Amateur movie with Big budget

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

DEATH OCCURED LAST NIGHT is a low-key Italian mix of crime thriller and giallo, although, sad to say, it fails as a film in both genres. The story is about a woman with the mind of a child who is abducted and forced to work in a brothel before something even more horrendous befalls her. Her father notes her disappearance and goes on a hunt to find her, becoming increasingly unhinged as he does so. Meanwhile, the stolid police team mechnically conduct the slowest investigation ever. And slow is the word here; although the film is well shot by Duccio Tessari, the amount of incident it contains is very low and there are only one or two shocking moments. It picks up in the last ten minutes but before then it's all so cold, lifeless, and, well, a little bit boring. It's a pity, as the photography is fine and Frank Wolff makes for a decent cop protagonist; this is one of those films that needed a lot more 'oomph' for it to work.

25 year old Donatella Berzaghi (Gillian Bray) is a total babe and a nymphomaniac to boot, but also has the mind of a three year old. Of course, there are some people who see her disability as a bonus and are willing to pay to do bad things to her, which is why she is abducted and put to work in a brothel.When distraught widower Amanzio Berzaghi (Raf Vallone) realises that his precious daughter is missing, he goes to the police, who begin a city-wide search for the young woman. After the girl turns up dead, having been burnt alive, Amanzio begins his own investigation, determined to make those responsible pay for what they have done.Although labelled as a giallo by some, probably because of its typically giallo-esque title, Death Occurred Last Night is more of a poliziotteschi, with the focus on the detective work carried out by cops Duca Lamberti (Frank Wolff) and Mascaranti (Gabriele Tinti). There's a lot of dialogue and little in the way of action, meaning that the film does tend to drag a lot of the time. Director Duccio Tessari sees fit to include some gratuitous female nudity to spice things up a little, and the climax is satisfyingly brutal, but on the whole this is a fairly mundane feature, with not a leather-gloved maniac brandishing an open razor to be found.4.5 out of 10, rounded up to 5 for the hilariously bad likeness of a suspect drawn by an interviewee at the police station, which the police sketch artist uses to create a portrait that is almost as bad.

Spoiler warning! This early 70s movie, as the previous comments have already pointed out, is a mix of drama and "giallo" (in Italy a crime story is nicknamed "giallo", that is to say "yellow", because a very successful series of detective stories published before WWII by Mondadori had yellow covers). "La morte risale a ieri sera" is marred by poor acting, silly dialogues and forced plot lines, but remains enjoyable as an overall view of the (north)Italian society of almost forty years ago. However, the title is incredibly meaningless: it doesn't allow the occasional viewer to tell this movie from thousands of other Italian crime stories of the 70s. The book which the movie is based upon was written by Giorgio Scerbanenco and entitled "I milanesi ammazzano al sabato"(=People who live in Milan kill on Saturday): it ironically refers to the fact that "milanesi" are people so hard-working that they kill only when they do not have to go to work! This attractive sociological touch is completely lost in the ultra-generic title "The death occurred last night".

Part giallo and part drama, this movie's been overlooked by both the "mainstream" critics and the Italian-horror fans alike, and that's a shame, because it's one of Italy's more serious genre efforts of the 70's. The distraught father's race to find his kidnapped daughter before the police do, is both tense and poignant. It's free of the exploitative elements most genre films have, and along with Tessari's other thriller (Bloodstained Butterfly), one of the most mature Italian thillers of the decade. The ending is painful without being gratuitous, and well above something Hollywood could handle: compare the father's obsession to find the girl in this to Cage's in 8MM and be amazed at how crassly the latter is constructed. See this one!