THE FIFTH CORD aka GIORNATA NERA PER L’ARIETE

Luigi Bazzoni, 1971

Starring: Franco Nero, Silvia Monti

Andrea, a journalist with a drinking problem, is at a New Year’s Eve party where one of the guests is attacked and hospitalized. The man is convinced that it was an attempted murder and soon enough the bodies – mostly guests from the party -- begin piling up around Andrea. In order to avoid becoming the main suspect himself, he begins investing the crime; even though he was at the party, he was too drunk to remember the events of the evening. He learns that his mistress and his former lover may be involved, and the only real clue is a series of black gloves with various fingers cut off left behind by the killer.

Clearly building off the success of Dario Argento’s The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, The Fifth Cord – the title actually translates to Black Day for the Ram and it’s also known as Evil Fingers or Silent Killer – is an underrated effort with a solid lead performance and some effective moments of suspense. It borrows The Bird with the Crystal Plumage’s composer, the great Ennio Morricone, cinematographer Vittorio Storaro (also known for his work with Bernardo Bertolucci), and the premise that the protagonist saw something of vital importance, but can’t remember exactly what. While Bird’s protagonist didn’t realize exactly what he was seeing, The Fifth Cord’s Andrea is simply an alcoholic – a device that believably wipes his memory and also makes him something of a likable scoundrel.

Italian B-movie star Franco Nero – mostly known for his spaghetti western roles – was excellent in the earlier proto-giallo A Quiet Place in the Country and is really the best thing about The Fifth Cord. His character is sort of a raconteur; a not so hard-working journalist who specializes in whiskey and women and is charming despite his many flaws. In typical giallo fashion, he’s a reluctant detective, driven to solve the crime only to keep himself from being arrested (or killed). I am perhaps biased writing this review, as I would watch a movie where Nero scraped paint off the walls (which he nearly does in A Quiet Place in the Country) and probably walk away content. He is certainly the film’s weighted center and remains a stable presence – despite his character’s unstable personality – in the face of dozens of characters and a somewhat flimsy plot.

POTENTIAL SPOILER: The primary plot issue is that Andrea wades through a series of clues to uncover an underground sex ring that involves minors. This sleazy element is disappointingly forgotten by the end of the film and it winds up as little more than a red herring. The overall tone is not quite lurid enough to be in league with a Lucio Fulci movie, but it goes a long way towards making everyone – including Andrea – a potential killer. The stylish cinematography, which eschews the vivid color palette of many giallo films, is dark and moody, with an emphasis on nighttime shots, overcast skies, and heavy blues. The death scenes have an especially grim feeling, certainly more so than The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, and tension is ratcheted up by a number of creepy moments – such as when the killer records a confessions and plans for future murders.

Director Luigi Bazzoni didn’t make a lot of giallo films, but the three he did helm are some of the most unusual entries in the genre. His early film, The Possessed (1965), dealt with a woman’s mysterious suicide at a lake resort and plenty of sleazy sexual intrigue, while the latter Le orme aka Footsprints on the Moon (1975) is a delightfully chilling tale of psychological disintegration complete with a woman’s haunting dreams of an astronaut. What Bazzoni really brought to The Fifth Cord was the sense that all the characters are corrupt, morally flawed, or at least carrying a dirty secret, and that violent could erupt at any moment in such a compromised universe.

Fortunately available on DVD, The Fifth Cord might not be in the very top-tier of giallo classics, but it’s well worth seeing. Even if it’s sometimes difficult to keep the characters straight, there are a lot of familiar faces, including giallo actresses Rosella Falk (The Black Belly of the Tarantula), Silvia Monti (Lizard in a Woman’s Skin), and Ira von Füstenberg (Five Dolls for an August Moon), as well as The Bird with the Crystal Plumage’s Renato Romano. There are effective death scenes, a particularly chilling concluding sequence where the killer menaces, a child, and plenty of suspense. But hey, if all these pictures of Franco Nero haven’t convinced you, nothing will.

