The Devil with Seven Faces (1971)

When Julie Harrison gets a call from her twin sister Mary things begin to get strange for her.  She starts to feel as if she is being followed and is almost abducted as she leaves her lawyers office.  This leads Dave, her lawyer, and his friend Tony to unravel the mystery surrounding her sister and why suddenly so many people want to do her harm.  Eventually they discover that Julie’s sister Mary was involved in the theft of a million dollar diamond and that she took off with the diamond leaving her fellow thieves holding the bag.  Add to that an angry insurance man who lost his job because of the theft and suddenly there are a couple of cutthroats looking for her!  But is everything really that simple, or do some of the characters have ulterior motives?  Is anything really as it seems, or is there another double cross going on?

This is one of those movies that tries really hard to be clever, but just ends up being confusing and silly.  The plot feels contrived and there are way too many red herrings early on in the film.  But if you can stick thru the first half of the movie the story starts to focus more on what is actually going on and because of that starts to be enjoyable.  But be warned even after getting to the meat of the story the film has a tendency to jump around and can be hard to follow.  You will also really need to suspend your disbelief.  Because the movie is trying to be clever it expects the audience to accept several illogical and downright silly coincidences.  The cast does a decent job, but isn’t spectacular.  The women are appropriately beautiful and the men are suave, as you would expect from a European crime flick. 

Technically this is a decent film.  There is a car chase that was obviously shot much slower than intended with the film sped up to make it more exciting.  If you have ever watched a Benny Hill episode you will understand what this actually looks like on screen.  Instead of being exciting the whole sequence just made me laugh.  Also as I mentioned above the editor of the movie makes some seriously jarring cuts between scenes that almost make you feel as if something is missing.  I did dig the groovy 70s music, wardrobe, and décor. 

This is nothing more than an average movie.  But still after the first half hour of the film I wouldn’t even of expected that.  If they had managed to make the entire movie as well as they made the last half of it they might have had something really cool.  Still if you are interested check out The Devil with Seven Faces.  You can get a copy of the movie pretty cheap from Mill Creek on the Demons and Devils 10-pack. Check them out at http://www.millcreekent.com/ for more information. 

2 ½ out of 4

reviewed by John Shatzer

© Copyright 2009 John Shatzer