One On Top Of The Other (1969)
The Movie
One On Top Of The Other was written and directed by director Lucio Fulci who would go on to become a pioneer of and major contributor to the emerging Italian giallo and horror movie genres. The movie’s original Italian title is Una Sull’Altra and it has also been marketed as Perversion Story. It’s an intriguing beautifully photographed crime thriller filmed primarily in San Francisco with a terrific jazz soundtrack by Riz Ortolani. The director has said that the story was influenced by Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo (each features a doppelgänger leading lady) and like Hitchcock before him he prominently showcases San Francisco at a time when the city was perhaps at its most flattering. The movie featured a cast of international actors who spoke their lines in English but had their accents overdubbed into American English, not uncommon at the time for European-made movies. There is plenty going on to hold our attention throughout, not least of which are several steamy (but tastefully filmed) sex scenes. The film’s nail-biting denouement was, remarkably, filmed in the San Quentin State Prison gas chamber with real prison staff playing their respective roles, the first and only time this has ever been done.
The Story
George Dumurrier (French actor Jean Sorel) and his brother Henry (Argentinian actor Alberto De Mendoza) run a medical clinic. Henry is worried that his brother is working too hard, taking on too much debt and flouting medical ethics in an ongoing drive to keep their business alive. George’s marriage to his sickly wife Susan (Austrian actress Marisa Mell) has not been going well; his torrrid affair with photographer Jane Bleeker (Italian actress Elsa Martinelli) certainly doesn’t help. But Jane tells him their affair has to stop and leaves town. While pursuing her, George hears that his wife has died from an asthmatic attack, surprisingly leaving him as beneficiary of a two million dollar insurance policy. An insurance investigator starts tailing him, suspecting murder, not asthma, but the plot really heats up when George and Jane see a stripper at a club (Marisa Mell, again) who bears an uncanny resemblance to the dead wife. Is she or isn’t she? He becomes sexually involved with her in an attempt to find an explanation but before he can do so he is arrested for murder and sentenced to die in the gas chamber. Revelations at the movie’s end yield the biggest twist of all.
The Locations
(Note - The movie captures are from the Mondo Macabro ‘Perversion Story’ Blu-Ray Disc)
Aerial Tour Golden Gate Bridge —- Bay Bridge —- Civic Center —- Telegraph Hill —- Alcatraz —- VA Medical Center, Clement and 42nd Avenue —- Southern end of the Great Highway
The Dumurrier Clinic The Lodge At Pebble Beach, Monterey Peninsula
Driving Home Cavallo Point, Marin County —- Golden Gate Bridge —- Central Expressway/80 North interchange, Design District —- Fairmont Hotel, Nob Hill — Twin Peaks Boulevard, Twin Peaks —- Oak Knoll Ranch Mansion, 2200 W. Oak Knoll Avenue, Napa, California.
Sex In The City 1083 Lombard (on the crooked street), Russian Hill —- Hyde Street at North Point, Russian Hill —- Driving south on the Golden Gate Bridge —- Southern Pacific Train Depot, 3rd and Townsend, Mission Bay
Train Chase Union 76 Gas Station, 1199 California at Jones, Nob Hill —- Jones Street between California and Pine, Nob Hill —- Northbound Golden Gate Bridge —- Toyota Dealer, 1465 Van Ness Avenue, Western Addition/Nob Hill —- Westbound San Mateo Bridge
Reunited Reno SP Station (Now Amtrak) —- 280 N. Center Street, corner E. Commercial Row, Reno, Nevada
Tragic News Truckee, California seen from I-80 —- Reno Arch, Reno, Nevada —- (the former) Mapes Hotel, Reno
Surprise News The Lodge at Pebble Beach, Monterey Peninsula —- Fishermen’s Grotto, 9 Fisherman’s Wharf
Dead Ringer Broadway Parking Station, 425 Broadway, North Beach —- Varni’s Roaring Twenties Club, 807 Montgomery Street, Jackson Square
Phone Call Hyde Street cable car terminus, Fisherman’s Wharf
Rendezvous Marina Green Parking Lot, Marina —- Grant Avenue at Washington Street, Chinatown
Monica is Questioned 201 Sansome Street, Financial District —- 315 Maple Avenue, South San Francisco
Where Is Elizabeth O’Neill? Japanese Tea Garden, Golden Gate Park —- Fisherman’s Wharf
George Is Arrested 1083 Lombard (on the crooked street), Russian Hill
Monica Flies The Coop U.N. General Assembly Bldg, 1st Ave, Manhattan —- E. 42nd St. at 6th Ave, Manhattan —- Center Drive, Central Park, Manhattan —- Franklin D. Roosevelt Station Post Office, 909 3rd Ave, Manhattan
Doppelganger FDR Drive, Lower East Side, Manhattan —- Rockefeller Plaza, Manhattan —- TWA Flight Center, JFK Airport, New York
The Big Reveal San Quentin Prison, San Quentin, Marin County —- State Capitol Building, Sacramento
Shocker In Paris Orly Airport, South Terminal (now Orly 4), Paris, France —- Vagenende Restaurant, 142 Boulevard Saint-Germain, Paris, France
George’s Fate San Quentin Prison, San Quentin, Marin County