Cinema: 36-23-45

The 10th Victim. “This year, killing women is the In thing to do,” somebody tells Marcello Mastroianni. In or not, killing a woman appears to be Marcello’s only out, for Huntress Ursula Andress intends to lure him to the Temple of Venus in Rome and shoot him dead on live television for a Ming Tea commercial.

Strains the old credibility, eh? Not in the 21st century, when Victim takes place. War has been abolished, but violence remains in fashion. As an outlet for hostility, sporting citizens get licenses to kill. Lucky Ursula has already dispatched her ninth victim by gunning him down with her much advertised double-barreled bra. When Marcello’s number pops up in her card file, this perverse, colorful venture into sex and sadism tips its entire plot. The rest unreels like a series of frenetic Happenings.

Director Elio Petri, in an interview, has summed up the significance of Victim in a word: “Nothing.” He expresses his non-idea very modishly, however, and occasionally a bit of Something sneaks through between falling bodies. The settings are an agreeable mishmash of op art and futuristic architecture. And Mastroianni, playing a proud collector of such comic-book classics as Flash Gordon and Mighty Mouse, has the bemused manner of a fellow who will follow civilization just about anywhere that it cares to go—from sunset worship to sexual fetishism (state-approved). But he balks at turning his parents over to the old folks’ Collection Center. “We hide them,” he admits. “Sometimes we dress them up as teenagers.” Ursula conceals exquisite bones under sufficient body to qualify as one of moviedom’s most breathtaking divinities. To be an actress as well would be redundant.

Made even halfway believable instead of just faddishly sick, Victim might have avoided drawing a blank, for behind all the razzle-dazzle lurks a valid satirical notion. The film’s bang-bang beginning ends as a bust because voyeurism remains a vice, not a point of view. A movie that laughs at violence and wallows in it at the same time may well be adjudged an effort to market the stuff in its original form.