PHENOMENA

Dario Argento, 1985
Starring: Jennifer Connelly, Daria Nicolodi, Donald Pleasance, Dalila Di Lazzaro

Jennifer, the lonely, teenaged daughter of a famous director, is sent to a Swiss boarding school for girls. She learns that young women have been attacked and murdered in the nearby hills. Jennifer accidentally puts herself into danger with her unpredictable sleepwalking habits, but she has a unique ability – a psychic connection with insects that protect and help her. Her only friend in the area is a scientist, forensic entomologist John McGregor, and the two try to figure out the identity of the murderer before Jennifer is the next victim.

Somewhat of a twist on his classic Suspiria, Dario Argento’s Phenomena is an utterly bizarre giallo film, complete with sci-fi trappings, dream logic, and sequences of gross-out violence. As in Suspiria, an isolated young woman travels to the forest of northern Europe (Germany in the former, Switzerland in Phenomena) and encounters a world made up mostly of other women. Both Suspiria’s Suzy and Phenomena’s Jennifer only makes one female friend, who is killed, and they are left with unfriendly peers and hostile authority figures. Suzy’s wine is drugged, she’s confined to the ballet school she’s attending, and she’s told that she’s ill. Between her non-conformist personality and bouts of sleepwalking, Jennifer’s icy headmistress (Dalila Di Lazzaro of Flesh for Frankenstein) forces her to submit to medical testing and is ready to have her shipped off to an insane asylum.

Both Suzy and Jennifer find refuge and wisdom in the form of an elderly scientist. In Suspiria, Suzy meets with a young psychologist (the great Udo Kier) and his older mentor (Rudolf Schündler of The Exorcist), who confirm her suspicions about the evil goings on in her ballet school and explain that the founder was believed to be a powerful witch. Professor McGregor (Donald Pleasence with an implausible Scottish accent) is far more of a father figure to Jennifer. He not only tests and explains her gift to her, but is the only person to believe in her extraordinary abilities. Science has a rather murky role in Argento’s films, namely Cat O’ Nine Tails ­– set in a research institute and concerning genetic research – and Four Flies on Grey Velvet, where the final reveal hinges on an absurd idea that the human eye captures the final image it sees before death. Science, or perhaps science fiction, is less troubled in Phenomena simply because the film does not ever attempt to stay grounded in rationality.

Instead, it is Argento’s most fantastical exploration of the natural world. The school for girls is set in the Swiss mountains, a place that simply feels like a fairytale forest. This is Argento’s most lush shoot – rivalled only by the conclusion of his following film, Opera, which is set in a similar location and involves another young girl abandoning herself to nature after surviving a terrible ordeal. Here Jennifer is linked to the natural world by more than just the setting – which includes hills, fields, forests, a lake, fire, and a cesspool of sewage/rotting corpses. She is deeply connected to it by her psychic link with all insects and by her changing body – she and the other girls are all 14, 15, or 16, in the midst of puberty and on the verge of sexual awakening. And while animals play a role on screen in The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, Four Flies on Grey Velvet, Deep Red, Suspiria, Inferno, and Tenebre, this is Argento’s first film with an actual animal star in the form of Inga the chimp.

This is also perhaps Argento’s only film to wander into the body horror territory so thoroughly explored by directors like David Cronenberg and Stuart Gordon. While Deep Red and Suspiria include some particularly graphic, effecting death scenes, many of these are stylish exercises in onscreen murder as art. In comparison, the murders of Phenomena are ugly, devoid of art deco set pieces and bold, primary-colored lighting. There is a gruesome decapitation where the victim’s head is tossed unceremoniously into the water, Jennifer vomits up pills in a lengthy sequence, and she crawls through dirt and, perhaps most memorably, falls into a brown slush of refuse and rotting flesh. Maggots squirm, flies pick a face and crowd the windows of Jennifer’s school when the girls pick on her, and a detective macerates his own thumb to get free of handcuffs.

SPOILERS. The film’s sense of the grotesque and of sexual hysteria is compounded by its complex examination of parenthood. While many of Argento’s films have troubled parent-child relationships, such as Deep Red and Four Flies on Grey Velvet, and characters with teenage/young adult trauma, like The Bird with the Crystal Plumage and Tenebre, Phenomena’s violence revolves around painful family relationships. Jennifer’s mother abandoned the family and her father is absent due to his work. The killer, a young boy with a disfiguring disorder that makes him look monstrous and fear mirrors, is the product of his mother’s rape. He slaughters young women and his mother (Daria Nicolodi, the mother of Argento’s daughter Asia, whom he would split with that year) kills to protect him. She is the film’s most horrible figure, akin to the monstrous hysteria of the two witches in Suspiria and Inferno, and is the culmination of female violence present in The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, Four Flies on Grey Velvet, and Deep Red.

Phenomena is one of Argento’s most difficult films, but is also among his most unique. It will likely frustrated unprepared horror fans expecting a straightforward giallo, but this film is a strange blend of fantasy, science fiction, dream logic, and the grotesque. It’s available uncut on Blu-ray (avoid a censored American version titled Creepers) and comes recommended for more adventurous viewers, anyone who wants to see Argento at his strangest, and all fans of the young Jennifer Connelly. I honestly wish Argento had made the time to further explore her relationship with insects, something that is unfortunately overshadowed by the serial murder plot.

INFERNO (1980)

Dario Argento, 1980
Starring: Irene Miracle, Leigh McCloskey, Eleonora Giorgi, Daria Nicolodi

Rose Eliot, a young poet in New York, collects antique books and stumbles across a terrible secret with the recent purchase of The Three Mothers. She learns of three powerful witches — Mater Lachrymarum, Mater Suspiriorum and Mater Tenebrarum — and discovers that Tenebrarum may be located in the very apartment building Rose calls home, built by an eccentric architect named Varelli, also the author of The Three Mothers. She writes a letter detailing her findings — and her fears — to her brother Mark, a music student in Rome, and he comes to visit just as Rose goes missing.

While Suspiria, the first film of Dario Argento’s “Three Mothers” trilogy, is a dark fairytale, Inferno is a nightmare and a fever dream. In fact, Argento was seriously ill for much of filming and veteran horror director Mario Bava stepped in to handle some second unit work. Perhaps as a result of this, Inferno seems indebted to Bava’s candy-colored descents into the underworld and meditations on the supernatural, such as Hercules and the Haunted World and “The Drop of Water” segment from Black Sabbath. Bava was also responsible for some of the matte painting and optical effects, and his son, Lamberto Bava, acted as assistant director on the film – a few years later, Argento would collaborate with the younger Bava on Demons.

Despite – or perhaps because of – Bava’s involvement, Inferno was initially poorly received. This is likely due to a number of factors: its perhaps unfair comparison to Suspiria, the disorienting sense of dream logic, and the fact that the somewhat fragmented film has a number of protagonists. Like Suspiria, the cast is still female-dominated and focuses on characters like Rose (Irene Miracle), her friend Elise (Daria Nicolodi), and Mark’s friend Sara (Eleonora Giorgi), all of whom are inexplicably drawn to the mystery of the Three Mothers. Mark (Leigh McCloskey) is brought into this world almost against his wishes and is left alone to contend with the evil in Rose’s apartment building. Like Suspiria, this is a fundamentally hostile, strange world where bureaucratic, natural, and supernatural forces conspire against the protagonists.

