THE KILLER (Freddy Unger) drags the battered body of Isabella (Francesca Ungaro) into the woods outside the salon.
Como, who inherited the business af- ter the death of her husband. Max Morlan, Christina’s partner, offers a de- scription of Isabella’s carefree lifestyle to Inspector Sylvester, who deduces from her corpse that the killer must be a sex maniac.
The unveiling of the new season’s
fashions must proceed as planned de- spite the negative publicity of the mur- der and the superstitions of the surviv- ing models. It is during the fashion show that Nicole—the only model “cyni- cal” enough to wear the black dress intended for Isabella—discovers a red- leather book . . . Isabella’s diary! It is immediately obvious, from her co-work- ers’ reaction to this discovery, that ev- eryone at the salon has reason to fear the secret revelations contained in this book. When Christina makes the ges- ture of taking possession of it, to turn it over to the police, Nicole insists on do- ing this herself—as is her right, as the person who found it. Christina agrees. While Nicole is on stage modelling Isabella’s dress, her purse—containing the diary—is stolen by unseen hands. Nearly all of the salon’s habitués have reason to want the diary de- stroyed. Nicole is supplying her lover Frank with drugs; Peggy, another model, is desperate to conceal the fact of an old abortion; Mark, who pops pills on the sly, is suffering from unrequited love for Peggy; another model, Greta, is living out of wedlock with the Marquis Riccardo Morelli, whose title masks his true financial destitution; and the house dresser Caesar is an insatiable eaves- dropper, perhaps compiling a diary of his own for fun and profit. Coming offstage, Nicole finds her purse and breaks away from the fash- ion show to deliver some cocaine to Frank at his antiques shop, where she is trapped, teased, and brutally mur- dered by the masked assassin, who slams a medieval spiked glove from a suit of armor onto her face. The killer rifles through her purse, but doesn’t find
4 This hyperbole was previously used on Allied
Artists’ campaign for William Castle’s 1958 release, House on Haunted Hill.
