Just a brief mention of this film which is entertaining and enjoyable but probably too tame for fans of its intended genre – an Italian-Spanish giallo or Eurothriller. The Italian poster above completely misrepresents one of the ‘accidental deaths’. It was made by two Spanish and one Italian production companies, seemingly on location in the UK. The original story was by an American and adapted by three Spaniards and an Italian. The rest of the crew and most of the cast was also drawn from the Spanish and Italian industries with the Spanish director Eugenio Martin in overall control. The central characters are ‘Arthur Anderson’ (coincidentally the name of a large multinational accountancy firm eventually brought down by the Enron scandal) played by the British star Michael Craig and ‘Julie Spencer’ by the American star Carroll Baker. Ms Baker made several Italian genre pictures in this period and was something of a ‘sex symbol’ in Italian cinema. Michael Craig had been a British leading man since the mid-1950s. He’d recently moved to international productions and had a busy stage and TV career though he never became well-known in the US. Carroll Baker had a similar career (they were roughly the same age) though she had been in higher profile Hollywood films.
Making Italian films in the UK was not unknown with the highest profile being Antonioni’s Blow Out (UK 1967). however, the star of that film, David Hemmings, was one of the small group of British actors who appeared regularly in Italian films of the period. The ‘Fourth Victim’ refers to the propensity of Arthur Anderson’s previous three wives to die in accidents within a few years of marriage. Anderson has no obvious income but he is clearly a wealthy man, living in a grand country house in East Berkshire and the film opens with the moment when his third wife mysteriously drowns in the outdoor swimming pool when Anderson is out of the house. His insurance company is highly suspicious of this third death and Anderson is charged with her murder but is saved by a jury verdict of ‘Not Guilty’. He is helped by the evidence given by his housekeeper. Soon after, Anderson meets ‘Julie Spencer’ who is renting a similarly large mansion next door. But exactly who is she and why should she be keen on pursuing a man who has lost three wives in the last few years?
The film was dubbed into English and also into Spanish and Italian. Mostly the dubbing is pretty good but some of the supporting players don’t look or sound at home in Berkshire. The distinguished (and highly prolific) Spanish actor José Luis López Vázquez plays a Scotland Yard Inspector named ‘Dunphy’, a familiar Irish name, yet he is given a Welsh voice. But this is nit-picking, the film is actually beautifully photographed by Guglielmo Mancori in Techniscope and generally well acted. As cars chase down country roads the film sometimes feels reminiscent of the TV series The Avengers (1961-69) which also had an air of fantasy about it. The Fourth Victim is odd in having some markers of a giallo such as somewhat exaggerated plot details, numerous blondes and a whiff of humour but being shorn of the nudity and gore of the Italian versions. Carroll Baker is very coy in some of the bedroom scenes and this was a period in British cinema when ‘sex and violence’ were very much part of the contemporary scene. Part of the humour present in the film comes from Inspector Dunphy who has a rather severe wife in tow and drives about in a car several decades old.
I’m not sure if the film was released in UK cinemas – I can’t find any evidence that it was. Like many ‘international films’ shot in the UK it makes use of familiar landmarks such as the Old Bailey and what I assume are the White Cliffs of Dover. There is also, for British transport fans a glimpse of the British Rail/SNCF hovercraft service from Dover to Boulogne. I think the film is worth watching mainly for the interplay between Michael Craig and Carroll Baker and a Spanish/Italian view of Southern England in 1970. There are versions free online but not on mainstream streamers in the UK. There is an American Blu-ray I believe.
itp Global Film 
I have seen Carroll Baker in some very similar films back in her later heyday, though not to say I can definitely remember this one. I would have been in my late teens. Something a bit sad about the lady who had made her name as a nymphet in ‘Baby Doll’ still peddling a fading glamour in Italian giallo in the seventies, though that irony would have been lost on me at the time.
Arthur Anderson did not entirely go under though it had a well-deserved blacked eye. Like many such companies the IT division at least immediately re-emerged under a new name : Accenture. They were employed to craft a new IT system at the Halifax when I worked there and still seemed to think they were the bee’s knees. They weren’t.
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