El pez de los ojos de oro (The Fish with the Eyes of Gold) is a 1974 Spanish giallo that tries to swim in the bloody waters of the Italian slasher craze, but ends up floundering in mediocrity.

The film's narrative is a tangled mess of red herrings and half-baked subplots that never quite coalesce. It kicks off with a scuba diver brutally murdering a woman on a beach, witnessed by a hapless bystander. From there, it devolves into a confusing whodunit involving a jewel heist, shady business dealings, and enough double-crosses to make your head spin.

As a giallo, El pez disappoints with its lack of stylish kills and suspenseful set pieces. The murder sequences are flatly shot and lacking in creativity or tension.

And despite the title's promise of something visually striking, the film is drab and bereft of any memorable imagery or directorial flair.

The acting is also amateurish across the board, with even the most intense scenes failing to generate any palpable sense of dread or danger. The dubbing in particular is atrocious and frequently out of sync.

There are glimmers of potential in El pez's premise of a killer using scuba gear to stalk victims underwater. But the film squanders this intriguing hook on a pedestrian plot that grows more incoherent as it lumbers towards its unsatisfying conclusion.

While it has gained a minor cult following among die-hard Euro-cult aficionados, El pez de los ojos de oro is a middling and eminently skippable entry in the giallo canon. It lacks the stylistic bravado and visceral impact of the genre's classics, leaving viewers with a muddled, tedious experience rather than a taut, chilling thrill ride.

THE FISH WITH EYES OF GOLD (1974, original title El pez de los ojos de oro) is an obscure Spanish giallo that I managed to track down in an English-subtitled print on Youtube; it's pretty good quality too, which is unusual for many of these productions. It offers a sunny coastal backdrop for a series of brutal slayings in which a mysterious murderer is going around offing a seemingly unconnected string of people. Shades of Agatha Christie's EVIL UNDER THE SUN, with the addition of a blond-haired bloke caught up in the middle of the crimes as the main suspect. It's a lively little piece, not particularly graphic in terms of sex and violence as these films go, but with plenty of plot and mystery to drive it along. The sun-drenched locales give it a holiday feel and there's at least one exploding car stunt that definitely endangered the actors taking part in it, so there's plenty to enjoy. 6/10.

You know you're in a giallo when you wake up next to the bloody body of the woman you just slept with and your first thought is, "I need to solve this."

That said, unlike so many giallo, the killer isn't revealed until the end. What is revealed is that he or she is obsessed with fish.

Derek (Wal Davis) is an Englishman new in town, enjoying his run at the Spanish ladies when said murderer starts killing everyone he asks to help him bring an al dente noodle to the spaghetti house, if you know what I'm getting at. This means that Derek ends up being the main suspect in a small town where he's the outsider.

Director Pedro L. Ramírez also made School of Death and writer Juan Gallardo Muñoz also was behind Sexy Cat. This isn't the kind of black gloved mystery that is going to knock your socks off, but it's also competently made and has some good mystery leading up to the fish-filled end.