This is an odd one. It still falls heavily into the serious nameless faceless killer stalking victims, spoken in giallo, but it has a weird bent to it. Goofy, almost, while (almost) always serious in situations, though. The tone is all over the place, both musically and storily. But it does have a scene that literally raised the hair on my head it was so creepy. Is it worth it? Maybe watch the shorter version, I imagine that scene is in there too, it’s too fuckin bizarre to cut.
Goblin’s music opens it (the first of many Argento films to follow), it appropriately sets the mood for some psychic shenanigans. Then we find Piano-Man Marcus is just tryin to do some dirty jazz, and meetin up with his fellow piano-man drunkard buddy, markedly different in his approach. But then a muuuuuurder, from the very same building Marcus lives in, and they witness it from below in the street. Glassy. Brutal. And for whatever reason, it sticks like toilet-paper to Marcus’s shoe, and he just can’t shake it off. Despite being a piano man, he Inspector Clouseau’s the shit outta it to get to the bottom of his memory of the murder scene. Well, if he were French. But this is Italian. So whatever the Italian version of Clouseau is, he does it!
There’s a shorter version of this movie out there, and I have to say maybe watch that? But the weird sides to it make it what it is too. While the camera work is stellar, macro-lens close-ups in some really cool moving shots or just interesting framing, the story itself is a bit all over the place, some odd tangents, and a dude that looks so much like middle-aged Javier Bardem it’s kind of disturbing in its own right. It is stylishly told, though. That’s a common theme with these movies. The logics may be all kinds of flawed, but you sure as shit will see some nice-lookin scenes and blood so thick you can paint a front door with it.