Inferno certainly has many parallels with Suspiria: there’s a key scene with a protagonist swimming, secret passages are important to the conclusion, a beast-like killer preys on young women, and there is an animal-related death in an open park/square. But while Suspiria has a marked contrast between a sedate, fairytale-like mystery plot and over-the-top, incredibly violent and unusual death scenes, Inferno is more concerned with elaborate set pieces. In addition to the central location of a cavernous old apartment building in New York, there’s an antique shop, a beautiful Roman library, an old ballroom suspended in water, and an alchemy lab – plus, the plot is set in motion by an old book, a letter is of key importance, and one of the protagonists is a writer.

This focus on the literary and the historical is countered by a disorienting emphasis on doubles. Rose and Sara share the same sense of wonder and fascination that draws them towards The Three Mothers and its mysteries, which also leads to their deaths. – The two main protagonists are siblings and there are plenty of protagonists who turn out to have dual roles within the film, particularly the other residents of Rose’s apartment building. The importance of doubling is compounded by the appearance of several actors from Argento’s previous films – Alida Valli, who plays a domineering instructor and part of the witches’ coven in Suspiria returns here as the suspicious caretaker of Rose’s building. Daria Nicolodi was previously seen in Deep Red as a plucky reporter who teams up with the protagonist to find the killer. Her role here is a sort of Gothic twist on the crime-solving sidekick; she helps Mark uncover clues while wearing a flowing nightgown, has an illness that makes her physically weak, and wanders around the dark building like a frightened child. Gabriele Lavia, last seen in Deep Red as a troubled musician, briefly shows up as Sara’s friend and protector.

Somewhere I read this described as a blend of The Wizard of Oz and Dante’s Inferno, which isn’t far off the mark. If Suspiria was influenced by Snow White, where a young princess takes on a wicked witch in a foreboding forest, Inferno is more of an ensemble piece set in an alternate dimension. The blue, yellow, and red lighting is certainly otherworldly and the central building seems to be an underworld universe all its own, with secret passageways, hidden floors, and an incongruous sense of style suggesting that all time periods exist there at once. Even the score is a blend of contemporary electronic music – from Emerson, Lake, and Palmer’s Keith Emerson – spliced together with Verdi’s opera Nabucco, a biblical-themed work about the titular Babylonian king who conquers and exiles the Jews.

Inferno comes highly recommended and is one of Argento’s most underrated works, if not one of the most underrated horror films of the ‘70s and ‘80s. This dreamy, disorienting film is not for everyone, but offers rich rewards for those willing to lose themselves in Argento’s hellish, yet colorful world of magic, mystery, and murder that does end with the promised inferno. Fortunately, the film is available in a wonderful Blu-ray edition and should be part of every film lover’s collection. It’s a shame that Argento followed up the brilliant of Suspiria and Inferno with something as flawed and problematic as Mother of Tears.

SUSPIRIA

Dario Argento, 1977
Starring: Jessica Harper, Stefania Casini, Joan Bennett, Udo Kier, Flavio Bucci, Miguel Bosè, Alida Valli

Suzy Bannion, an American ballet dancer, travels to Germany to enroll in a renowned school in Freiburg, but her arrival is marked by a menacing storm, an unfriendly reception, and the mysterious, anxious departure of another student who is later found dead. After taking an apartment out of the building, she falls ill and is moved into the school against her wishes, where someone seems to be drugging her food. She befriends another girl, Sarah, who believes that the school is secretly run by malevolent witches. After Sarah goes missing, Suzy takes it upon herself to unravel the mystery before she becomes the next victim.

Argento’s fairytale-like masterpiece was inspired by Thomas De Quincy’s collection Suspiria de Profundis, in particular the chapter “Levana and Our Ladies of Sorrow,” which introduces "Mater Lacrymarum, Our Lady of Tears," "Mater Suspiriorum, Our Lady of Sighs," and "Mater Tenebrarum, Our Lady of Darkness" (the latter two characters would receive a mention in his follow up film, Inferno). This first supernatural work by Argento was co-written by then partner Dario Nicolodi, who claimed for years that it was based on her grandmother’s stories of real witches operating in Italy. Regardless of the source, this tremendous film is a blend of many previous filmic and literary influences: Grimm’s fairytales, German expressionism, the French fantastique, Snow White, film noir, Jean Cocteau and European Surrealism, and Gothic literature.

The plot follows a basic fairytale structure, where a young hero embarks on a journey of self-discovery and defeats evil. There is a core journey in Suzy’s travel to Germany, an eerie trip through a forest, and magical flowers that are central to her quest. Things often occur in threes: there are three girls trying to fight the witches in the form of Pat, Sarah, and Suzy, and three witches In the form of Tanner, Madame Blanc, and the head mistress. Like Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber, which was being written during Suspiria’s production and was published in 1979, Argento has reimagined the character often known as the “Persecuted Heroine.” Suzy, a beautiful, young ballet dancer, is initially similar to fairytale heroines, but fortunately has a different end goal than romantic fulfillment with a handsome price (though I’d give her a break with Udo Kier in the picture).

The script is perfectly complimented by a vivid, almost violent sense of color – Suspiria was one of the last films processed in Technicolor – that transitions from dark blues and blacks to screaming red and pink. The film is full of characters passing through doorways – often toward spectacularly realized deaths – and Argento somehow adds elements of the surreal and disorienting to mundane acts like a cab ride, a swim in a pool, and eating dinner. The world Suzy has entered is undeniably hostile and strange and – like the Germany of many of Fassbinder’s films – this is a realm existing in and out of time, a place of the subconscious rather than the waking world. Though many try, there are not a lot of horror films or dark fantasies able to achieve this dreamlike quality and in that sense, Suspiria has something in common with Night of the Hunter (1955), Valerie and Her Weeks of Wonders (1970), Lemora: A Child’s Tale of the Supernatural (1973), Messiah of Evil (1973), A Company of Wolves (1984), and even The Red Shoes (1948).

Suspiria is also a marked departure from classic supernatural horror like Cat People (1942) and Night of the Demon (1957), where the horror is implied gradually and unfolds subtlety. Suspiria – whose tagline proclaims “The only thing more terrifying than the last 12 minutes of this film are the first 92!” – kicks off with an elaborate, highly stylized double homicide where Pat, hiding out from the horrors at school, is tracked to an art deco apartment building by a strange beastly figure, resulting in an operatic sequence of shattering glass, sliced flesh, and a brutal hanging. There are Fulci-like scenes of squirming maggots pouring from the ceiling on hapless students, a corpse coming back to life with murderous intentions, and a girl stumbling into a room inexplicably full of barbed wire.

And, of course, there are the witches. The school headmistresses represent a far more bureaucratic source of terror for much of the film, dealing in control, manipulation, and disorientation, chiding Suzy about room fees, her medical health, run of the mill inconveniences, and rules. Tanner (Alida Valli of The Third Man and Eyes Without a Face, the latter of which must have been an influence on Argento) wears conservative suits and her heels clack on the floor abrasively while she shouts out instructions. Madame Blanc (former noir star Joan Bennett, playing a role not similar to her appearance as the ambiguous family matriarch in Dark Shadows) is full of grace, refinement, and manners, and it’s easy to see her as a politician’s wife or retired debutant. Tanner and Blanc pale in comparison to the swollen, growling, and draconic form of Helena Markos (aka Mother Suspiriorum, played by the uncredited Lela Svasta), who sets all manner of obstacles in Suzy’s path and is ultimately the monster she must defeat.

Much has already been said about Suspiria and it holds a deserved reputation as one of finest horror films ever made. Pick it up on region 2 Blu-ray, or 2-disc special edition DVD. Either way, this is a must-see film and it’s something you need in your collection. While giallo films are not for everyone – and they make up the bulk of Argento’s work – this is a near-perfect blend of mystery, horror, and fantasy. The score from Goblin is also one of their best and is the perfect music to listen to while driving through a thunderstorm.

