Ambassador Sobiesky (first name unknown) is the secondary antagonist of the 1971 giallo film The Iguana with the Tongue of Fire. Sobiesky is the Swiss ambassador stationed to the embassy in Ireland, as well as suspect in a series of egregiously violent murders until he becomes a target.
He's portrayed by the late Anton Diffring.
Biography[]
The ambassador was a domineering figure over his wife, as well as unfaithful, with a mistress in Dublin he'd reconvene with each time he'd visit the embassy. Out of rejection or to keep her from revealing the affair, Sobiesky killed his mistress in her home, splashing her face with extremely corrosive acid before slicing her throat with a straight razor. The lady's corpse was later found naked and covered in a towel in the trunk of the ambassador's official vehicle, which was found by the Ambassador's young son. The chief of police is bothered by restricted access on the grounds due to diplomatic immunity, so he sends his most unorthodox yet efficient investigator, Inspector John Norton, on assignment. A nightclub dancer familiar with the ambassador later tries to blackmail him into silence, and she's later found murdered in her dressing room, stabbed to death.
As the murders escalate, Sobiesky has to deal with giving checks to his deadbeat stepson Marc Sobiesky, along with grappling with his unhappy marriage and his wife fighting for her own freedom and aggressively retorting to Sobiesky's threats with having no hesitation to threaten the ambassador's status with information on the affair. Sobiesky throws a fit at his wife from hearing her ultimatum. When he returns to Switzerland for bobsledding competitions, when he's riding his own bobsled, it crashes from tampering, severely injuring the ambassador. It's revealed, when the killer tries to murder Inspector Norton's family, it was Mark responsible for the rest of the murders. To escape justice, Marc jumps out a window during a climactic fight with the inspector, committing suicide from a crash through the windshield of a police cruiser below. The ambassador later laments Marc must've been enraged out of jealously against the family, as he was with happy and fortunate happy people in general. As Sobiesky returns to Switzerland, Inspector Norton reveals he knows the ambassador killed his mistress, but he placed a call to the government of Switzerland to disavow Sobiesky of his status and immunity, which sets the grounds for his eventual arrest. The film ends with Sobiesky lighting a cigarette on his return voyage, unaware of the penalties awaiting him.
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