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Good story, Not enough for a whole film

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

What Have They Done to Your Daughters? (1974) *** (out of 4)A teenage girl commits suicide and at first the two inspectors (Claudio Cassinelli, Giovanna Ralli) think it's just a random case but soon more bodies begin to appear. After questioning a peeping tom the police learn that there's a group of teenage girls being kidnapped for a prostitution ring and a maniac on a motorcycle willing to kill to keep it a secret.This is the second film in the "schoolgirls in peril" giallo series, which started with WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO SOLANGE? Both that film and this one were directed by Massimo Dallamano but whereas the first went for a good classic mystery, this second film is pure exploitation and offers up plenty of nudity and some graphic death scenes. This film certainly isn't a masterpiece but it's slightly entertaining.The best thing the film has going for it is the direction, which includes one terrific sequence inside a parking garage where one of our inspectors is stalked by the maniac dressed in black. The entire sequence is well-directed and really contains some nice tension. The film also benefits from its rather naughty story-line and there's no question that it has a rather perverted feel for the teenage girls and the prostitution ring.The film also benefits from a nice cast who certainly help keep the picture moving. This includes Ralli as the female investigator as well as a supporting bit by Farley Granger as a victim's father. The cinematography is quite good throughout and we're also given a nice score.WHAT HAVE THEY DONE TO YOUR DAUGHTERS? is a rather sleazy entry in the giallo genre and while the mystery isn't the greatest ever written, there's enough here to make it worth watching.

While the original Italian title – THE POLICE ASKS FOR HELP – clearly pigeonholes this one in the then-popular (and incredibly prolific) poliziottesco genre, the English title under which it is better known around the world – WHAT HAVE THEY DONE TO YOUR DAUGHTERS? – implies a giallo in the same vein as Dallamano’s best-known film, WHAT HAVE THEY DONE TO SOLANGE? (1972). In any case, while both elements are effectively present – a hatchet-wielding murderer is the subject of the climactic manhunt – the police procedural themes are more prevalent.The film deals with a teenage suicide which eventually uncovers a child prostitution ring which, as usual, includes not just the petty sleazy oddballs (here personified by Franco Fabrizi) but also high-profile professionals (a celebrated doctor) and high-ranking government officials (a Minister). The cast is surprisingly good for this type of genre effort: Claudio Cassinelli (as the investigating Police Chief), Giovanna Ralli (unusually cast as a female D.A.), Mario Adorf as the policeman who finds the first body and also discovers that his own teenage daughter was once a “victim” of these perverts, the afore-mentioned Fabrizi and Hollywood veteran Farley Granger in a smallish role as the first victim’s father.As usual for Italian genre movies, the music score is an asset and here it is provided by Stelvio Cipriani whose motif, while simple and repetitive, is extremely effective given that it involves children singing gibberish (and thus commenting on the main theme of the movie itself even through its performers). Alarmingly, the end titles claim that every year in Italy, 8000 teenagers run away from home but only a small percentage returns to the fold – the majority are never found!

The lifeless body of an attractive teen girl is found in a dusty attic. She's hung and everything points in the direction of a suicide. Closer investigations, however, points out that the girl has been murdered elsewhere before dragged into the attic. The discovery of the corpse slowly unravels a network of teen-prostitution in which several eminent civilians are involved. This hardens the police investigation while the killer (on a motorcycle and carrying an authentic butcher knife) is still on the loose. `What Have They Done to Our Daughters' is kind of like a sequel to `Solange' (or fully entitled: What have you done to Solange'). The stories don't follow each other but they handle about similar events: young schoolgirls caught in a web of unsettling and sleazy affairs. Both films are above average gialli, with an incredibly high tension-level and killer musical scores. Even though `Solange' upholds the mystery longer and more efficiently, this film contains a little more action. Best example to state this is the extended police car versus motorcycle chase through the beautiful streets of Italy. The budgets, however, are low so don't expect blood-soaked murders like the ones featuring in Dario Argento gialli.