DEEP RED aka PROFONDO ROSSO

Dario Argento, 1975

Starring: David Hemmings, Daria Nicolodi, Gabriele Lavia, Macha Méril, Clara Calamai

A psychic, Helga Ulmann, senses that someone in the audience of her lecture is mentally disturbed, has murdered long ago, and will kill again. Soon after, she is killed in her apartment and her neighbor, jazz musician Marcus Daly, witnesses her murder and is convinced he has seen an important clue. Reporter Gianna Brezzi decides to help him against his wishes when he realizes that he's the killer’s next target. Their only viable clue is a child’s lullaby and the tale of an old haunted house…

Profondo rosso (1975) aka Deep Red aka The Hatchet Murders is notable for, among other things, being Italian horror maestro Dario Argento’s first collaboration with the band Goblin, who would go on to score several of his later films. Deep Red also marks a turning point Argento’s career. After establishing himself with the “Animal Trilogy” – The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, Cat O’Nine Tails, and Four Flies on Grey Velvet – Argento kicked off a series of popular masterpieces, including Deep Red, Suspiria, Inferno, and Tenebre. Deep Red marked a new level of directorial confidence that allowed Argento to explore a more extravagant visual style and more poetic, dreamlike narrative structures. 

Despite its graphic death scenes and hints of the uncanny and the supernatural, Deep Red is one of Argento’s most accessible films and is a great introduction to giallo films in general. There are elements lifted directly from Mario Bava’s seminal giallo films The Girl Who Knew Too Much and Blood and Black Lace, such as the protagonist being a foreigner in Italy, the killer wearing a raincoat and black gloves, a vibrantly colored set, and so on. Deep Red also includes many of Argento’s trademarks, including POV shots, close ups of objects, and a number of characters with creative careers (two musicians, a journalist, an author, and an actress). Argento cleverly borrowed from mystery and romantic comedies with the presence of a plucky reporter responsible for comic relief in the form of Giada. She is played by the actress Daria Nicolodi, who would go on to become one of Argento’s major collaborators and the mother of his daughter Asia.

In addition to fine performances from Nicolodi, English star David Hemmings is enjoyable as the pleasant but anxious Marcus Daly. He played a similar role in Antonioni’s Blow-Up (1966) and was in a number of horror and suspense films, such as the similarly themed Fragment of Fear (1970) and British pagan horror Eye of the Devil (1966). Gabriele Lavia (Inferno, Beyond the Door) gives what is probably the best performance of Deep Red as the sympathetic and interesting Carlo. Macha Méril (Night Train Murders) and classical Italian actress Clara Calamai (Visconti’s Ossessione) round out the female-centric cast. Despite suggestions that Argento was misogynistic, he often gave his most interesting roles to women and Deep Red is a fine example of that.

The film also benefits from some excellent cinematography by Luigi Kuveiller (New York Ripper). The anxiously roving camera captures bold colors and eye-catching sets, as well as a more heightened level of graphic violence (compared to Argento’s earlier work). The incredibly creative death scenes rely on every day, household objects as instruments of death – the corner of a mantel, hot water, a window – bolstered by some great special effects from Academy Award-winning Carlo Rambaldi (E.T.). These seemingly mundane moments of violence are countered by strange, surreal elements, including an unexpected attack by marionette, disturbing children’s drawings of murder, a dying lizard squirming on a pin, and close ups of children’s toys.

Though he hinted on it with his earlier films, sound is of key importance in Deep Red – where The Bird with the Crystal Plumage is a synthesis of art and violence, Deep Red combines the latter with music. Always a fan of using diegetic (occurring within the narrative of the film) and non-diegetic (the soundtrack) music, both are used artfully here and there is a tense relationship between the score and sound effects that relates directly to the violence unfolding – such as the killer’s insistence on playing a tape recording of a disturbing child’s song before committing murder.

This was Italian band Goblin’s first score for Argento and signaled the beginning of a successful collaborative relationship that would last throughout some of his most beloved films. Composer Giorgio Gaslini was originally hired to compose for Deep Red, but Argento was allegedly unhappy with his work. Some of these jazzy themes remain, but Goblin wrote most of the proggy, harpsichord-heavy score that Argento fans know and love. Originally known as the Cherry Five, Goblin’s early lineup included Claudio Simonetti, Fabio Pignatelli, Massimo Morante, and Walter Martino. Their score for Deep Red is mostly a prog rock affair, no doubt inspired by bands like King Crimson, but includes both pop and jazz elements and is as menacing as it is catchy. In addition to keyboards and the harpsichord, Goblin uses acoustic guitar, electric guitar, piano, and has some very bass heavy songs on tracks like “Death Dies,” “Profondo Rosso,” and “Mad Puppet.” This is certainly one of their finest scores for Argento and the complete score can fortunately be found on CD. 

Deep Red comes highly recommended, as does the Goblin score, though I am somewhat biased because it was my first favorite Argento film and the first I had the pleasure to see. Over the years there have been a number of Deep Red releases, including a restored DVD from Anchor Bay, a Blue Underground Blu-ray, and a two-disc special edition Arrow Blu-ray. It remains one of Argento’s most loved films for a good reason and is a fine example of post-Hitchcockian cinema that straddled the line between horror film and psychosexual thriller.

THE CAT O’NINE TAILS aka IL GATTO A NOVE CODE

Dario Argento, 1971

Starring: James Franciscus, Karl Malden, Catherine Spaak, Horst Frank

A blind man, Franco, and his young charge Lori, accidentally stumble into a blackmail plot one night walking home past the Terzi Institute, a renowned science center responsible for some groundbreaking research. A break in and murder soon follows at the Institute, and journalist Carlo begins following the story. Despite his impairment, Franco has a brilliant mind and sets about unraveling the mystery. He and Carlo team up and discover that a doctor who claimed to know the identity of the thief was murdered, though the police have ruled his death accidental. The bodies begin to pile up as Franco and Carlo close in on the killer, who seems to be connected to the Institute’s research on the YY chromosome, indicating latent violent tendencies.

Argento has referred to this Italian-French-West German coproduction as his least favorite film and I’m inclined to agree. Among his classic works (1970’s The Bird with the Crystal Plumage to 1987’s Opera), the second and third entries — The Cat O’Nine Tails and Four Flies on Grey Velvet — are by far his weakest. The Cat O’Nine Tails was certainly something I neglected over the years, despite seeing many of his other films repeatedly. But unlike Four Flies on Grey Velvet it has a certain charm and warmth, thanks largely to star Karl Malden’s appearance as the improbable blind detective.

I think The Cat O’Nine Tails biggest issue is that it takes a notable step backwards into safer and more conventional territory after Argento’s debut, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage. While that first film was certainly influenced by traditional mystery literature and the German krimi films, Argento added his own innovative blend of style, art, and violence to the mix. The Cat O’Nine Tails, however, takes an uneasy foray into science and focuses on a more traditional relationship between a crime journalist and a brilliant amateur detective.

And that relationship — between Karl Malden and James Franciscus — is the best part of the film. It’s a rare healthy example of male bonding and machismo (as portrayed by the macho Franciscus and the fatherly Malden) in an Argento film. Though the two begin by exchanging information, but become quite close by the film’s end, with nice moments of Carlo joining Franco and his niece for dinner. The domestic elements of this film and its examination of complicated family relationships that would emerge throughout Argento’s body of work. In addition to the unusual threesome — Franco’s niece is adopted and is not a blood relative — one of the chief scientists has a strange, almost incestuous relationship with his adult daughter (Catherine Spaak), who is also adopted. Her subsequent affair with Carlo is one of the film’s most awkward relationships.

