What Have They Done to Your Daughters?

source: What Have They Done to Your Daughters?

La polizia chiede aiuto

Though the film's innocent, optimistic music score, serving it's title, which I really favor, will be one which will stay in my head, this Italian exploitation crime drama doesn't fare too badly, if not for a crappy and simple ending. It is a stylized effort, bursting with some nice graphic shock gore here and there, and a cool, anger driven cop character, heralding it. A full masked psycho on a motorbike, is the responsible killing hand, to a first initially thought suicide of a young girl, caught up in a schoolgirl prostitution ring, involving many a high up party of clientele. A great car/bike chase through the paved streets of our Italian city, some shock scare moments, some T and A and some kinky pimp talk via secret tape recordings, doesn't amount to a compact drama, where this one falls short, especially in the thriller, construction stakes. And yet again, we're still haunted by that music score. Cool frank movie poster, not the one illustrated on this IMDB page. 6.5/10

From the director of the excellent what have you done to Solange, Massimo Dallamano, here is a strange Italian giallo, more a police procedural (an a really lurid tale, a ring of teens used as prostitutes by people in very high places - that was the time, in Italy, when several directors and scripwriters tried their hands on very hot subjects, like this one) than an Argentian thriller (but it is scary enough in a few places and also very gory). It starts with the false suicide of a very young girl, hanged * under a roof and then proceeds with a lot of cars and bikes chases (the killer is always covered by a motorcycle helmet until the very end - it is possible that the director of Night School took from here the idea of the killer masked with an helmet), almost always running without pauses. Tense and scary enough, good almost till the end (a lot too Dillenger for my tastes).

Second in Dallamano's schoolgirls-getting-killed trilogy, it's not as good as Who's Next? (Solange) but not bad in its own right. The killer is someone who rides a motorino (hey, it is Italy!) and never takes off his/her riding helmet, ala Magnum Force, the 2nd Dirty Harry film. This one's more exciting than scary, as the police hunt down this maniac. He's one of the cooler villains in film history though, because unlike the traditional drag-ass killer, this guy never speaks and just RUNS at you with a machete. He really SPRINTS at top speed, which is actually very scary, especially to a jaded horror buff used to the Michael Myers/Jason/zombie method of ambling on over to their victims, who usually have to trip in order to be caught. And there's one scene involving a light switch that will make you jump out of your undies. Stelvio Cipriani's score is again top-notch (he later reused part of it for Tentacles), the dubbing tolerable.

Massimo Dallamano, the director of the excellent giallo WHAT HAVE THEY DONE TO SOLANGE?, is also behind this similar follow-up which takes more of a police procedural approach to the proceedings. It's inviting, involving stuff, taking a sleazy plotline and giving it a classy approach with an excellent soundtrack and cinematography, alongside a cast of seasoned Italian cast members who give it their all (Claudio Cassinelli and Giovanna Ralli make a good pairing and Mario Adorf is always great fun). The film isn't overtly gory, but there are the usual shocking moments, lots of disturbing bits, and at least one great chase sequence. The ending is as pessimistic as they come.