Nine members of a rich and dysfunctional family are enjoying their annual vacation on a small Mediterranean island when someone sabotages the boats. Left without a way to escape, the family soon begin getting killed off one by one.
Tropes found in Nine Guests for a Crime:
- Asshole Victim:
- Considering what the four men did to Charlie, it's hard to feel any sympathy for them when they meet their ends.
- Attempted Suicide: Carla has tried multiple times in the past. Her husband sees them as jokes or attempts at getting attention.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Lorenzo seems nicer than most of the family, but at the end, he reveals his true colors as a sadistic and greedy psycho who figured out the killer's identity early on. He didn't tell anyone or try to stop it because he enjoyed watching his family get killed and wanted his father's inheritance.
- Buried Alive: After being shot with guns; the still-alive Charlie is pushed into a hole and covered in sand.
- "Everybody Dies" Ending: When Carla, Elisabetta, and Lorenzo are the only ones left alive, the latter holds the two at gunpoint and forces Carla to go fetch the spark plugs for the motorboat. After getting the plugs, Carla tries to make a run for it, so Lorenzo raises his gun to fire at her, but Elisabetta tries to fight and distract him. He eventually wrestles her off, shoots her, and chases after Carla. While he's hunting for her daughter, a wounded Elisabetta manages to climb into the boat and knock over a gas cannister, spilling fuel all over the floor and essentially making a trap. After Lorenzo guns down Carla, he goes back to the boat where he fixes the motor and tries to start it, triggering the trap and dying in an explosion. A still-alive Carla watches the explosion and succumbs to her wounds. Roll credits.
- Faking the Dead: Carla killed herself off early on by pretending that someone pulled her under the water, so she could start her murders undetected.
- Gasoline Dousing: How Walter meets his end. The killer covers him in a net, tosses gas on him, and ignites the trail with a gunshot, leaving him to burn to death.
- Hand of Death: The killer wears black leather gloves, which are often the focus during the murders. They even wear them while diving.
- Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Michele is impaled through the neck with a harpoon when the killer shoots him with a spear gun.
- Malevolent Masked Man: During their first murders, the killer sports a diving mask. After that, they trade it out for a white latex or rubber mask.
- Never Found the Body: Conversed. Lorenzo figured out the killer's identity because their death was the only one where a body wasn't found.
- No Full Name Given: Everyone in the movie, actually. The family's surname is never said, so all the characters are just left with their first names.
- No Name Given: The two sailors that end up becoming the first victims.
- Off with Her Head!: Greta is found with her head severed, which comes off when Lorenzo tries to wake her up.
- Peekaboo Corpse: Charlie's corpse is hung behind a door to spook the group.
- The Reveal: Carla is the daughter of Elisabetta and the sailor that Uberto, Lorenzo, Michele, and Walter murdered twenty years ago. She is killing the family for revenge and Elisabetta is helping her by staying silent.
- Vorpal Pillow: The killer snuffs out Uberto by smothering him with a pillow as he's suffering a heart attack.
