MovieChat Forums > L'iguana dalla lingua di fuoco (1971) Discussion > Underwhelming curio

Underwhelming curio

posted a month ago by DoctorThirteen (14182)
3 replies | jump to latest

Italian/French/West German co-production, directed by Riccardo Freda, and starring Anton Diffring, Luigi Pistilli, and Dagmar Lassander. When two women connected with the Swiss Ambassador to Ireland (Diffring) are found murdered in Dublin, the police investigation is hampered by the Ambassador invoking his right of Diplomatic Immunity. To try to get round this the senior investigating officer unofficially recruits the services of retired 'loose cannon' cop John Norton (Pistilli). But as Norton attempts to unravel the truth (including forming a romantic relationship with the Ambassador's daughter (Lassander)) there are further murders which hint at the possibility of more than one killer and more than one hidden agenda.

Unusually, this giallo is largely set in Dublin. Even more unusually, it was actually filmed there. Anyone who's visited the Republic of Ireland knows it has spectacular coastal scenery, and the movie certainly makes use of that. The cast are pretty good (Diffring is his usual excellent, cold, condescending b@stard) and the basic idea is okay. The drawback is that the finer details are confusing as hell (I watched a video essay on the film afterwards and was relieved to see I'm not the only one who thinks so). It really is a tangled mess. Even when all is revealed at the end (largely by way of an exposition dump from Diffring), it's still a muddle. In fact Freda was so unhappy with the finished film he had his name replaced with the pseudonym 'Willy Pareto' (Freda also apparently wanted Roger Moore for the detective role; I really don't see any way Moore would have taken this).

The unusual setting and Diffring make this worth at least one watch (I don't see me ever revisiting it). There's a fair bit of blood and gore, violence and nudity. 5.5/10.

[–] agentalbert (3130) 5 days ago

I can't really disagree with anything you say here. The movie is confusing and some of the effects work is so poor as to really be distracting. You can get away with things like that in a good movie like Don't Torture A Duckling. But the ridiculous bald cap you see in the final sequence is so bad it's just laughable. I think the character I liked most was the ambassador's wife played by Valentina Cortese. She was fun, especially in the scene where she's flirting with Luigi Pistilli's character. I wish there were more of her.

When it ended, I wasn't sure how it was that the detective knew that it was the ambassador who killed the first two women. Why wasn't this the step-son? Wasn't his motive to torment his hated stepfather the ambassador?

All these years later there are characters that are still not credited at all. Who plays Norton's daughter? Who plays the woman (in the unconvincing wig) that is murdered in the opening scene?

[–] agentalbert (3130) 5 days ago

My favorite line in this was when the inspector says to the ambassador, "The use of vitriol suggests the hands of a woman...or a colored person". Ha! Gotta love 70's dialog!

Though I didn't realize at first that they're using "vitriol" as a synonym for acid, or it's a kind of acid. I thought they just meant as in vitriolic, or with malice.

The info (in the commentary) about the Swastika Laundry was interesting as well.

[–] DoctorThirteen (14182) 4 days ago

The swastika was hilarious, given that Diffring's known for playing Nazis.