The easy partnership between Carlo and Franco gives this a sort of Dragnet air, where the buddy investigators use crime fighting and mystery solving to give their lives purpose and definition. But there is also something of Agatha Christie here with the Miss Marple-like plot device of Franco and his niece overhearing the genesis of the crime on a street corner — whispers about blackmail from a nearby car. Throughout the film, Franco makes some ridiculous leaps of faith that nearly always turn out to be true, and the blind detective — a crossword puzzle writer by trade — would be completely ludicrous if it weren’t for the blithe Malden.

The film has a few main flaws that make it understandable why Argento ranks this as his least favorite. Unlike The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, it struggles to find its own identity and rests somewhere between giallo and standard mystery film. The lack of style is disappointing, particularly after the bravado of Bird, and Argento wouldn’t really set this right until his fourth horror film, Deep Red (1975). There are also several moments of unintentional humor, which are often found in giallo films thanks to bad dubbing, but here results from some awkward and/or improbably situations. 

Speaking of the latter, I think Argento’s biggest mistake is his ill advised foray into science. While most of his other films concern artistic protagonists (most often musicians and writers) and plots hinging on the psychosexual, Cat O’Nine Tails dabbles in corporate espionage and scientific research with mixed results. While some directors can effortlessly blend themes of horror and science fiction, this lacks the emotional depth of the explanation for the killer’s actions in The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, Deep Red, Tenebre, and others.

Available on Blu-ray, Cat O’Nine Tails only comes recommended to Argento fans or anyone who enjoys more traditional murder mysteries. There are some solid kills — a man is pushed in front of a train, a woman is strangled because of evidence she has hidden, and a photographer is killed in a dark room in one of the most Argento-like scenes — and it is one of his warmest, if least imaginative works. And I don’t know about you, but I love Karl Malden. You could have quite an afternoon with a triple feature of this film, Ken Russell’s Billion Dollar Brain and Baby Doll.

THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE aka L’UCCELLO DALLE PIUME DI CRISTALLO

Dario Argento, 1970

Starring: Tony Musante, Suzy Kendall, Enrico Maria Salerno, Eva Renzi

Sam, an American writer in Rome, witnesses the attempted murder of a woman in an art gallery. A black-gloved attacker nearly kills Monica Ranieri, the beautiful wife of the gallery’s owner, Alberto. The police, suspicious of Sam and in need of his help, confiscate his passport and prevent his return flight to American while the investigation is still underway — they believe that the same person murdering women around the city is responsible for the attack on Monica. Sam has the sense that he’s seen something he can’t quite put his finger on that’s a critical clue, and soon the murderer begins targeting Sam, trying to kill him before he solves the mystery.

The Bird with the Crystal Plumage was Dario Argento’s very impressive debut as a director. He had been working as a film critic and a screenwriter up until then and, thanks to some family connections, was able to make this highly influential first film. Though it is obviously inspired by Bava’s Blood and Black Lace and borrows much of its plot from Frederic Brown’s uncredited novel The Screaming Mimi, Argento brought a blend of sadomasochism, violence, and exaggerated style to the screen that is obviously all his own. The Bird with the Crystal Plumage effectively synthesized the German krimi films based on Edgar Wallace’s mystery novels, Bava’s candy-colored horror films, and Hitchcock's psychosexual thrillers to create something new and unusual.

The film not only strengthens the tropes introduced by Bava — which would carry on throughout the genre — but it also introduces a number of themes that would obsess Argento throughout his career. For starters, the protagonist is a foreigner who is not a detective or police officer, but who is forced to solve the case because a) he is targeted by the killer, b) the police are ineffectual, and c) he has some perverse passion, an innate curiosity, that propels him onwards. The victims are primarily beautiful women, and the killer wears leather gloves and a raincoat. The killer is murdering because of an unresolved past trauma not revealed until the film’s conclusion, and characters surrounding the protagonist are depicted as in someway morally compromised, perverse. These are all standard giallo fixtures.

One key theme that would carry on throughout Argento’s work is the problem of vision, the concept of the seen but wrongly interpreted or not yet understood clue. Sam witnesses the attempted murder, but realizes that he has seen something important that he can’t quite put his finger on. This same scenario occurs in later films like Deep Red, Suspiria, and Tenebre, and it is this device that sets Argento so far apart from the Agatha Christie-style mysteries that came before him and the slasher films that would come after. Works of classic detective fiction often revolve around a clever amateur detective, such as Holmes or Poirot, and a Everyman partner like Watson or Hastings. Mysteries are solved when the detective reveals the missing links between a series of elaborate clues — links that he has figured out often due to some information not available to the sidekick or the audience. But in The Bird with the Crystal Plumage the genius detective is cast aside for a far more suspenseful tale where a modern Everyman — and the cinema goers following him — must try to solve the crime through primarily visual evidence.

Another theme with a strong presence in Argento’s work that was introduced in this film is the use of animal imagery. His first three films were dubbed the “Animal Trilogy’ thanks to their titles — The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, Cat O’ Nine Tails, and Four Flies on Grey Velvet — despite the tenuous connection to animals. Many of his films include at least one scene with an animal (a lizard, dogs, insects, birds, and even a chimpanzee), and here a key clue is figured out by the call of the titular rare bird, a guest at the local zoo. This is entwined with the film’s larger motifs of hunting, collecting, and imprisonment. When Sam witnesses Monica’s attack, he’s trapped between two glass doors like a fish in an aquarium (which was allegedly Argento’s inspiration), which looks into a gallery filled with terrifying metallic art, including a bird claw. The film’s living spaces are prison-like — Sam’s one room dwelling, Monica’s high rise apartment, and the artist’s loft, which can only be accessed by a ladder — and key sets include the zoo and a hall filled with taxidermy.

Art is another important theme. In addition to the fact that the initial crime scene is set at an art gallery, an antique store, a deranged painter, and an eerie painting provide an important clue, and art actually becomes a weapon. Many of Argento’s early protagonists were artists: Sam is a writer and his girlfriend is a model, while later examples include musicians, photographers, journalists, dancers, novelists, and opera singers. This theme can be found throughout the genre, as the characters are often expected to be hip or fashionable, or artists with unstable dispositions.

SPOILERS AHEAD (for many of Argento’s movies): Finally, this is also the first of many films where the killer is given an unusual identity. There is something Hitchcockian about this and I can’t help but be reminded of Psycho, where the killer becomes quietly insane after years of repressing a past trauma. While we believe the killer is Mrs. Bates, it is really Norman in disguise. The Bird with the Crystal Plumage is an inversion of this in the sense that we believe the killer to be male (it is even presented that Monica’s husband is guilty), until we discover that Monica has been in disguise in androgynous garb. Many of Argento’s subsequent films follow this pattern: Four Flies on Grey Velvet and Deep Red also have female killers, while Tenebre and Phenomena each have two murderers.

It is difficult to examine The Bird with the Crystal Plumage on its own, as I’ve seen most of Argento’s classic films (from this first entry through Opera in 1987) many times throughout the years. It is an incredibly strong directorial debut and has very, very few flaws. Thanks to his aforementioned connections, Argento was able to get some exceptional talent working on the film, such as composer Ennio Morricone and cinematographer Vittorio Storaro (Bertolucci’s regular collaborator). There is likely much more I could say about the film, but little that hasn’t already been said. It comes with the highest recommendation and is one of my favorite of Argento’s works. For obvious reasons, it’s also a great introduction to giallo films — certainly more accessible than Blood on Black Lace — and if you don’t own it already, pick up the special edition DVD or Blu-ray.

