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A violent argument comes from the discovery of a wife’s infidelity and the husband, Nicola, is soon suspected of murder when the woman ends up very dead at the hands of a black-gloved assailant. Nicola storms out of the flat after assaulting his wife when their loud name calling leads to physical abuse and causes the woman to stab him in the hand with an ice pick. Inspector Piero Terzi (the always welcome Paolo Malco) likes the detective with a drinking problem and a violent streak for the murder and he enlists the help of a psychological profiler to aid in proving the man’s guilt. The profiler, Anna Berardi is not convinced of Nicola’s guilt (she knows the man and loved him in the past and she doesn’t believe he has it in him. He’s also already come to her begging for her help.) and thinks that a supposedly dead serial murderer may not have perished in a fire some eight years ago. The inspector highly doubts a ghost could be behind these murders but a growing body count and a twist or two keep him on his toes. Things best get figured out soon because Inspector Terzi’s daughter (and Anna’s student) becomes a target after Berardi shares her suspicions with her students. The killer with an ice pick is also keeping busy with the attractive female population in between stalking targets of with character relevance. Familiar faces abound throughout Lamberto Bava’s perfectly adequate giallo that lacks the splatter one would expect from an Italian 80s genre picture and relies more on the mystery befuddling our heroes. I don’t know if I’m just softening in my old age, but I’ll take that trade even if it doesn’t make for an exactly thrilling time.
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