The Police Are Blundering in the Dark is a 1975 giallo film. For writer and director Helia Colombo, and for a majority of the cast, it is their only known film credit.
When his female friend Enrichetta becomes the latest in a series of beautiful women to disappear from the countryside near Rome, journalist Giorgio D’Amato investigates. He finds a connection to the villa of Edmondo Parrisi, a wheelchair-using photographer for whom Enrichetta modeled on the night she disappeared. Further investigation reveals that the villa’s inhabitants and guests conceal a host of secrets - the most surprising of which is Edmondo’s invention of a device that photographs human thoughts.
The Police Are Blundering in the Dark contains examples of:
- After-Action Villain Analysis: After the killer is stopped, his history is explained: He was a brilliant surgeon whose life turned upside-down when he suffered an attack of mental illness during an operation on his wife, which killed her. As a result, he changed his name and moved elsewhere to start a new life. How this might relate to his pattern of killings, however, is not explained at all.
- All Abusers Are Male: Averted. Eleonora has been sexually abusing Edmondo’s niece for some time, out of her anger at him. Also, while it is the mentally challenged man who accosts Lucia and begins undressing her, her choice to have sex with him is Questionable Consent considering his impaired intelligence.
- Amateur Sleuth: Giorgio, trying to locate Enrichetta.
- Book Ends:
- The title quote - see Title Drop.
- Just before the killer claims his first on-screen victim, she screams for help to the driver of an agricultural machine, but there’s no sign he hears her. At the movie’s climax, the murderer dies by falling into the path of a similar machine.
- Clueless Mystery: To an extreme. Giorgio and Alberto may uncover some dark secrets - but none of them relate to the killer’s identity or motive.
- Epigraph: Just before the end credits. “Mankind differs from beasts for an incurable evil: intelligence.”
- Extreme Libido: Lucia the maid craves carnal satisfaction - at times resembling a drug addict craving a fix. It turns out to be “erotomania”, as diagnosed by the doctors who hospitalized her for such issues in the past.
- I Never Said It Was Poison: When Edmondo confronts the killer, the killer actually turns the accusation around, purporting to believe that the accuser is actually the one whose psychosis drove them to murder. However, which of them is the true killer becomes clear: they know what happened to the bodies, which no one except the killer does.
- The Meddling Kids Are Useless: The murderer is uncovered, not by the police, not by amateur investigation, but because Edmondo tested out his thought-photographing device on his dinner guests, without their knowledge.
- Private Detective: Alberto, but no one hired him to investigate. He simply thought solving the mystery would invigorate his private-detective business.
- Throwing Off the Disability: Averted. In a rage over Eleonora’s actions, Edmondo grabs up a knife, rises from his wheelchair, and makes it only a few steps before crashing helplessly to the floor.
- Title Drop: Early in the movie, Alberto reads a newspaper headline about the missing photo-models; the sub-head announces “La polizia brancola nel buio” (the police are blundering in the dark). Alberto repeats this at the end of the movie, explaining why he started his own investigation.