EYEBALL aka GATTI ROSSI IN UN LABIRINTO DI VETRO

Umberto Lenzi, 1975

Starring: Martine Brochard, John Richardson, Ines Pellegrini

A bus full of tourists vacationing in Spain are picked off one at a time by a sadistic killer hiding in their midst. This mysterious assailant gouges out the left eyeball of each victim and a Barcelona inspector, days away from retiring, is determined to find the culprit before it’s too late. The only clues he has to go on is that the killer wears a bright red raincoat and red gloves and focuses on the female members of the tour group. Anyone could be the killer, including a marketing agent and his secretary (she’s also secretly his mistress), a priest, a former soldier, a lesbian couple, and more.

While the Italian title translates to Red Cats in a Glass Labyrinth and it is also known as Wide-Eyed in the Dark, The Devil’s Eye, and The Secret Killer, the aptly re-named Eyeball is one of Lenzi’s goofiest, most absurd thrillers. It’s packed with red herrings and ridiculous characters and while I can’t say I didn’t see the ending coming from early in the film, it’s was silly enough to be surprisingly enjoyable. Be prepared for some truly ludicrous dialogue and characters who mindlessly continue enjoying their vacations while their friends and loved ones are dropping dead – an amusing spoof of the (primarily American) middle class tourists who won’t let anything get in the way of their good time, all the while complaining about local customs.

Eyeball is undeniably a flawed affair, but will appeal to anyone who enjoys the trashier side of Italian cinema. Lenzi included all the standard giallo elements – an unidentifiable killer wearing gloves and a raincoat, red herrings, unlikable characters that are all potentially guilty, female nudity, and violence – but such a sloppy way that he seems to be more concerned with having a good time than making a suspenseful film. Like Lenzi’s Knife of Ice, this is a Spanish co-production that takes advantage of some lovely locations in and around Barcelona, and unfortunately there are several scenes where the setting is more interesting than the proceedings.

Perhaps the film’s main flaw is that it lacks a solid protagonist, or, at the least, a familiar giallo lead. Instead, Martine Brochard (The Violent Professionals, A Man Called Blade) and John Richardson (Black Sunday, She) are wholly unlikable. Richardson’s Mark Burton is cheating on his mentally disturbed wife, who is herself a suspect when she fails to turn up at the mental asylum she was supposed to check in to (!) and sends Mark a telegram that she has arrived in Barcelona. Brochard’s Paulette perhaps could have been an interesting character with a more forgiving script; instead her sole function is to act as the stereotype of a jealous, demanding mistress.

When I really think about it, the repetitive deaths, unlikable characters, and undeniably silly elements reminds me more of ‘80s slasher films than ‘70s giallo. While this has the colorful elements of a giallo, much of it is set outdoors in bright daylight, providing a direct contrast to the work of candy-colored, but still dark, menacing work of Bava and Argento, and even to the similar, Gothic-themed and lushly-colored The Vampires’ Night Orgy (1974), where a different busload of tourists meets a sticky end in the Spanish countryside. The killer’s standout signature – a bright red raincoat and matching gloves – is also a departure from the stylish black and dark brown leather trench coats of the early giallo classics like Blood and Black Lace, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, and Deep Red. I can’t help but wonder if it’s borrowed from the far more effective English-Italian coproduction, Don’t Look Now (1973), where a small, red raincoat-clad menace terrorizes a grieving couple in Venice.

Eyeball is not available on DVD in the US (yet), though a German disc exists under the title Labyrinth des Schreckens (Labyrinth of Terror). Lenzi completists, Eurotrash fans, and anyone who loves lower grade slasher films will probably get a kick out of this later-era giallo that has more in common with Lenzi’s Nightmare City than it does with Blood and Black Lace. Keep an ear out for a nice score from Bruno Nicolai – regular composer for Jess Franco, Sergio Martino, Sergio Corbucci, and even Tinto Brass – that rises above the proceedings.

SPASMO

Umberto Lenzi, 1974

Starring: Robert Hoffmann, Suzy Kendall, Ivan Rassimov

Christian finds a woman’s body on the beach, but she turns out to be alive. He sees her again soon after and learns her name is Barbara. They begin a relationship, though it is fraught with troubles. A man breaks in to Barbara’s hotel room and Christian fights him off, accidentally killing him, and then the body disappears. They hide out at Christian’s friends’ artsy beachside home, which happens to already be inhabited by renters: an old man and his younger girlfriend. The couple claim they want to help Christian uncover the truth, but all is not as it seems.

Spasmo is by far one of Lenzi’s strangest thrillers and there’s nothing else quite like it. This is certainly a film rife with plot holes and confusing twists, but if you like utterly bizarre films – or are familiar enough with Eurotrash that you don’t demand a lot of rationality from the plot – it’s well worth hanging on for the ride. There is little gore or violence and things don’t really get going until the third half of the film, but once they do, there is quite a descent into madness and murder… and mannequins. If you hate movies with mannequins, this is not the movie for you.

I think it was only inevitable that pediophobia – the fear of dolls – and automatonophobia – the fear of humanoid figures – have played a fairly significant role in the horror genre over the years. Freud’s concept of the uncanny, the strangely familiar that both repulses and attracts, can be found everywhere from the monster that appears in human guise (Dracula, The Wolf-Man) to the double (The Student of Prague), the dead brought back to life (Frankenstein), recreations of the human form (Der Golem), and many, many more. Mannequins began to trickle into horror through the ‘30s and ‘40s, growing in popularity: for example, House of Wax (1953), The Twilight Zone episode that terrified me as a child, “The After Hours” (1960), Mario Bava’s Blood and Black Lace (1964), his later Hatchet for the Honeymoon (1970), and the totally wacko American film Tourist Trap (1979), to name just a few.

Mannequins are used particularly effectively in Spasmo and rest at the heart of the film’s mystery, because you have no idea what the devil they mean until the last five minutes of the film. There are mannequins on the beach, mannequins hanging from trees, punctured by knives, bloodied, scantily clad, and so much more – plus an array of taxidermied animals. The mannequins are an obvious stand-in for female corpses and it soon becomes clear that this is not a story of Christian running from a missing body, but that a maniacal murderer is loose. Lenzi relies solely on the unpredictable and atmospheric, so it’s difficult to discuss the film without giving away its twist ending.

Characters appear and disappear, seemingly at will, and Christian’s girlfriend Barbara (played by adorable giallo regular Suzy Kendall of Bird with the Crystal Plumage and Torso) can’t corroborate his story. Kendall, whose best performances rely on her wide-eyed beauty, is at a loss here as a character who is supposed to seem ambiguous – at some times innocently in love with Christian and at other times as a potentially dangerous femme fatale – and it’s unclear if the weakness stems from the script or Kendall’s performance. It is Barbara’s introduction to the story – as a body washed up on the beach – that launches Christian into a world of paranoia, madness, and murder. Unfortunately, Kendall’s expressions range from confused to carefree, dampening what could have been an interesting role.

Austrian actor Robert Hoffmann (from Massimo Dallamano’s A Black Veil for Lisa and another cult film set on a beach, The Lonely Violent Beach, one of the few directed by giallo scribe Ernesto Gastaldi) is able to hold his own here, with no help from the script, and makes the best of the “wrong man” scenario he is placed in. Despite some hilarious moments – such as an early scene where he lets Barbara convince him to shave off his beard – he’s able to elicit the necessary sympathy. His brother is played by one of my favorite giallo actors, the sinister-looking Ivan Rassimov (All the Colors of the Dark, A White Dress for Mariale), though he isn’t given nearly enough screen time, but fittingly has the last laugh.

