The Weapon, the Hour, the Motive (1972)

Please don't spend money on this.

A Masterpiece!

A different way of telling a story

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

I will hesitate to call it a Giallo - there was only 2 murders, those two too were not that gory by Giallo standards. It's more of a investigation/polizia movie where a detective investigates murder of a church priest. While the direction is pretty good & acting quite decent, plot could contain more twists & surprises. I guessed the murderer before half of movie was over. Neverthless, its a worth watch - if nothing else than for the creepy gothic church set-up.

I liked this a lot. Bit of a confusing and strange start, a young boy in a room, a nurse with a hypodermic and all within a convent of singing nuns. And who is that guy on the motorbike getting in the way of the police? Oops, he is the police! I guess this just about qualifies as a giallo for while it doesn't have the stylish look or garish details, there are the sudden kills, the child always there mysteriously in the background, not to mention the cat and the bouncing marbles. Compelling and absorbing, this is well directed and we have to gradually piece things together as best we can to keep apace. And then there is the extraordinary scene where the priest flagellates himself for his guilt over his lovers, yes two of them. Oh and that is nothing to what we are treated to once the nuns decide to do the same - en mass! Good resolution always helps and so in summary a good yarn intelligently told and peppered with enough sex and violence to keep the most jaded giallo fan happy.

A young clergyman, Don, has had two loves, and now he chooses one of them, Julia, as his only one lover. But soon Don is found dead in the chapel. And there is a witness, Felcio, who tells almost nothing about the murder to the police. But the murderer continues to take people's lives, and finally Felcio decides to inform of the very secret of the first murder... This is a typical Giallo film with good music by Francesco De Masi. The problem is that he does better jobs in other films. Indeed almost everything about this film seems to have average quality and therefore I have almost nothing say about it. Still it can be said that the story itself, which is nether complex nor confused, has at least one interesting side. Person like the first and leading victim, Don, is immoral. And killing the immoral person is much more immoral. But not revealing those immoralities is immoral? Or is there clear distinction between killing and letting-die? Although this film as a whole is not a moralistic one its religious and/or philosophical side, which seems to support the classic claim that there can be a deductive proof that the God does not exist based upon the existence of the evil, is rather unique and therefore can be interesting.

"The Weapon, The Hour and The mobile are the 3 most important things you need to know about a murder" say Renzo Montagnani. It's also the title of this classic giallo.It's not a revolution of the genre but a classic expression of what a good suspenser must be. No crazy & wild camerawork but a genuine suspensful screenplay, with sharp dialogues & excellent, coherent and plausibles twists. Where directors such as Umberto Lenzi who rather play upon the incredible twists & turns a giallo is supposed to bring then on flashy camera angles, Francesco Mazzei choose the simple way. Discreet yet precise camera work, less murders and actors than usual but a gloomy script revolving around a priest having two affairs at the same time with two women. When he decides to stop both, he gets killed in his church. The cleverness of it all is in the way the script chooses to focus on the relationships between the characters than to elaborate murder after murder. The tensions between all of them are more visible than usual. At the same time, it also shows the private life of the detective investigating the case. Disenchanted but always professionnal, he gives some touch of humour which always hit the mark.Some scenes ar quite surreal & nightmarish as when the nuns decide to expiate the crimes the priest committed before he died. They just whip their bare back with screaming preys til they faint. Just incredible. the other FX are very effective and the murders scenes look impressive : master Carlo Rambaldi (King Kong, ET) did it again.The actors are all first rate : Renzo Montagnani proves he really can act, Eva Czemerys is always as magnetic & mysterious than in Giuseppe Bennatti's poor L'ASSASSINO HA RISERVATO NOVE POLTRONE and Bedy Moratti shows some incredible capacity to be both & strong at the same time in one single scene. Amazing actress.L'arma, l'ora, il movente is a superior giallo in quality. Sleaze addicts & euroschlockers will be disappointed but movie buffs will certainly go for this very entertairning and chilling suspenser til the very end.