Not Enough Diamonds To Go Around: ‘A Hyena In The Safe’ Reviewed
by Rachel Bellwoar
As the locals celebrate carnival with fireworks and confetti, six people gather outside a mansion. Proving that they all had to drive through the same parties to get there, they all have confetti stuck to their clothes but that’s about the only thing they have in common. Cesare Canevari‘s A Hyena in the Safe (1968) is a film that’s much more interested in how they differ. During their introductions, a point is made to mention where they’re from, so it’s clear they’re most likely strangers. For whatever reason, they’ve been recruited to pull off a bank job together, and the international makeup of the group only suggests the haul must be significant.
Unfortunately, as will be revealed soon, the heist already happened, and while the film touches on the roles they played in that robbery a little, the main thrust of the plot (and the reason they’re there) is to divide the loot. Right from the start, there are people who shouldn’t be there and people standing in for other people, who they claim to represent, but it’s all hearsay. The only way to open the safe without triggering a radiation safeguard is to open it using six keys. Each of the people at the mansion has one of the keys, but will they live long enough to split the diamonds, or will greed cause the situation to go the way of Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None?
The premise of the film isn’t exactly new, and a lot more could’ve been done to establish alliances and pit characters against each other instead of letting relationships get so muddled early that it doesn’t really matter who kills who – just that they’re dead.
What A Hyena in the Safe has in abundance is style. From the camerawork to the makeup, hair, and costumes, this is a film that looks good and isn’t afraid to embrace camp, like having one of the characters pull off a look where her hair is tied under her chin. These are fashions styled for the runway, not a meeting of the (criminal) minds, but that’s why the film’s fun to watch.
It’s also why the film gets away with not showing any of the heist. While alternatively described as a giallo and a caper, there are a lot of nods to ‘60s spy films as well, so no, we don’t get to actually watch them steal the safe but we do get to see it rise out of the water on a platform when a lever is pulled and, to anyone who grew up on reruns of Get Smart and The Avengers, that’s all you need – gadgets and booby traps. Future tech in the ‘60s was so much better than the AI slop we’ve been carting instead.
Gian Piero Reverberi‘s music gets a lot of play out of the same jaunty theme that can be slowed down and turned into a funeral dirge when needed. The results are deadly and comical at the same and while the choice to dub the film afterwards isn’t well-hidden and causes some clunkiness, the stylishness is what prevails .
For bonus features, Celluloid Dreams has assembled a fifty-one minute documentary that’s split between an interview with Canevari (who passed away in 2012) and talking heads with journalists discussing Villa Toeplitz, the mansion where the low-budget movie was able to film for free and which has gone from being privately owned to a public park. Many of the filming locations still look close to how they did in the ‘60s, as a separate eight-minute tour of the property by Francesco Pollanetti shows.
There’s also a visual essay by Andy Marshall-Roberts that’s well-edited but can get bogged down in plot summary. The highlight is a commentary by a very prepared Guido Henkel that starts with a discussion of carnival for non-European listeners and even fact-checks Canevari’s interview. It’s the one bonus feature that covers the costumes which again, along with the makeup, are what give this Italian film a lot of its pizzazz and one of my favorite moments is a discussion of sword canes in movies, a prop I’ve always associated with Gilda (1946) and which makes an appearance in this movie. Until this Blu-ray, A Hyena in the Safe had been difficult to see but now it goes on sale November 25th from Celluloid Dreams.
