The Evil Eye (a.k.a The Girl Who Knew Too Much) 1963,,,,,,We're well aware that dedicated horror film buffs and historians judge this black-and-white Mario Bava film as the kick-off point for the 'Giallo' genre........we respectfully disagree.
We found very little in this strange little bi-polar murder mystery that anyone could trace to Giallos, those lurid, full-color sex-and-gore drenched slashfests that flourished in Euro-trash filmmaking throughout the 1970's........(the more likely jump-start that really put the genre on the map was Dario Argento's pivotal 1970 "The Bird With The Crystal Plumage" - check out our post of 5/8/17)
That's not to say 'The Evil Eye' isn't worth watching. In fact, the purely brilliant cinematics of Bava combined with the movie's nutso schizophrenic mood swings make it a 'must watch' for all horror buffs. Rather than the blood soaked death fetishes of Giallo', this seems closer in spirit to Alfred Hitchcock's mixture of murder and mirth, though far clumsier in execution.........
And yes, along its twisted path , you can spot some Giallo-style tropes and tidbits that later became staples of the genre.
The biggest plus here - the film's luscious, adorable ingenue Leticia Roman, playing an American girl visiting Rome to attend to an ailing elderly relative. Bava takes full advantage of Roman's most startling feature, her huge expressive eyes that manage to out-bulge those of Barbara Steele...(Italy's reigning horror diva and star of Bava's groundbreaking 'Black Sunday')
It doesn't take long for the plot to supply Roman with plenty of excuses to pop those peepers wide open in fright, starting with her witnessing a woman stabbed to death on Rome's famous landmark, the Spanish Steps........
But did the murder really happen? Or did she imagine it while already hysterical and upset from a violent mugging on the steps? And who's that mysterious patched-jacket guy whom she's unaware is stalking her? (And happens to look like the same guy she saw looming over the murdered woman.....)
Roman attempts to unravel the mystery with the help of an American doctor (John Saxon)....and the clues and red herrings lead them on the trail of a serial killer whose unsolved crimes stretch back decades.
If you're thinking this ought to provide Mario Bava with sufficient material to create some of his best trademark creepy staging and editing you're correct. And the director's expert use of the dark monochrome photography gives these sequences some extra sense of dread.
Then, when you least expect it, the movie takes wild 360 turns into either goofy slapstick comedy or bubbly, frothy 'Roman Holiday' romcom territory......we kid you not.
The jarring detours into laughs include Roman being ogled by a portrait of a dead relative......whose ghost then invisibly pinches her ass. Later she attempts to intruder-proof the house she's staying in by building a literal spider's web of twine around every room....(which kind of mimics the laser beam alarms we'd see in future heist capers). And while edging toward a climactic reveal of the serial killer, she and Saxon take time out to perform a sprightly, gag laden romcom montage tour of Rome's most familiar postcard sights.....a la Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepbuern in you-know-what.
We've no way of knowing if all these crazy shifts in tone were due to the film having no less than six screenwriters (including Bava) or its most probable heavy re-editing by the post production team of American International, the shlockmeisters who released the film in the U. S.
We do know that the back-and-forth between the obvious jokes and the scares somehow made for a strangely entertaining experience........and the film's final and most inventive visual gag would make even Hitchcock chuckle a bit.
For all those various reasons, the stunning Leticia Roman, the unnerving suspense scenes whipped up by master Bava and even the screwy tries at screwball comedy, we'll leniently award 3 stars (***).......but regardless of what you read elsewhere, this one may be many things, but it's most assuredly not the dawn of 'Giallo'
No comments:
Post a Comment