LA PORTA SUL BUIO - "The Tram" (1973)

 

This week's Saturday Night Special is called "La Porto Sul Buio," and was a four episode 1973 Italian TV show that translates into "The Door Into Darkness."

Written, Produced, and Directed by Dario Argento, if nothing else, it's interesting to see what Maestro Argento can do under the restrictions involved in making a television show instead of a movie. In other words, it's very intelligent and not nearly as violent and gory as a lot of Argento's other work.

Dario even makes an appearance, and gives an introduction at the beginning.

 

This was the second of the four episodes, and it was titled "The Tram."

Dario even introduces the star of the show, Enzo (Blood And Black Lace) Cerusico.

Here comes the other the star of the show, "The Tram," coming into the station to get cleaned. There are some trams scattered across America, but it's a more popular form of transportation in Europe.

While the janitor guy is busy cleaning the tram in between stops, he stumbles onto something quite unusual! 

There's a dead young woman stuffed under one of the seats!

He did better than I did, I couldn't even find a credit for whoever played Monica Rini, but then she was only onscreen for about three seconds.

Pierluigi (Machine Gun McCain) Aprà is Roberto Magli, the guy who is the Collector on the tram, and should have seen what happened, but he's clueless.

Detective, also known as Commisario Giordani is beside himself! How could a girl get killed on a tram car full of people, and nobody saw or heard anything?

 

Detective Giordani gets this brilliant idea. He contacts all the people that were on the tram, and gets them to go along with recreating what happened that fateful night, right up to where they got on and off, as the jazzy music composed by Giorgio (Deep Red) Gaslini, swings hard!

Unfortunately, the plan doesn't yield any more information, and the Detective is back to square one, but you have to give him credit for a valiant effort!

I was going to make a joke about Pierluigi Aprà channeling his inner Ringo Starr, but then I found out he committed suicide at the age of 36, and it didn't seem funny anymore.

There's no other conclusion that Detective Giordani can come up with, it had to be Magli. 

Corrado (Wake Up And Die) Olmi is Officer Morini, Detective Giordani's partner. Morini tells Magli that his knife is just like that one that killed the girl.

Magli is either innocent or in complete denial, but either way, he's about to get sent up the river for what probably will be the rest of his life!

Detective Giordani can't get this case off his mind, and no matter how he looks at it, it still doesn't add up or make sense to him!

The Detective decides to give it one more shot before they send Magli off forever, and he contacts everyone that was on the tram, in an effort to recreate the scene once more, but unfortunately for Magli, everybody is busy or has some kind of excuse as to why they can't make the reunion!

Excuses, excuses, excuses! It's old news, and nobody cares!

The totally gorgeous Paola (Battle Of The Amazons) Tedesco is the Detective's girlfriend Giulia. Sometime in the sub-titles they also call her Gillian.

Giulia volunteers to help flush out the killer since none of the passengers were willing to be of any assistance, but it turns out to be a bad idea after the killer seemingly kills the Detective, and she's next!

Well, at least they know for sure now that the killer wasn't Magli since he's in jail, but was it worth it?

 

Indeed it was, but it was fun to watch!