 Coming to Rome in search of inspiration, the American Sam Dalmas, while taking a slow night's walk on the roads, witnesses an attempt of homicide: a figure in a shiny coat and black hat is stabbing a young woman, behind the glass door of a gallery of art. Sam tries to intervene to save the woman, but the safety glass of the gallery resists his hits and prevents him from entering. worried from the presence of Sam, the murderer however runs away without completing his crime. Sam stays immobile in front of the glass, while in gallery the wounded woman lies on the ground. Finally the police arrive. The woman is taken away by an ambulance and the medics declare that they will be able to save her. The Commissioner Morosini interrogates Sam for a long time, but he is not able to describe the face of the assassin, as he was not able to see him. Not even the attacked woman- the wife of the owner of the art gallery- is able to help the Police.
For the Commissioner, the identification of the mysterious individual with the black hat and coat is very important, as the assassin has committed similar crimes recently in Rome and the public has been demanding a solution of the case. Until they can determine the identiy of the mysterious assassin, the Commissioner Morosini, finally after interrogating the American again without result, he decides to withdraw Sam's passport to prevent him from leaving Italy. Morosini is in fact convinced that, during the attack in the art gallery, Sam could have seen something helpful to the identification of the homicidal madman.
Sam agrees with this fact to the Commissioner, adding however that he has not been able to understand what this important detail about the assassin that he is sure to have seen. While returning home, the protagonist is attacked by a stranger attempting to kill him with a cleaver. Sam is saved and tries to stop the aggressor, but he runs away without Sam seeing him well. It is evident at this point that the particular detail Sam noticed during the attack on the woman in the gallery is indeed fundamental, otherwise the murderer would not have tried to eliminate him immediately in a manner so brutal. However, the scene flashed in front of his eyes so quickly that he still doesn't succeed in pinning it down.
Sam ponders the case while the mysterious assassin strikes again. The coated stranger chooses an attractive girl. After following her along a dark park, the maniac follows the girl in to her residence. He waits while the young woman goes to bed, then he enters her apartment and her room, where he brutally kills her with a sharp knife. Sure to have a detail that could conclusively trace the identity of the mysterious assassin, Sam- informed that the crimes of the maniac go on-begins to develop his own investigations. For this purpose, he approaches to find a homosexual antiquary, who worked with one of the girls killed by the mysterious assassin. From the antiquary, Sam discovers that the last picture sold from the girl before she was killed is a painting rather grisly, in which is represented a man armed with a big knife attacking a child. This convinces Sam that the picture has something certainly to do with the terrible homicides. But what could be the relationship?
Meanwhile the Commissioner Morosini decides to address the city's prudent curiosity via television. He explains that he is in full carrying out the investigations to identify the madman that has killed four women already, and for them to be assured that as soon as possible the maniac will be halted. Full of contempt for these declarations, the murderer contacts the Commissioner by telephone and tells him that, in a sign of challenge, as soon as possible a fifth woman will be killed. Almost simultaneously, Sam suffers a new attack. While he is returning home together with his fianc?e, the beautiful Movita, a car tries to run them over.
The two are saved, but the police officer that is entrusted to protect Sam is instead killed. Sam and Movita are saved from the trap by a deposit of potential witnesses from a bus. The assailant takes off. Sam and Movita then pursue him and discover that the man with a disfigured face is wearing a bright yellow coat. The stranger enters a hotel. Sam follows him the inside, convinced now he will discover his assailant inside; but in the hotel Sam has a bitter surprise. The atrium is full of people that all wear the same yellow coat.
It is in fact an assembly of ex-boxers, and all the members wear the same coat as a sign of recognition. In the middle of all those equal people, Sam is not able to distinguish who has attacked him and who killed the police officer. Sam however doesn't surrender so easily. Having finally at least a trace, although vague, he completes other investigations and, after learning from an individual called "Addio" and of the informant called Filagna, he is now aware of the identity of the attacker in the yellow coat: an ex-boxer, who is also a drug addict. Sam enters his home but when he arrives, he finds him already dead, hanged. The murderer-after having evidently recruited him to eliminate Sam- has killed him.
While Sam prepares to restart his personal investigations almost anew, the murderer strikes still. He possesses a kind of secret shelter, an isolated room where there is also- suspended from a wall- the picture of the attacked child, the painting which the antiquary has leant to Sam. The murderer wears his characteristic black shiny coat and goes out in the night. A girl is climbing the stairs of her own palace when suddenly the girl is grabbed unexpectedly by the figure in black who brutally kills her by slicing her with a razor. Soon after, Sam receives a threatening phone call: he is speaking to the same assassin, who is covering his voice making it absolutely impossible to identify. But the phone call is recorded by the Police and the Scientific experts notice that, in the background while the voice speaks, a sharp noise is heard: like a creaking. He has not been able to define it but, Commissioner Morosini tells Sam, I am convinced that that could be a valid trace to identify the place from which the call originated: but what is that sound? While the Police go on their investigations, Sam begins to search for the painter Berto Consalvi, who painted the picture in which he represented the child attacked by a crazy person armed with a knife.
