Roylott Limited (L’Anonima Roylott) is a chemical manufacturing company run by two unscrupulous brothers, Joe and Eric, and their equally complicit lawyer, Evans. With the promise of huge payouts, the Roylott’s draw in new, young, talent into their company, only to then deceive them into signing hugely unfavourable contracts. When both brothers are gunned down by a mystery assassin, police inspector Mackay is brought in to investigate…

A very short (long) note about the title:

This is not ‘The Anonymous Roylott’ – Whilst it could be argued that the killer is anonymous for most of the running time, we can, however, eliminate any of the Roylotts from our enquiries quite early on – because it’s the Roylotts themselves who are being bumped off.

To take this a step further, even in Italy this film shouldn’t be referred to as ‘L’Anonima Roylott’ – that credit only goes to the stage play it was originally based on (download/Italian) The title cards clearly display ‘The Vultures of the Metropolis’ in big, bold, striking letters. It’s hard to miss.

Then there is a second title card that follows which states the film is based on the stage play ‘L’Anonima Roylott’.

Just about every source I’ve found has this film down as the same name as the stage play, with some going as far as to say that yes, ‘Vultures of the Metropolis’ was the original shooting title, but it was changed at the last minute. However, this doesn’t explain the title card on the film print itself. Unless RAI (the broadcaster) were somehow in possession of a workprint of a film from 1936. The only promotional artwork I’ve tracked down online (which does refer to it as ‘L’Anonima Roylott’) is not from the Italian release, it’s possibly a Yugoslav poster.

Back to the title of the stage play – this took a while to accurately translate, and it’s probably the reason why it’s been so mistranslated over the years. It appears there is no direct English translation, the closest we can get to ‘anonima’ in this instance is ‘limited company’. In fact, to back this up, the very first line of the wikipedia synopsis states, Roylott Limited is a chemical manufacturing company… The titles I’ve listed on this blog are what I believe to be correct – and much of the information on the web is erroneous – unless someone can prove otherwise?

Critical Reception

“This time the collaboration between Matarazzo and (Guglielmo) Giannini has proven successful. Matarazzo doesn’t just conduct the proceedings with energy and vigour, but the rapid pace doesn’t cloud the details in the narrative: and he knows how to distribute suspicion equally among all the suspects – something which cannot be criminally neglected in this genre. Even the acting reveals an expert hand.

Questa volta la collaborazione di Matarazzo e di Giannini ha dato buoni frutti (..) Matarazzo ha non solo condotto le cose sbrigativamente, ma la rapidità dell’azione non nuoce allachiarezza dei fatti; e ha saputo distribuire equamente i sospetti fra tutti i sospettabili, il che per un film del genere rappresenta la più encomiabile delle precauzioni. Anche l’interpretazione rivela una mano esperta (…) Congratulazioni a tutti”. (S De Feo, “Il Messaggero”, 28 novembre 1936)

For a detailed analysis of this film, some context about the times, and a lot more on scriptwriter Guglielmo Giannini (and his other giallo ‘Skyscrapers’) – check this LINK and use Google translate.

If that site goes down, this is an off-site backup with a Google translate copy also included – all credit to the author Mario Galeotti (link)