Directed and written by Luigi Batzella (who is also the Ivan Kathansky who made The Beast In Heat, the Paul Solvay who made Nude for Satan and The Devil’s Wedding Night and the Dean Jones who made God Is My Colt .45 but Joe D’Amato made a bunch of those as well, so he at least signed for them), Blackmail is all about bad girl Babel Stone (Brigitte Skay). She’s just been busted for drugs again and her father (Umberto Raho) has to bail her out. He’s probably wondering why the Italian title translates as The Strange Blackmail of a Respectable Girl.

Babel does have an excuse. When her mother died, her dad quickly got remarried to the much younger Stella (Rosalba Neri). If she was a son, she would probably understand. I mean, I get the need to grieve but Rosalba Neri, you know? Give your dad a rest.

She decides to get back at him — and make some money — that her friends Claudio (Benjamin Lev), Rick (Claudio Giorgi) and Eva (Nuccia Cardinali) will kidnap her. This seems a bit like Delitto al circolo del tennis but you know, the giallo directors never seem to trust hippies.

The whole plan goes wrong when they decide to hide at the home of Claudio’s sister Paola (Darla Abrem) and her husband Marcel (Lorenzo Piani) and they return home early, which means that they also have to get kidnapped.

You know how people thought that John Paul Getty III kidnapped himself? This movie is based on that, except that I doubt that that real life story had attacks on maids that end with sapphic interludes and Neri getting involved to make money off everyone. If you’re a fan of Skay — she’s also in Isabella, Duchess of the Devils, A Bay of Blood, The Love Factor and Four Times That Night — you’re probably going to want to see this. Beyond showing off her body for most of the running time, she plays a really ice cold manipulator and is the whole reason why this movie is a success.