After Dario Argento’s Bird With the Crystal Plumage became an international hit in 1970, Italian producers immediately funded more giallo films with titles that included various animals. I was under the impression that A Hyena In The Safe was part of this wave. But I was wrong. Turns out A Hyena In The Safe (Una iena in cassaforte) was released in the summer of 1968. This was one of the early giallo films from the time when Mario Bava and Umberto Lenzi pioneered the murder mystery genre. While writer-director Cesare Canevari wasn’t as prolific as his peers, InsidePulse has reviewed at least two of his movies with the spaghetti western Matalo! and the exploitation classic The Gestapo’s Last Orgy. Canevari’s A Hyena In The Safe does not feature the giallo tropes used by Argento that others impersonated. The film is a mystery about a group of people who are all extremely suspicious as they seek to divide a fortune.
Late one night during carnival, six people show up at a fancy villa with a huge garden. Albert (A Man For Emmanuelle‘s Sandro Pizzochero) arrives with his girlfriend Jeanine (Flesh For Frankenstein‘s Cristina Gaioni). This upsets the other five. They’re all connected to a massive jewelry heist in Amsterdam and tonight is when they split up their share six ways. There shouldn’t be extra people in the room that could tie them all together. Making matters even more uncomfortable is a new guy arrives because he now owns the share of the original criminal. They put aside their reservations and go out to garden where the head honcho has a submerged safe that rises from the bottom of a pool. The only way to open the safe is that all six of the thieves has a special key. This is where Albert really upsets everyone since he can’t find his key. The hyper protected safe can’t be cracked. Albert goes nuts looking for his keys and completely loses it when another criminal withholds his “necessary” drugs. While he’s freaking out over the key and withdrawal someone pushes Albert off the top of the villa. This leaves his hot girlfriend dealing with the other crooks who still want that missing key and have no problem going to any extreme to turn those locks.
A Hyena In The Safe is a brilliant “small” film. This is about desperate people stuck in a mansion wanting to be the one collecting all the jewels and not just their share. This has all the makings of a modern reality show. But it’s more mod than modern. There’s a lot of groovy fashions on display around the villa. Cesare Canevari wisely has nearly half the cast be female and they all get to show off that sixties style. Cristina Gaioni knew how to work her wardrobe even when it’s being ripped off her by the others in the search for the missing key. Cinematographer Claudio Catozzo (The Nude Princess) and Editor Enzo Monachesi (The Ceremony of the Senses) team up to make the film visually pop so it has a claustrophobic feeling without turning stuffy. All the action is in the villa and gardens.
What makes this click as a giallo is the everybody on the screen could be the culprit or the next victim. It’s not a matter of who packed a pair of black gloves. You can’t trust anyone in that house will tell the truth. There’s even a mystery character circling the villa in a helicopter who might be behind all this since he declares that he’s the boss over the radio. The mystery is unravelling and tightening up at the same time. The movie has been obscure for decades. Now A Hyena In The Safe can bust out for fans of the genre.
If you’re going to make it a Giallo and Gelato night, I recommend pairing up A Hyena In The Safe with Talenti’s Salted Caramel Truffle.
The Video is 1.33:1 full frame. The color in the transfer pops on the screen. This is groovy Italia in every frame. The Audio is Italian DTS-HD MA 2.0 mono. The dubbed voices sound great. The movie is subtitled in English.
7 Guests For A Massacre (51:10) is a major documentary on the film with an interview with the director. Cesare Canevari gives a lot of details of how the film came together and the stories of the cast. There’s also a tour of the locations in Milan. We meet up with actor Sandro Pizzochero who went by Alex Morrison in the credits. He gets into Albert’s character. He was frustated that the film was only in theaters for a week. They confirm that Dimitri Nabokov is the son of the author Vladimir Nabokov (author of Lolita). On the poster, Nabokov was large to hint somehow the writer was a part of the production. Ben Salvador was really the director’s accountant.
Schrödinger’s Cat (36:04) starts with the strange puzzle about a cat in a box that can be alive and dead at the same time. He relates this to the vault in the movie. They get into how so many people associated with the film did not have established careers and many vanished afterward. Yet the movie looks amazing and not an amateur hour production. The various characters are investigated and why this film deserves your attention as a great overlooked film.
The Mysteries of Villa Toeplitz (7:52) takes on a stroll through the gardens and mansion of the estate today. The house is shuttered, but the gardens are kept up. Francesco Pollanetti is our tour guide. There is no safe at the bottom of the pool.
Commentary by Guido Henkel has him call the film a caper giallo. He gets into how the film was an outlier about the film since it wasn’t hyped by a studio or last long after it opened in Milan. The film hadn’t been sold to other countries. It didn’t get a real revival in Italy until 2020. This is the first legal release fo the movie in America. Henkel shares as much information as he can about the cast and crew. Dimitri Nabokov had a very interesting career as translator of his father’s work, opera singer and race car driver.
Image Gallery has lobby cards and posters.
Italian Trailer (4:10) lets us know there’s a sensational heist at the core of the movie. There’s a lot of groovy fashions too.
Celluloid Dreams present A Hyena In The Safe. Directed by Cesare Canevari. Screenplay by Cesare Canevari & Alberto Penna. Starring Dimitri Nabokov, Maria Luisa Geisberger, Ben Salvador, Sandro Pizzochero, Karina Kar, Stan O’Gadwin, Otto Tinard & Cristina Gaioni. Running Time: 93 minutes. Rating: Unrated. Release Date: November 25, 2025.
