An Ideal Place to Kill aka Oasis of Fear stars Ray Lovelock and Ornella Muti as Dick and Ingrid. A young hippie couple from Denmark who smuggle porn to Italy to pay for their lifestyle. When they overspend on their latest trip they sell Polaroids of Ingrid to finance their trip home. This runs them afoul of the law, and they get booted from Italy.

On their way out of the country, they get their money and supplies taken from a biker gang, and eventually run out of a gas. They eventually end up in the house of Barbara Slater, a woman who has coincidentally just killed her career military husband and left his body in the very car Dick is siphoning gas from. Rather than give them the boot, she allows them in, feeds them, and begins to have a kinky fun time with the trio, until things get weird and it’s revealed that she is trying to frame them for her husband murder.

An Ideal Place to Kill is marketed as a giallo, and it is easy to see why. It has the stylish visuals of the genre, but it really doesn’t have the over the top violence that really is the genre’s trademark. Still it feels like it has enough thematic connective tissues to certainly please fans of the genre.

While watching the film I was struck with the thought that it would make an ideal companion feature with Enzo Castellari’s Cold Eyes of Fear. Both films frequently get labeled as gialli, but only skirt the genre slightly. With that said Ideal Place to Kill is still an excellent, and fun watch. Lovelock and Sjoman have excellent chemistry, and the on again/off again dynamic of the main trio really keeps things suspenseful especially as things ramp up in the film’s third act.

Mondo Macabro presents An Ideal Place to Kill in a splendid 2:35:1 1080p AVC encoded transfer that just looks simply gorgeous, colors pop, detail is excellent, blacks are inky and deep. Mondo Macabro nails it again. Audio is handled with a DTS-HD Mono track in English or Italian. Everything comes through crisp and clear without issue. Extras include an interview with Umberto Lenzi, a commentary with Troy Howarth and Nathaniel Thompson, delted scenes and a trailer. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!

Director – Umberto Lenzi

Cast – Ornella Muti, Ray Lovelock

Country of Origin – Italy

Discs – 1

Distributor – Mondo Macabro

Reviewer – Scott MacDonald