A Black Veil for Lisa
                         (aka: Sette scialli di seta gialla)
                     (UK Pal VHS on the Diplomat Label)
                                         (1975) 
                                         review by Monkeyman

This is a borderline giallo from the director of Solange and What have they done to your Daughters, in that it concentrates more on being a police procedural film than upon being an out and out giallo. One of the things that I love about many seventies Italian movies in the genre is that they quite often attracted top stars to the lead roles, and for the most part, the performances of these stars were uniformly excellent (Ray Milland, Gina Lollobrigida) and, in the case of A Black Veil for Lisa, John Mills is the actor who turns in an superb performance as Inspector Bulov of Interpol who is working in Hamburg with the local police and trying to catch the local "Mr Big" of the drug world.

Bulov cant concentrate on his work as he suspects that his young and beautiful wife Lisa (Paluzzi) is having an affair, and so he constantly telephones their house to make sure she is there, racing round in his police car if she doesnt answer the phone.

In the meantime,whenever Bulov tracks down an informant willing to speak out against the drugs baron,they are murdered by a black gloved assassin Max Lindt(Hoffman) who is on the drug lords payroll.

Bulov manages to track down Lindt due to him leaving his trademark lucky dollar at the scene of one of the crimes, but, driven mad by his own jealousy instead of arresting him he strikes a deal with him to have his wife murdered.

Needless to say, plans do not run smoothly......

Dallamano built up an strong body of work during the seventies before his untimely death in a car crash,but its fair to say that while not uninteresting, A Black Veil for Lisa is one of his lesser films (Solange being by far his best work in my opinion) However,there are still many things to admire, not least the performances of the three leads.

Mills is excellent as the bitter and twisted Bulov,while the beautiful Paluzzi convinces as Bulovs young sexpot wife. Hoffman is his usual smooth self, turning from cold blooded killer to charming ladies man effortlessy.

All in all then,another good film from Dallamano,but one that is probably not going to appear on anyones top ten list!!