December 27 2025, 21:25
Death Walks at Midnight
Director: Luciano Ercoli
Release year: 1972
On the surface, this had everything I love in a film. It’s a mystery set in a European city, in the world of fashion, nightclubs, parties, with artists as lovers, eccentric minor characters galore, murder with a weirdly brutal weapon... it could be perfect. None of this matters if the pacing is off, the dialogue is dull, and there’s no character development.
Valentina is a freelance model making a living from her looks and good reputation. She decides to take part in a scientific experiment with a new hallucinogenic drug, and whilst high has a vision of a woman being brutally killed by a man wearing a spiked metal glove. The experiment is a tabloid stitch-up, and on publication of the story she loses work because of the drug use, and worse, the killer is real and needs to kill her before she identifies him by name.
I loved Valentina. She’s smart, confident, money-focussed, resourceful and beautiful. The men in her life seem to be symptomatic of the times—sexist, entitled and rude—but she holds her own with them. There’s a running theme of women not being believed and powerful men locking them away. There are plenty of cliché characters. It’s so frustrating. And the final ten minutes becomes an extended fight and chase scene on a rooftop that reminded me strongly of Dario Argento’s The Cat o’ Nine Tails from the year before.
It’s derivative and lazy, but I had fun with Nieves Navarro as Valentina, and I’m a sucker for artist’s studio and gallery scenes. There just isn’t much art or artists in modern thrillers. Italian gialli celebrated art and the artist. It adds a layer to the mysteries that I find charming and stimulating.
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