If you remember my prior conclusions that all the best gialli are Italian, you might wonder whether this one is too French to qualify. But no, it is in fact fully Italian and just happens to take place in France.

We know it’s in France because it opens with a guy jumping from the Eiffel Tower. This is a little bizarre because the Eiffel Tower is just like… sitting there. It’s out in the open with no fences or lines or fees or anything, like it’s just a piece of playground equipment that you can climb on if you want. And also, even though it’s daytime, there’s almost nobody there, and our characters who are chasing the guy are left practically alone. Was this ever real? It seems implausible, but the past is sometimes weird.

So yeah, that’s the French part. As for the sex murders, we open with a woman being killed at a “massage parlor” that makes little pretense about actually being a brothel. The obvious suspect is the guy whose past behavior was so unseemly that he got himself banned from the place, who overrides the ban by paying a boatload of money, and whom we then see viciously beating the woman who turns up dead.

But he’s such an obvious suspect that he can’t in fact be the real killer. Plus, he’s quickly decapitated in an ensuing motorcycle chase, and yet the movie does not end and the murders continue, so… y’know, probably not him. (The movie makes some gestures at blaming his vengeful spirit, but one of the things about gialli is that while they sometimes hint at the supernatural, they almost never actually go there; and this movie does not.)

Overall, it’s a decent movie, but even though Paris is a great place to set a movie, I still think gialli work better in Italy. Paris is just a bit too sedate — and yes, I’m saying that about a movie where a guy jumps from the Eiffel Tower.