This film is an extremely entertaining psychological thriller with Carrol Baker excellent as a rich American widow getting away from it all at a secluded Italian villa. Enter smart aleck down on his luck playboy, Lou Castel, who has some golddigging motives behind his slick hipster seduction techniques and has no qualms about how he gets what he wants. He encourages Baker's character's incipient alcoholism and dubious self-esteem, brings in his supposed 'sister' to help drag Baker even further into a maze of sick mind games, drug addiction and group sex, all culminating in a descent into near-madness and self-destructive depravity.
I won't give away anymore, suffice to say that the film delivers on its swinging sixties, Euro sleaze ambience and psychological suspense thriller credentials in spades. Director Umberto Lenzi's work has been, at best, uneven and he's churned out his share of crap. However, he made some quite good giallos and crime pictures in the sixties and seventies and this is one of them (other good films by Lenzi -- SPASMO, SEVEN BLOODSTAINED ORCHIDS, ASSAULT WITH A DEADLY WEAPON, to name only a few).
Unfortunately this film is ofen confused with another okay but not-quite-as-good Lenzi film that was also released briefly here in America under the same PARANOIA title (but is more commonly known, especially on video, as A QUIET PLACE TO KILL).
玛利亚(安娜·费尔南德斯 Ana Fernández 饰)是一名清洁女工,独自一人居住在位于西班牙的一间小小公寓之中,过着形单影只的生活。身为一名清洁女工,玛利亚的收入十分拮据,刚刚够维持自己一人的生计,日子过得十分苦闷。玛利亚的男友是一名卡车司机,两人之间的关系十分淡漠。某日,玛利亚发现自己怀孕了,然而男友却并没有一丝一毫想要结婚的打算。
父亲生病,在母亲的陪伴之下,老两口来到了城里看病,借住在玛利亚的家中。父亲和母亲吵吵闹闹了一辈子,却也相互扶持着过了一辈子,玛利亚将这一切看在眼里,心中充满了无奈。在这期间,玛利亚的母亲结识了住在玛利亚楼下的孤独老人,随着时间的推移,两人之间竟然产生了淡淡的情愫。