A Blade in the Dark (1983)

Sadly Over-hyped

Highly Overrated But Still Good

n my opinion it was a great movie with some interesting elements, even though having some plot holes and the ending probably was just too messy and crammed together, but still fun to watch and not your casual movie that is similar to all other ones.

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

Being left bored by Lamberto Bava and Stanko Molnar muddling first collaboration Macabre,I entered their second collaboration with greatly decreased expectations.and since having learned that Bava had a three year break between his first and second film,the gap in time seems to have made Bava much more focus,with his second effect being a tense,speedy Giallo/Slasher-hybrid.The plot:Scoring a horror film in a rented villa,Bruno asks the director to give him the final reel of the film for him to score,which she weirdly seems keen on holding on for herself.Later on that night,Bruno meets a woman at the villa called Katia,who he cant remember having ever met before.With having enjoyed his chat with Katia,Bruno looks all over the villa to find her again.Falling to find Katia, (who,unbeknown to him has been vicusly murdered)Bruno instead stumbles upon a deranged looking diary.Suspecting that something nasty is accruing at the villa,Bruno goes to meet the director to find out the truth about the villa and her horror film.Eventally she caves in,and starts to tell Bruno that one of the main infolances of her film was her sister,who was also the previous tente of the villa,until she had suddenly disappeared.Returning to his recording studio,Bruno begins to fear that he is not alone in the villa,when he finds that the diary and the reels of film have been cut to bits by a very sharp blade... View on the film:On the making of included on the excellent Blue Underground DVD,Lamberto Bava mentions that with having been given only six weeks to shoot the film,he had to rush like crazy to complete the film on time,which surprised me quite a bit,due to Bava showing a lot of attention to creating a tense film which moves at a strong,brisk pace.For his vastly improved directing,Lamberto uses a good number of great tracking shots,which helps to give a strong creeping sensation that the killer may be about to appear from any corner of the isolated villa.Along with the tracking shots,Bava turns the film into a fantastic Giallo/Slasher genre mash-up!,with the scenes of the killer slowly heading down to the next floor where Bruno is attempting to hide being truly edge of the seat stuff,with Bava cranking the tension up to as high as he can.Along with the Giallo murder mystery side,Lamberto shoots most of the great,gory murder scenes with a strong "Slasher" eye,with the blade constantly shimmering in the scenes,as the murders are shoot in a more impact-focus way,and a noticablely less pop-art stylised way.For the screenplay writers Dardano Sacchetti and Elisa Briganti cleverly make sure that you never have a moment to step back from the movie,to notice that 90% of the film is taking place in one building.To cover any signs of budget/shooting limitation's,Sacchetti and Brigant create a Giallo that keeps branching out sections of the story into new,scary area's.And although some of the characters are disappointingly under- written,Sacchetti and Brigant include a brilliant sting in this Giallo/Slasher tale,which completely got me by surprise,and had a good impact on me due to the tense mystery which Bava had been building up since the start of the film.Final view on the film: An extremely brisk,well-paced Giallo/Slasher mash-up,with a good cast,a tense,tightly-written screenplay and stunningly improved directing from Lamberto Bava.

Lamberto Bava may not have the awesome movie making talents of his father Mario, but all the same; he has directed a number of good genre flicks, and for my money; this Giallo is the best of them. The film takes obvious influence from Dario Argento's phenomenal eighties Giallo 'Tenebre' (which Lamberto Bava had a hand in), as well as a certain other influential classic film that I can't name for fear of spoilers. The film was clearly made on a low budget as the cinematography looks cheap and most of the film takes place around just one location - but Lamberto doesn't let this hinder him, and that's a big credit to him as a director. The plot focuses on Bruno, a composer who goes to a secluded villa to work on a score for a horror movie. It's not long before he meets some women that used to know the person who was there before him, and it's not long after that the women begin to disappear! Naturally, Bruno decides to investigate the disappearances, and it's not long before he realises that they have something to do with the movie he's working on...Compared to other Lamberto Bava films, and other Giallo's, the body count here is rather low. However, every murder in the film is memorable, and that is largely thanks to the fact that they're all so brutal! The bathroom murder is somewhat notorious in its own right, and the film also features a couple of brutal knife slayings and someone being repeatedly bashed on the head with a spanner! The cast is made up of lesser known performers, though they all do their jobs well. Andrea Occhipinti is interesting enough in the lead role, and he is supported by a host of beautiful women, which is nice. The film also features a role for Michele Soavi; whom cult fans will recognise as another Argento-trained director. The central setting is well used and Bava manages to spring a foreboding atmosphere from the house and its grounds. The film also features a creepy sequence that involves some kids and a tennis ball that is liable to stick in the memory long after it's over. The conclusion is an obvious rip off of another film and it's just a bit silly too; but all the same, A Blade in the Dark is a fun little Giallo and I certainly recommend it.

Composer Bruno is hired to complete the music for an up and coming horror film, and to get the job done without much interruption. He decides to rent out a secluded villa, but his work gets sidetrack when he believes that some ravishing young woman who have disappeared have been murdered within the villa. So naturally he looks into it, and finds out there might actually be a connection there with the old tenant of the house and the movie he's composing.If there was a film I wanted to like, Lamberto Bava's cruel, perverse Giallo piece "A Blade in the Dark" is one. The concept behind the story showed promised, and the build up to the inventive deaths and their eventual outcomes were sadistically effective. It's a maliciously crazy shocker, and it sure does come off excruciatingly bloody. Lamberto execution showed flair, atmosphere and bite with his swaying visuals. However I found the moments in between terribly slack and Elisa Briganti and Dardano Sacchetti's tedious script was just too sloppy and meandering. When the humid material delivers its revelation, we've seen it before to really be surprised and satisfied. Even the performances felt forced, and mainly stuffy. The grating dubbing didn't help one bit. A mundane Andrea Occhipinti never convinced me in the lead and Michele Soavi came off ridiculous. The cast did have some beauties in the shape of Lara Naszinsky (truly gorgeous), Fabiola Toledo (what a stunner) and Valeria Cavalli. Maurizo and Guida De Angelis' forebodingly hypnotic music score was a nice stroke, and there's a creative mixture of bone rattling sound FX. Even the choice of location rubs off nicely with its brooding isolated villa. Gianlorenzo Battaglia's cinematography shows few jolting flourishes, but more often follows the book.Mediocre, if diverting Giallo that's spoilt in the long run by its unneeded padding and lumbering nature.

Let's face it, this is 70's style garbage inspired by similar movies of that time like "Profondo rosso". OK, that wasn't a perfect movie either, but at least there were decent actors in it and Dario Argento's taste for suspense and some interesting camera angles. Lamberto Bava unfortunately doesn't have a clue of what the elements for a good thriller are (maybe his dad just gave him the money to make the movie but not enough good advices), and ends up with trite murder scenes and a boring soundtrack trying to make a movie that would like to be as taunting as Deep red but actually looks more like Tenebre, possibly the first Dario Argento's movie to start his downward inspirational spiral...What is interesting to notice is the dubbed voice of a very young Andrea Occhipinti (he could never act, not even when he got older anyway..) and the killer in the movie that is an evil transvestite...I guess Andrea wanted that part so badly, or maybe he was even straight at the time, like George Michael. Things change.