A QUIET PLACE IN THE COUNTRY aka UN TRANQUILLO POSTO DI CAMPAGNA

Elio Petri, 1969

Starring: Franco Nero, Vanessa Redgrave

Leonardo, a painter, is going through a creative slump and is tormented by violent nightmares. He spies an old villa out in the country and becomes obsessed with the idea of owning it. His agent and lover, Flavia, eventually gives in and purchases the house, though it needs a lot of work and seems to intentionally drive her away. Meanwhile, Leonardo begins painting again, but is transfixed by a legend of the house’s previous owner, a beautiful and promiscuous young woman who died there in the ‘40s. She fuels his sadomasochistic fantasies, and the lines between fantasy and reality begin to blur with violent results.

This Italian-French coproduction from director Elio Petri (The 10th Victim, Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion) is relatively unique in the annals of giallo films in that it features a major international star, as well as an Italian cult star. Vanessa Redgrave and Franco Nero were a couple at the time, after their meeting on the set of Camelot (1967). Though they split after a few years together, they reunited and married in 2006. During their time as a couple in the late ‘60s, they made a series of unconventional films together, including two films with Tinto Brass: Drop-Out (1970), where a housewife meets a drifter and they go on an unusual journey together, and La vacanza (1971), about a woman sent to a mental asylum when her aristocratic lover tires of her.

Though Nero appears far more than Redgrave, they are both spectacularly over the top in A Quiet Place in the Country. This unusual film has plenty of giallo elements — it certainly would not be the last to examine a descent into madness or a painter’s violent adventures in the Italian countryside — though it is not strictly a giallo film. Based on Oliver Onions’ Victorian-set novella, The Beckoning Fair One, there are plenty of elements of Gothic and psychological horror, and it includes some surprisingly effective notes of the ghost story. For much of the film it is unclear if the Countess’s ghost is haunting Leonardo or if he is just losing his mind. The house certainly seems hostile to Flavia, causing her physical harm and driving her from the building — to the apparent bemusement of Leonardo. It is also unclear if Leonardo is vandalizing his own studio and spilling paint everywhere, or if some supernatural force is responsible. There is also an excellent seance sequence towards the end of the film that serves as the tipping point to madness.

Regardless of the explanation, Leonardo’s obsession with the Countess leads to the blurring between his fantasy world and reality, resulting in some beautiful sequences. The hallucinatory elements of this film transcend the typical giallo, but can be found in the incredibly creepy (and admittedly superior) House with the Laughing Windows, or films like The Perfume of the Lady in Black. The lovely cinematography is from Argento collaborator Luigi Kuveiller — with camera work from Fulci collaborator Ubaldo Terzano — and while there is often a lot of beauty in the many urban-set giallo films, I wish the genre had more of these rural pieces that focus on the splendor, yet inherent creepiness of pastoral Italy.

The villa is incredibly beautiful and the contrast between shots of golden wheat and the rich wood of the building with snippets of Leonardo’s paintings provides a surprising amount of tension. The paintings, from American Neo-Dadaist Jim Dine, are explosively colorful, abstract works done in primary colors, far closer to the images of blood that haunt Leonardo than to the picturesque landscape. Thematically, the film also expresses this divide between a quiet, contemplative, and creative life, and the financial demands put upon a commercially popular artist. Flavia, so viciously attacked by Leonardo’s subconscious and/or the ghost of the Countess, is the signifier of the commercial world. She wants Leonardo to be charming around potential investors and, though she obviously loves him, constantly exerts the pressure to paint, to produce. Their sexual relationship — fueled by pornography and fetishism — seems to aggravate the core of Leonardo’s mania, which is further triggered by the story of the nymphomaniac Countess.

Available on DVD, A Quiet Place in the Country comes highly recommended. A near perfect blend of giallo, ghost story, and art house film, it’s one of the most beautiful works in the giallo canon. It also boasts a fantastic score from Ennio Morricone, which blends anxiety-inducing jazz with sounds of nature, such as crickets, wind, and more. It’s also pleasantly over the top, thanks to a maniacal performance from Italy’s most handsome man, Franco Nero, who delightfully contributes to the film’s final twist. Though this might not be a true giallo and certainly has its flaws, it’s a wonderful film that shouldn’t be as neglected or ignored as it is today.