciting situation to the other but also from one memorable (if not spectacularly so) side character to the next.

It’s all very good fun. Halsey sells the moping as well the two-fistedness of our hero, not turning him into an unconquerable hero, but a man driven by genuine emotion, sometimes desperate, sometimes angry. Which is rather more than you usually get from the protagonist in films like this.

All of this adds up to a fine little addition to its genre, and a pleasant surprise on a rainy Sunday morning.