The Iguana with the Tongue of Fire (1971)
A cracking giallo set in Dublin starring Luigi Pistilli as a detective investigating the murder of a woman that could have connections with the Swiss consulate.
Apparently director Ricardo Freda wanted Roger Moore as his lead but at the last minute he got Pistilli. A shame really as Pistilli is very good as a Dublin cop albeit with dubbed Irish accent and it's always fun to watch Anton Diffring in films like this, especially when it became knowledge that he had no idea what the story was about when he filmed the
Doctor Who adventure
Silver Nemesis in 1988. If he had no idea what that was about God knows what he made of
The Iguana With the Tongue of Fire.
Freda's film is bewildering from the off. Everybody is pretty much a red herring especially Diffring's ambassador, his family and staff. Watching i was thinking everybody was the killer, in fact the one person i didn't suspect logically turned out to be the murderer who carried out savage cut throat razor attacks. It didn't help that the initial kill was done by someone in sunglasses, naturally Freda proceeded to give every shifty character shades throughout the film, even Pistilli's detective. Even more of a mind f*ck was that everyone seemed to own a cut throat razor too.
The Iguana with the Tongue of Fire isn't a top level giallo but i thought it was thoroughly entertaining with some gorily sadistic murders not to mention Dagmar Lassander spicing things up.
½ / 5