Although the 'Giallo' genre officially began with Mario Bava's 'Ragazza Che Sapeva Troppo' (aka 'Evil Eye', or 'The Girl Who Knew To Much') in 1963, continuing with the same director's 'Sei Donne Per L'Assassino' ('Blood and Black Lace', 1964), it wasn't really until the commercial success of Dario Argento's 1969 debut, 'L'Uccello dalle Piuma di Cristallo' ('The Bird With the Crystal Plumage') that it really got underway to become a staple of Italian cinema in the 1970's. The films essentially were bloody thrillers in which the primary thrill was in watching pretty young girls being stalked and dispatched by anonymous, leather-gloved assassins. Stylistically these films forced the audience to identify with the killer, featuring lengthily protracted and elaborately staged sequences of women in terror strung together by a convoluted whodunnit plot along the lines of those of early twentieth century British crime-writer Edgar Wallace.In fact, director Massimo Dallamano's previous film, 'Whatever Happened to Solange?' ('Cosa Avete Fatto a Solange?' 1972) was based on an Edgar Wallace novel. The follow-up takes it's cue from the same film by also setting itself within a girl's school, giving us a whole host of young nubiles around which to build the plot. The film opens with a rousing score courtesy of Stelvio Cipriani, a big-band romp through 70's flower-power accompanied by shots of the young girls getting on and off of their boyfriends scooters outside the school gates. This is followed by the discovery by the police of a young girl swinging naked from the rafters of an attic in a nearby deserted house after an anonymous tip off.As the Italian title 'La Polizia Chiede Aiuto' (The Police Ask For Help) suggests, and what sets this apart from its predecessor and most of the Giallo films of the period, is that a lot of time is devoted to the police's detective work and the milieu of the police themselves as opposed to those of the potential victims, bringing the film more in line with the policier drama than pure 'Giallo'. For the most part the film follows these investigations from suspect to suspect, with each plot point highlighted by a lengthy flashback. A motorcycle chase forms one of the action set-pieces alongside the usual suspense scenes, including a taut sequence in which the female detective (Giovanni Ralli) is stalked by the leather-clad, helmeted killer with a meat cleaver. The gorier pay-offs mainly occur towards the end, once the cleaver has made its initial appearance, but along the way we discover a mutilated body in the back of a car, and the blood spattered bath in which it was dismembered.If all this sounds rather perfunctory so far, it is the sheer bleakness of the film that distinguishes it. The initial murder is linked to the discovery of a school girl prostitution ring, and this central concept pretty much summarises the whole tone of the film. With a potential political scandal hinted at, and a scene in which the Claudio Casinelli's police investigator lies to the press to buy more time, the general milieu invoked is a corrupt and sordid one, where corruption and vice are masked by the superficially angelic innocence of the girls involved. The deadpan and po-faced narrative includes lengthy scenes of the police listening intently and repeatedly to tapes made of the call-girls' meetings, and graphic post-mortem descriptions of the victims. Salacious tit-bits like these are so deeply engrained within the complex plot that forces one is forced into a particularly bizarre and twisted perspective of the world by the accumulation of such elements.Director Dallamano was a cinematographer turned director who had worked on a number of spaghetti Westerns in the 60's including Sergio Leone's 'Per un pugno di dollari' ('Fistful of Dollars', 1964). Prior to this he had made a number of films including adaptations of Oscar Wilde's 'Dorian Gray' (1970) and Leopold von Sacher-Masoch's 'Venus in Furs' ('Le Malizie de Venere', 1969)'La Polizia Chiede Aiuto' also sports features an undistinguished supporting role from former Stranger on a Train, Farley Granger (Alfred Hitchcock, 1951). It is competently made, fast moving and gripping in places. It's worth checking out, but a maybe a little too serious in both its sleazy theme and its approach to prove a major crowd pleaser.