Despite its flaws, Spasmo is an unusual psychological thriller worth checking out, thanks to the nonsensical, go-for-broke plot, mannequins akimbo, stunning shots of the Tuscan coast, and a solid score (as always) from Ennio Morricone. Somewhat like Lenzi’s previous film, Knife of Ice, this has a touch of Gothic style and makes the absolute most of the amazing landscape, shot by Guglielmo Mancori, a veteran of spaghetti westerns, Eurocrime, Lenzi’s earlier So Sweet… So Perverse, and more (including one of my favorites, Wild Beasts). Amazingly, Spasmo has made it to DVD thanks to Shriek Show and it is, at the least, worth a rental. 

KNIFE OF ICE aka IL COLTELLO DI GHIACCIO

Umberto Lenzi, 1972

Starring: Carroll Baker, Ida Galli, George Rigaud

Martha, a young woman who has been mute since witnessing the death of her parents in a train accident years ago, is excited about the arrival of her cousin Jenny, who has been travelling the world as a famous singer. Jenny arrives, via train, to Martha’s home in the Pyrenees with her wealthy uncle. But her visit is cut short one dark night when she goes to investigate a strange sound in the garage and is murdered. The small village is thrown into a panic, as she is the second young blonde woman found murdered that night and local police believe Satanists are responsible when they find an amulet at the scene of the crime.

This Italian-Spanish coproduction is the fourth collaboration between director Umberto Lenzi and American star Carroll Baker, though it is a marked contrast to Orgasmo, So Sweet… So Perverse, and Paranoia, all of which are erotic thrillers centered on a threesome gone wrong. Instead, Knife of Ice offers up very little sexual material and the only remotely erotic element is the skimpy nightgown worn by Italian star and giallo regular Ida Galli (La dolce vita, The Leopard, Hercules in the Haunted World) in her brief role as Jenny. Jenny’s appearance is not dissimilar to Janet Leigh’s lengthier turn in Psycho. This introduction of a major star who is then suddenly killed off, does come as quite a shock and in that sense, Knife of Ice is one of his most successful thrillers. By shedding the predictable formula of his early films (including the three with Carroll Baker and 1971’s Oasis of Fear), Lenzi manages to deliver a fairly gripping film with a number of effective red herrings and a surprising twist. He creates a paranoid world closing in around the mute, helpless Martha, where seemingly every character is a potential killer.

SPOILERS IN THIS ENTIRE PARAGRAPH: Fascinatingly, the actual murderer is revealed, at the absolute last minute, to be Martha herself in a twist that I perhaps should have seen coming, but didn’t. This is an early example of what would become a fairly popular trope in Italian horror, the female murderer. These characters can be found throughout Argento’s films in particular – though notably one of the earliest examples is Fulci’s Lizard in a Woman’s Skin. The majority of the characters are inspired to kill because of a traumatic past experience. A deeply embedded psychosis eventually emerges thanks to some trigger, one that seems slight, but brings about a violent change in personality.

Knife of Ice is also part of a handful of films released in 1972 that include an odd plot device. The police – and often the protagonists themselves – are thrown off the track of the killer, because they come to believe that the murders are being committed by a group of Satanists. Martha and Jenny’s Uncle Ralph (George Rigaud of Eyeball, Horror Express, The Case of the Bloody Iris) just happens to be an expert on the field and can help the police when they come across Satanic imagery and a drugged out Satan worshipper with psychotic eyes. Fulci’s Don’t Torture a Duckling and Sergio Martino’s All the Colors of the Dark have similar uses for devil worshippers or practitioners of black magic. This was also the same year for satanic horror films Dracula A.D. 1972, Virgin Witch, Bava’s Baron Blood, and others, following a genre craze that began in the ‘60s and came to a head the following year with The Exorcist.

The appearance of the satanic character (Spanish actor Mario Pardo) gives this film a mildly psychedelic, swinging ‘60s vibe that runs rampant throughout Lenzi’s earlier thrillers, but otherwise, this is a tame, mannered film that could be set almost any time after the ‘40s. Though there are four deaths, violence and gore are non-existent, with one notable and strange exception. Martha has flashbacks of a bull-fighting match she attended with Jenny some undisclosed time in the past. The horrified Martha watches as bull fighters attack and kill the bull (a real scene of animal violence, for the squeamish), while Jenny practically salivates with bloodlust beside her. This disturbing hint of what can only be described as sexual menaced is enhanced by the apparent guilt and/or sinister behavior of nearly all the male characters, including Martha’s doctor (Franco Fantasia), her driver (Eduardo Fajardo), and her uncle. It’s a shame this element wasn’t further developed.

The film’s final attribute worth mentioning are the strangely Gothic visuals, which replace the standard giallo use of vibrant, modern art-inspired set design and over-the-top use of primary colors. Knife of Ice primarily takes place in an old villa right next to a crumbling cemetery. The basement of the house resembles a crypt seen later in the film and the lovely, mountain-side town is beset with waves of fog several times a day, adding a built-in plot device. This restrained performance from Baker is one of her best and her lack of dialogue – combined with conservative, juvenile dresses and repressed mannerisms – make her seem far younger than 41.

This mannered, restrained giallo will not be for everyone, but Knife of Ice should please fans of elaborately plotted murder mysteries and thrillers with a Gothic atmosphere. It’s available on DVD and comes recommended, but don’t be fooled by the title. Though the original Italian, Il coltello di ghiaccio does translate directly to Knife of Ice, it’s connection to the plot is flimsy at best and refers to the Edgar Allen Poe quote that opens the film: “Fear is a knife of ice which penetrates the senses down to the depth of conscience.” This is obviously a reference to the identity of the killer and their motivations, as well as to the film’s Gothic imagery – though it doesn’t seem like this is actually something written by Poe, unless it was re-translated into English from a skewed Italian translation. I’d love to have the chance to ask Lenzi where this came from, as he’s still alive and kicking as I write this.

SEVEN BLOOD-STAINED ORCHIDS aka SETTE ORCHIDEE MACCHIATE DI ROSSO

Umberto Lenzi, 1972

Starring: Uschi Glas, Antonio Sabàto, Pier Paolo Capponi, Marisa Mell

A number of women are murdered by a mysterious, black-gloved killer. The only clue left at each crime scene is a piece of jewelry: an ornate, half-moon pendant. The only victim to escape is the third intended victim, Giulia. The police help her fake her death, while her boyfriend, Mario, tries to get to the bottom of the mystery and figure out the identity of the killer before it is too late. They soon trace the half-moon pendant back to a hotel Giulia once worked in; the other dead woman can also be linked back there in some way, and Giulia and Mario make a list of potential future victims. But will they locate the killer in time?

One of Lenzi’s few traditional giallo films, Seven Blood-Stained Orchids, also known as Puzzle of the Silver Half Moons, is also one of his most accessible. It’s a great place to start for relative giallo newbies, who are ready to move past Bava and Argento to other directors, as the film has some great murder set pieces and the plot is certainly less ridiculous than some other giallo scripts I can think of. To Lenzi’s credit, and things generally move towards a logical conclusion. The story is credited to both Edgar Wallace and Cornell Woolrich. Wallace was a British writer whose mystery/suspense novels kicked off an entire German genre in the ‘60s known as krimi films (read my introduction to this fun series for more information).

