Death Walks on High Heels

A solid and well-balanced murder mystery. Relatively good pacing and the twists key you guessing.

After a strong opening murder, it loses momentum quickly. Than it makes the mistake to kill of one protagonist and hospitalize the other half way into the movie, leaving it without an audience proxy. With too many characters and twists the plot becomes loose in the second half. Its only near the end after some revelations about a secondary character that connects the movie to the opening again, it regained my interest. The two likable inspectors are the best part of the the second half.

Fun take on the giallo format. The mystery of the jewels really takes over the second half of the film... Not necessarily in a good way, felt like starting the beginning of a 2nd film more than a 2nd half of a film. Plenty of naked women, red herrings, black gloves, twists and giallo tropes throughout.

Shares a lot of same crew with Ercoli's "Forbidden.." but I felt this was a step down. It's overly complicated and the heist backstory is not as intriguing. It's also at least 15 min too long. That said, there's one especially gory murder to spice things up and the English seaside setting is rare for the genre. It's fun to see Scott elevated to leading lady while Wolff and Andreu provide solid support. Cipriani's score is OK, but more like a Gialli mixtape than anything particularly memorable.

DWoHH is divided into two unequal parts. First hour is a quite senseless, trashy, and rude peeping show where the director Ercoli fetishisizes his wife Susan Scott. Sounds good but is in fact a bit uncomfortable to watch. The last 30 minutes or so is more of a generic whodunnit with red herrings and light visual humour - not anything great but it does feel refreshing after what came before. Ercoli lacks focus and a vison of what he is doing here. He wanted to direct films and here he directs.