These two posters were made to promote the Italian crime flick Gli occhi freddi della paura, aka Cold Eyes of Fear, which premiered today in 1971. Plotwise, somewhere in the noctural heart of London—though the movie was actually shot at Cinecittà Studios in Rome except for some exteriors—an ex-con plans to make a judge pay bigtime for convicting and sending him to jail. Along with two henchmen he’s taken over the judge’s house in order to rob him of incriminating papers, which will expose a frame-up, and justify His Lordship being bloodily murdered.
The only problem is that, despite presumed years of hate-hardened planning forged in the white hot crucible of supermax somewhere, His Lordship isn’t home. Instead, the judge’s nephew ends up trapped inside with the criminals because he wanted to use his uncle’s swanky house as place to get laid, and now stands in the way of sweet retribution. It seems like a failure of planning on the part of the criminals, if you ask us, but what can you do? Improvise, of course.
We could get into the second half of the plot here, but we’ll just say that Italian crime movies were often convoluted (see: giallo) so we were surprised how straightforward this flick was. We could also get into the cast, but that’s what the keywords at bottom are for. The only participants that matter to us are the lovely Giovanna Ralli as the nephew’s hired hooker who’s in the wrong place at the wrong time, and Karin Schubert, who isn’t in the movie for long but deserves mention just because she’s Schubert. As housebound thillers go, with various parties trying to outmaneuver each other in a confined setting, Gli occhi freddi della paura isn’t bad.