Cornell Woolrich, one of my favorite American writers, penned a series of bleak crime novels known as the Black series, which influenced film noir. They are generally all concerned with revenge killings. Rendezvous in Black, which supposedly influenced Seven Blood-Stained Orchids, follows a man whose fiancée died in an accident the night before their wedding. He tracks down the group of men responsible and, every year on the anniversary of his bride’s death, he murders one of their loved ones. While Seven Blood-Stained Orchids does not follow this frankly absurd plot about a drunken flight and deadly projectile, Lenzi’s killer mimics this pattern. In order to get revenge for a past trauma – equally as coincidental as the death in Rendezvous in Black – this incident has driven the killer mad and he murders every woman associated with the event, because he doesn’t know the identity of the responsible individual.

The themes of past traumas haunting the future, guilt, and evaded responsibility coming home to roost are standard giallo themes, but there is something light-hearted and almost innocent about Seven Blood-Stained Orchids. While so many giallo characters – including protagonists, victims, bystanders, and killers – are often portrayed as immoral, possessing dirty secrets, and capable of dark deeds, Mario and Giulia are surprisingly likable and oddly innocent. This may be something of an unintentional spoiler, but it would be only too easy for either Mario or Giulia to be the killer, but instead, they are refreshingly devoted to one another.

While I enjoy the general irrationality that comes with most giallo films, the killer here even has something of a reason for his/her crimes. There are still a fair amount of red herrings, including a case of identical twins, and some wonderfully suspenseful moments, such as a scene where a future victim finds her dying cats – recently poisoned by the killer – sprawled out on the floor of her home. Despite its title, Seven Blood-Stained Orchids is not dependent on gore. Several death scenes are implied, relying on tension alone, though there are some well-executed scenes of violence. In one such moment, the lovely Marisa Mell (Danger: Diabolik) meets a sticky end at the pointy end of a power drill. The film’s final reveal – no actual spoilers here – is also carefully controlled as Mario and the killer battle in a pool, allowing for a tense scene that takes its time to reveal the killer’s face. Guilia, who was nearly drowned to death, waits helplessly by.

Seven Blood-Stained Orchids is a pleasant, if run-of-the-mill affair that hits all the giallo notes, including a black-clad killer with leather gloves, but doesn’t offer anything particularly noteworthy or unique. Antonio Sabata (Beyond the Law) and German actress Uschi Glas (The College Girl Murders) are not the most compelling of giallo protagonists, and there are some glaring plot holes – namely the fact that I have no clue what the pendants actually have to do with anything. Despite these routine flaws, it’s a solid watch and is available on DVD from Shriek Show, and, as I mentioned, is a good starting place for giallo newcomers. It’s light-heated with plenty of funny moments and has an up-beat, jazzy score from the underrated Riz Ortolani. When you consider that 1972 was one of the giallo genre’s most prolific years, with films like Death Walks at Midnight, Who Saw Her Die?, The Killer is On the Phone, What Have You Done to Solange?, Case of the Bloody Iris, Delirium, and many more, Seven Blood-Stained Orchids is a level-headed, quality entry that proves Lenzi is capable of restraint, a fact belied by his later, gore-drenched works.

NEW YORK RIPPER aka LO SQUARTATORE DI NEW YORK

1982, Lucio Fulci
Starring: Jack Hedley, Almanta Suska, Howard Ross, Andrea Occhipinti, Alexandra Delli Colli, Daniela Doria

As horribly mutilated female corpses turn up around the city, the police department (headed by Fulci himself) is stumped. Jaded Lieutenant William is in charge of the case and calls for the aid of young psychotherapist, Dr. Davis, with the hope that they can at least get a psychological profile. Meanwhile, a woman named Jane looks for sex where ever she can get it – and records her exploits for her wheelchair-bound husband – but eventually stumbles into the arms of a killer. Fay, a local young woman, is targeted by a man with two missing fingers, but escapes with her life. She also has a disturbing dream that her boyfriend Peter, has tried to kill her with a knife, but he arrives to the hospital grateful that she is alive. Lieutenant Williams continues to receive taunting phone calls from the killer, who quacks like a duck.

Yes, the killer talks like Donald Duck. If you can get past that, you should be able to find your way towards the black, subversive heart of New York Ripper, Fulci’s most controversial film. Hated by many, and loved passionately by me, it’s arguably his most hateful film, a brutal and misogynistic reimagining of the giallo set in the heyday of New York sleaze. It also marks the end of his two year golden period, where he made some of his goriest and most notable works: Zombie (1979), City of the Living Dead (1980), The Black Cat (1981), The Beyond (1981), and House by the Cemetery (1981).

New York Ripper is not for the faint of heart, or the serious-minded. One of the things I’ve always loved most about Fulci is his sense of the surreal, the bizarre, and the whimsical. While there are elements of this in everything from Lizard in a Woman’s Skin to The Beyond, New York Ripper is simply packed full of surreal elements likely to aggravate the casual viewer. In addition to the killer quacking like Donald Duck, the dialogue has some real gusto (my favorite line occurs when the medical examiner tells the Lieutenant mid-autopsy that the latest victim had a knife stuck up her “joy trail”) and you’ll find everything from a never-ending game of futuristic chess to public toe sex.

The film’s sexual content is its main source of controversy. Many scenes are flat out softcore porn, and there are several characters who seek out sexual gratification. Jane goes to a live sex show, where it’s implied that she masturbates, is pleasured by a complete stranger’s toes at a café, and makes audio sex tapes for her husband. Even the Lieutenant visits a prostitute. From a sliced nipple and eyeball (courtesy of actress Daniela Doria, who Fulci killed imaginatively many times throughout his career) to a broken bottle jammed up the aforementioned joy trail, most of the violence is vividly splayed out across the hyper-sexualized female form by the enthused killer.

This is also, by far, his goriest film. While there is technically more blood and general fluids of decay in Zombie, City of the Living Dead, or The Beyond, New York Ripper absolutely has the most brutality. It also shares the nihilistic tone of Don’t Torture a Duckling, with which it has a fair amount in common. SPOILERS: In that film, the killer is a young, handsome, dark-haired priest (Marc Porel) murdering pre-teen boys to preserve their innocence. New York Ripper’s killer (Andrew Occipinti, who could be Porel’s brother) is murdering sexually mature and often promiscuous women because his young daughter is riddled with cancer and will die before she matures. In both cases, sexuality is the ultimate corrupter.

And like Don’t Torture a Duckling, there are essentially no likable characters, no warm relationships, no love, and no affection. There are many intimate relationships in the film, including husband/wife, boyfriend/girlfriend, and father/daughter, but none of these exhibit even the faintest signs of love. They are instead about control, necessity, and sexual need. At their core, they are all about a basic selfish, even sociopathic, desire for survival. What’s truly unsettling about this film is that instead of reasonably normal characters plagued by an abnormal killer (as in Argento's Tenebre), the killer's emotional state soaks into the very heart of New York Ripper.

I am morally obligated to recommend this film, even though you will likely hate it. The script from Dardano Sacchetti is delightfully nonsensical, full of some great red herrings and plot twists. All the random subplots and pieces of seemingly useless information found in the typical giallo come together in an emotionally icy conclusion, which comes as an absolute surprise and cements the film’s real message of nihilism and despair. Check out the Blu-ray from Blue Underground and prepare yourself for a filmic work unlikely any other.

THE PSYCHIC aka SETTE NOTE IN NERO

Lucio Fulci, 1977

Starring: Jennifer O’Neill, Gabriele Ferzetti, Marc Porel, Gianni Garko, Ida Galli

The newly married Virginia Ducci (played by the beautiful Jennifer O’Neill) has had reoccurring psychic episodes throughout her life. After dropping her husband off at his airplane one afternoon, she is struck with a series of visions that leave her terrified, because they are all clues to a murder that she believes has been committed. She shares this with her psychologist/ paranormal investigator friend (Marc Porel, recognizable as the priest in Don’t Torture a Duckling), who tells her she is being silly. But when she follows her instincts and discovers a woman’s body walled up in her husband's old villa – which she has been renovating – her friend agrees to help her investigate. It is quickly apparent that something is not right. The clues in her vision indicated a different dead woman and some of the other items in her vision are beginning to show up in her daily life. Is she in danger herself? And what did she really see?

