Welcome back to Dark Corners Streaming.
‘Good morning.’
When it comes to that uniquely Italian genre, Giallo,
I admit to being a novice having only seen a handful of films.
So I can’t offer any particular insight into 1972’s Eye in the Labyrinth,
which you can stream on Amazon, but I know what I like.
‘Where is Lucas Bernard?’
‘I don’t know.’
And what I like about giallo is that sense of it being Film noir’s sexy Italian cousin,
replacing stark black and white with bright primary colours
and the subtle inferences slipped past Hollywood censors with a more direct approach to sex.
‘Thinking I was alone, I took off my bathing suit to sunbathe and in the nude.’
and murder.
Spiced with post-Psycho pop psychology.
‘She was my daughter, Lucy’
This does leave the genre prone to exploitation
but while Eye In the Labyrinth has the usual girls in bikinis.
including an early role for Sybil Danning,
and occasionally uncomfortable violence,
it doesn’t rely on that, that’s not what keeps you watching.
What works here, and another thing the genre inherits from Noirs like The Big Sleep is the vaguely plotted mystery.
‘Lucas!’
Rosemary Dexter’s Julie hunts for her missing boyfriend through a sea of red herrings,
near misses
and doorways to nowhere,
still finding time for occasional skinny dipping,
before zeroing in on an idyllic clifftop villa
populated by the of privileged artists, lovers and layabouts who exist only in giallo movies,
‘Thomas, Eugene’s feeling me up.’
and run by Gerda, played by the great Alida Valli,
already approaching the 4th decade of a career that would eventually run to almost seven.
Plus, Thunderball’s Adolpho Celi
as retired mobster Frank.
‘I must say you’ve got a lively imagination’
The plot meanders through a series of events and encounters that may or may not have something to do with Lucas’s disappearance,
‘Frank you’re crazy, I have nothing to do with this thing’
and it has to be said, our interest in that disappearance does wax and wane through the course of the movie but,
frankly, so does Julie’s.
‘You were lying weren’t you?’
In giallo, the mystery is more important than the solution
and the journey more important than the destination.
‘You shall die with no mercy.’
Get that tricky balance wrong, and you are left with a stylish but totally unengaging movie.
Get it right, and you get something like Eye in the Labyrinth
‘What does this mean?’
It means, I don’t really care what happened to Lucas
but I do care what happens to Julie,
and while I don’t fully understand her story, it is never boring.
This does come with the caveat that everything I just said is chucked out for a long, explanatory final act,
that the film really didn’t need and if I was watching it again I would turn off ten minutes before the end.
‘A naked woman doesn’t have to go into explanations, especially if she is as young and beautiful as you.’
I prefer the mystery.
'Open your mouth.'
Thanks for watching. As I said I am a bit of a Giallo novice, what are the five films I should see to get into it?
Classics, hidden gems whatever. Let us know in the comments below.