Sam finds the painter in a small country house where the strange man lives isolated, with walled doors, so much that to enter, Sam must climb a ladder suspended from a window that the painter throws down to him. Consalvi provokes the disgust of Sam revealing that he only feeds on the meat of his cats, but they speak about the picture he has painted. He explains that he was inspired by an incident that really happened: many years ago, a child had been violated by a maniac armed with a knife, and Consalvi had exactly represented that tragic event in his painting.
 In the meantime, Sam's fiance, Movita, has stayed only at home. She walks toward the noises heard outside her door. When she opens it to check, she discovers a figure in black that sees she is trapped. Movita closes the door leaving the aggressor out. She then tries to escape from the bathroom window, but she is not able to do it, as there are bars that stops her from exiting. Meanwhile the murderer-that is the mysterious maniac with the black coat- is trying to break down the door with his sharp knife, to get in and kill Movita; in the wood of the door there is already a big hole. The girl is desperate and can not even phone, as the wires have been cut. When Movita feels hopeless, she hears footsteps climb the staircase, and the murderer is forced to run away. The door opens and enters Sam, who greets Movita in his arms and tries to calm her. Carlo, who is a birdwatcher and friend of Sam, has meanwhile determined the origin of the strange sound in the phone call of the maniac. The sound comes from a very rare bird, the Hornitus Novalis, known well by its researchers for its long feathers very much like crystal. In Rome there exists only one of the animal, and it is in the Zoo. It is therefore from a neighbor that the phone call of the mysterious assassin came. This revelation shoots off like a rubber band in Sam's brain: the Ranieri consorts live in a palace in front of the Zoological Garden!
The homicidal madman must therefore be the husband of Monica, the woman attacked in the Gallery of Art. Sam and the Police break into the residence of the Ranieri consorts. When the agents try to stop Ranieri, the man rebels, stabs a police officer and then, while trying to run away, he falls from a window. Crashing to the ground, Ranieri, before he dies, confesses that he is the homicidal maniac that has killed the young women. The case is therefore concluded and the Police have been satisfied. Sam however is not still convinced, and is also not able to understand the thing that created his doubts, and decides to speak still with Monica, the wife of Ranieri.
He searches, but the woman has disappeared in the confusion that has been created during the break-in of the Police. Sam tries then to look for her in the Gallery of Art and later enters a nearby house. He enters the strange apartment, where he finds his friend Carlo stabbed.. .Next to him is the figure in black, who is revealed to be the same Monica Ranieri, while on the floor lies Movita, in turn wounded by the wife of the gallery owner. It is she who is responsible for all those crimes; she is the homicidal madwoman!
The husband that loved her has confessed in fact only to try to protect her. Sam then understands finally what was the mysterious detail noticed during the quarrell in the gallery, the detail that he had not been able to ever exactly pin down. When he in fact had seen Monica Ranieri fighting with the figure in black in the gallery, she was the one that held the knife in hand, not the apparent aggressor! Monica however meanwhile escapes and goes to seek shelter in the Gallery of Art. Sam pursues her, but the woman is able push a big modern sculpture on Sam, and the man stays imprisoned under the points of steel. While Monica is about to kill Sam, Commissioner Morosini storms in and stops her. Sam is saved, and the Police have also found Movita, tied up in the "secret" apartment of the crazy person, where the fortunate young woman is still alive.
The news of the capture of the maniac is printed in the news, while a psychiatrist explains the motivations of the murderer's way on television: "Ten years ago, Monica Ranieri, a subject born already with paranoiac tendencies, had been attacked by a brute who was certainly in that occasion crazy. But this was a cold trauma that stayed encapsulated for ten years, up to the day in which she saw again the horrible scene depicted in a paintiing who had witnessed the attack. This internal explosion then became violent and uncontrollable. She did not however identify with the victim, but with the attacker. To explain the behavior of the husband instead, a man that wished to ward off the suspicions from his wife, strongly in love with her, suffered an induced psychosis under influence of his paranoiac wife, so much so that he became psychotic and homicidal.
"The case is therefore happily resolved and everything has been explained. Sam's passport is returned by Commissioner Morosini, and he can finally leave again, leaving Italy to return with his fianc?e Movita to his country. While the airplane that transports the young couple takes itself off in the sky, Sam comments:
"I think that's what they had told me: in Italy: it is a calm country, nothing ever happens in Italy.." |
Tony Musante .... Sam Dalmas
