Nine Guests for a Crime 1977

Twenty years after Charlie’s death on a windswept beach, the wealthy villa owner Ubaldo invites his family back to the island for a guided visit to the spot where the crime took place. The group includes Lorenzo, Michele, and Patrizia, along with their spouses Greta, Carla, and Walter. Also present are Elisabetta, Ubaldo’s sister and the deceased Charlie’s former lover, and Giulia, Ubaldo’s new young wife. Once ashore, a mysterious assassin murders the sailors who ferried them to the island, and suddenly the group finds themselves cut off from help as danger closes in.

From there, the killings come one after another, each target chosen with chilling precision. The atmosphere tightens with mistrust, and the villa’s guests are picked off in increasingly brutal fashion, leaving only a handful of survivors by dawn. In the midst of the terror, the former lovers, siblings, and in-laws circle one another, trying to discern who among them has become Charlie’s quiet, relentless avenger.

The truth emerges only after a long and brutal stretch of suspicion: Charlie’s daughter is the killer, intent on avenging her father’s death years earlier. The revelation explodes with shocking clarity as it shatters the family’s dynamics. The killer is Carla, Michele’s wife, whose survival had long gone unspoken. She had counted on Elisabetta’s complicity to keep the plot hidden, a fact Lorenzo admits he suspected all along since her body was never recovered.

As the sun climbs higher, the chase reaches the water. Carla leads Lorenzo to the location where the final confrontation will unfold. Elisabetta, knowing the truth, tries to manipulate events, but Lorenzo resists her influence, aiming to end the nightmare. In a desperate sequence, Lorenzo shoots Elisabetta and presses on toward Carla, taking the crucial spark plugs in the struggle. Elisabetta, mortally wounded, dumps gasoline into the boat, sealing their fates. When Lorenzo attempts to start the engine, the boat detonates into flames, trapping him in a blazing finale. Carla, wounded and cornered on the rocks, perishes as the craft erupts, leaving the island silent except for the crackle of the fire and the distant, unresolved echoes of a family torn apart by revenge.