Also known as Seven Notes in Black, this film is one of Fulci’s more underrated and understated efforts. It has barely any gore or nudity and it is more of supernaturally-charged thriller than an outright giallo film, but thanks to Fulci and screenwriter Dardano Sacchetti, it’s packed with twists and turns and is dripping with sexual menace.

Like some of the better giallo films, many important clues that still manage to give nothing away are presented early on, a la Argento’s Bird with the Crystal Plumage or Deep Red, and lead in a suspenseful if indirect line to murder. Both the audience and the protagonists fail to put these clues together until it is too late.

If you’re a mystery fan, as I am, this is a wonderfully entertaining little film that’s both intimate and restrained. It comes recommended for the sheer fact that it’s one of Fulci’s best written films and manages to capture Freud’s sense of the unheimlich (often translated to uncanny), so rarely seen in Italian ‘70s horror. This concept suggests a blending of the familiar and the alien often found in British ghost stories where the familiar (the household, the countryside) is a place of fear and terror, but also a place where one is inexplicably drawn. This sensation is often associated with the visual and Virgina’s visions are a perfect example: dreams cut into reality and past, present, and future fuse together. Her new home is a place of old – and possibly new – death, the literal skeleton in the closet.

The Psychic also exhibits a fair amount of Poe’s influence, as well as the female-focused noir and suspense films of the ‘40s and ‘50s. Like The Two Mrs. Carrolls, Rebecca, Gaslight, Suspicion, Sorry Wrong Number, and many more, The Psychic concerns a woman who is ultimately possessed by a deep-seated sexual anxiety, one where the home is a place of fear and repression and the husband is an alluring, but dangerous figure of mystery and menace. Virginia’s visions of death are also related to other women. She sees her mother’s suicide (a dive off a seaside cliff), the bloody face of an old woman, a magazine with a brunette on the cover, and, of course, the female skeleton boarded up behind the wall.

The film’s primary flaw is that the characters are unfortunately flat. Jennifer O’Neill, though lovely and incredibly stylish here, is not an actress possessing a great amount of range. Virginia is almost entirely devoid of personality and it would have been nice to see an actress with some gravitas in the role. This may be a fault of the writing, as all the other characters also feel like cardboard cut outs. In some sense, this works in the film’s favor, granting a character like Virginia’s husband a sizable amount of mystery.

Despite this somewhat minor issue, The Psychic comes recommended and will surprise anyone used to Fulci’s other, incredibly gory horror films. Not only does this not feel like a Fulci film, but it seems more British than it does Italian – an interesting experiment at the least and one that should please fans of quieter, more subdued horror. There is an uncut version available from Severin films, which I am reviewing (beware: the US version is closer to 90 minutes, while the European version is 97 minutes). The print is serviceable, but nothing special. Maybe someday this will be including in my dream Fulci box set with additional language tracks and special features. It’s a shame Fulci didn’t make any more like this, though I suspect that some of the ill-advised efforts from his later career were attempts to return to this creepy, cerebral realm (House of Clocks and Door to Silence… yikes).

DON’T TORTURE A DUCKING aka NON SI SEVIZIA UN PAPERINO

1972, Lucio Fulci

Starring: Florinda Bolkan, Barbara Bouchet, Tomas Milian, Irene Papas, Marc Porel

In the rural town of Accendura, in southern Italy, young boys are being murdered. A Roman journalist, Andrea, works with the local police to narrow down the pool of suspects, including a mentally handicapped man with peeping tom tendencies, a wealthy young woman lying low in the town to escape drug charges, a suspected witch, and more. It seems that everyone has something to hide, and they struggle to find the culprit before another boy is killed – or before mob justice overcomes the frightened and superstitious villagers.

Non si sevizia un paperino can be counted among Fulci’s early giallo films – along with One on Top of the Other and Lizard in a Woman's Skin -- that set him on the path away from his role as a director of mediocre Italian comedies towards his persona as the Godfather of Gore. Don’t Torture a Duckling is even a departure from his giallo films and thrillers, and is a dark and deeply personal work. He supposedly swore off political films after Beatrice Cenci – a historical fact-based drama that was a scathing attack on the Church and almost cost him his career – but he reexamined some of these themes with Don’t Torture a Duckling, a look at repression, hypocrisy, small town hysteria, and the evils of superstition and mob justice.

The film does not have a strong central character, but loosely focuses on a journalist (Italian crime film regular Tomas Milian) and a comely socialite (Bond girl Barbara Bouchet) who form an unlikely team, sticking to the giallo convention that the detective (or detectives) is almost always an amateur investigator, rather than a police officer or other official figure. Following a similar convention, the two are strangers to the small town and are separated from its day-to-day gossip, drama, and long-held superstitions. And like any giallo, there are numerous suspects, several false confessions, and mysterious alibis. The two do no so much solve the mystery as accidentally stumble across the truth, because they happen to be in the right place at the right time.

Don’t Torture a Duckling is unique from other giallo films in that it has a rural setting and the murder victims are children. While other films tackled these subjects – such as the rural set A Quiet Place in the Country or House with the Laughing Windows, and child murder-themed films like Who Saw Her Die? – Fulci’s film is more critical than the average giallo. Fulci provides some biting social criticism that stretches from small town mentality to an attack on the Church. The villagers of Accendura, no doubt a stand-in for rural Italians – have long ingrained prejudices and superstitions and they are quick to become hysterical and violent. In one of the film’s most stunning scenes, the townsfolk band together to murder one of the suspects, because despite proof that she did not murder the boys, she admits to being a witch.

And while the typical giallo film has copious amount of nudity and gratuitous shots of sexy Italian ladies, as well as sex, violence, and sometimes gore, Don’t Torture a Duckling has almost none of this. Though several children are killed, Fulci shows a surprising amount of restraint, leaving most of the gore for the scene where the witch is beaten to death. Instead, he crafts a series of unsettling imagery that is remarkably effective. The film’s uncomfortable attitude about sex – and sexual repression – is best exemplified by an early scene where the bored socialite, sitting naked in her room, tempts and torments a young boy. He is transfixed by her nudity, but is also made uncomfortable by it – as is the audience, seeing as he’s a pre-teen, still only on the verge of sexual maturity.

It took me several viewings to really warm up to Don’t Torture a Duckling, as it is an icy, hard-edged film with few sympathetic characters. But it’s also undeniably one of Fulci’s masterpieces and is unlike anything else in his career or in the giallo genre. While many of the latter present sexuality as cruel, calculating, and utterly utilitarian, here it is corrosive and corrupting. The murderer – whose identity I will not give away – is not a violent aberration, but rather captures the unconscious mood of a town, a country, a society, determined to view sexuality as an evil force, though Fulci shows that its repression is far more detrimental than its expression. In many ways, it’s something of a precursor to my favorite of Fulci’s films, albeit one that is almost universally hated, New York Ripper (1982) – another tale of morbid sexuality, serial murder, and the violent compulsion to protect and crystallize innocence.

Don’t Torture a Duckling comes recommended, though it’s far from the typical giallo. It’s available on DVD from Blue Underground, and the transfer is a little grainy, it’s the best you’re going to get for now. There is also an older Anchor Bay release from 2000 that you may be able to find somewhere online. This belongs in the special edition Blu-ray box set of Fulci films that will hopefully come out some day.