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Customer Reviews of A Blade In The Dark

Entertaining Enough. 3.5
This is the only Lamberto Bava movie I've seen, and it's pretty good. It's a giallo, and massively influenced by Dario Argento's work, particularly 'Tenebre'. (On which Bava was a assistant director, I believe) And no, it's not as good as that movie, or 'Deep Red' or 'Opera', but if you like all those films I think you'll at least find this to be quite watchable, and there's a good chance that you'll rather like it. <
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>As with all giallo or slasher films, the quality of this film is primarily derived from how interesting the murder/horror scenes are. Fortunately, the ones here are quite good. Unfortunately, all the other aspects of this film are a bit sub par, but this doesn't effect the overall enjoyment level of this film much. 'A Blade in the Dark' was originally made with Italian television in mind, which likely hurt the film in a number of ways. First of all, it doesn't appear to have been made with an English audience in mind, so the dubbing isn't up to snuff, either in terms of performance or translation.(And the dubbing/dialogue never tends to be very good in this sorta film) It is never really incoherent, I guess, but it's pretty damn inelegant most of the time, and is occasionally laughably stilted and unrealistic. That, and there are some rather weird translations, such as when one character refers to another as 'cockroach', in a manner which suggests that this is a term of endearment. The basic plot is that there is a musician living out in a large, empty house, where there are a number of murders.(Or apparent murders. They don't find the bodies until late in the film.) Part of the reason it doesn't work as a mystery is because it's trying to hard to hide the killers identity. Virtually everyone is setup as a potential suspect, but no one really stands out, and the only way to figure out the killer's identity would be to be abundantly familiar with the genre's clichés. And there isn't really much of an investigation. The characters just sorta sit around and talk about who the killer might be, or whether there really is a killer at all. <
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>Yeah, this film is far from plausible, but I don't really buy that it is any less plausible than your average Argento film. Sure, nobody calls the police, but no charred dummies are mistaken for corpses, nor are vengeful ravens used to identify the killer(Opera), no apartments are left unwatched by the police despite the fact that the killer is known to have dropped a note off there, in person, and will almost certainly do so again (Tenebre) and the entire investigation does not depend upon sheer luck and happenstance (Deep Red). (Well, actually it arguably does, but that only makes it equally implausible) Still, the whole murder-mystery is less interesting than in those films, for the aforementioned reasons. The film also has some pacing problems, which I suspect may have been created by it's intended medium.(It would need to fit into a time slot, on TV) Thus, the latter portions of the film are a bit too talky, with characters frequently just sorta rambling on without really discovering much. <
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>This film isn't as stylish as lots of other Italian stuff, but it's nicely crafted, particularly during the murder scenes. It lacks any elaborate camera movements or surreal sets and lighting, but it is nicely shot, and the murder scenes have got a nice rhythm to them. Sadly, the first two death scenes are definitely the most interesting ones. The first one is the best, and it's really quite brilliant. It's a very extended scene, showing both the stalking and killing, juxtaposed with shots of our musician protagonist working on his music, and the following disposal of the body, and the near discovery of it by said protagonist.(I can't come up with his name right now. Sorry.) The most effective part is when the killer is dragging the body over a staircase, with the head brutally thumping itself against the steps again and again. The next, more famed scene, is less extensive, but still quite impressive. It is one of the most brutal murders I've seen in this sort of film, and it has a fairly nice, extended buildup, but there are a few basic execution flaws. Most notably, it involves smashing someone's head against a counter, repeatedly, but the attempt is less than convincing, as the killer sometimes lifts the head all of an inch of the counter before smashing it again, and it often doesn't seem to be being done with any real force. That, and I swear the sound isn't quite in synch some of the time, so that the smashing sound doesn't come at the right moment.(I haven't watched it carefully enough to know for sure, however). Still, it's a very effective scene, with a very cold and vicious finish. The rest of the murder scenes aren't as interesting or original, but they get the job done. The film isn't terribly gory, but it is very forthright and harsh with the violence, which probably works better overall, and is fairly typical of this sort of film. <
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>The film looks and sounds pretty decent, as you'd expect for an Anchor Bay release. Lastly, in case you didn't notice, you ought not to buy this version of the film, as there is the 'A Blade in the Dark'/'Macabre' disc which is also available. I haven't actually watched 'Macabre' yet, so I can't vouch for it's quality, but that disc only costs half as much as this one, and I'm betting that `Macabre' is worth -15 dollars, at the very least.

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A Dario Argento He's Not
Lamberto Bava is lucky to have a dad like Mario. According the the bio in the DVD, his dad used to feign illness to let Lamberto direct scenes from "Shock." How nice of the more talented Bava to humor him like that! It also said that Mario asked Lamberto to help him with scripts when the story wasn't so good. After you watch "A Blade in The Dark," you'll ask yourself, "What was Mario thinking?" <
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>This movie begins promisingly enough. Three young kids (although sadly, none of them are malevolent) enter an old creepy building late at night. One of them throws a tennis ball down a long, dark staircase. In some sort of bizarre Cool Kids Club initiation ritual, the two really tough kids tell the third wimpy kid he has to go down and get it. If he doesn't do it, he's a sissy little girl. They begin to chant, "You're a female, you're a female," over and over again until he starts down the stairs. (Thanks, boys. Some of us were born this way!) Seconds later, we hear a scream, and the tennis ball flies up and hits the wall behind the two boys, leaving a bloody stain. <
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>After then, the opening credits begin, and the awesomeness has ended. We then learn that the prologue is actually a scene from a horror film the main character has been contracted to score. As it turns out, the scene was based on an actual event that happened to someone the director really knew. Alright! I can get behind that! That opening scene really held my interest! I wanna know what happens next! Tell me more! <
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>Sadly, I never got to find out. The "traumatic childhood experience," that is obviously very central to the plot, is never explained. All we know is that it was based on a story told to the director by her friend, but never what the whole story actually was. What we never find out is what really went on down there, why did the little kid scream, and most importantly, why was the tennis ball bloody? <
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>Like most giallos, this one is about a regular guy who is not a detective or a police officer, who is trying to solve a murder. Dario Argento, undoubtedly the master of the giallo, usually has his protagonist as an eye witness to a murder who sees some weird detail that he is sure is important, but the police don't take him seriously. This leads to the protagonist trying to solve the mystery himself. But this, of course, is AFTER the protagonist has already gone to the police and they didn't buy his theory. This isn't really a very hard concept to work into your script. However, this guy never even goes to the police. The director he's working for asks him the same question I'd been dying to ask the entire movie. "Why don't you call the police?" He explains that since there are no bodies, they would think he was nuts. Well, if you don't have a body, you can't make an arrest, and it's true that none of them have been found yet. But this is AFTER he's found a blade-shaped hole in his bathroom counter top with blood coming out of it. Now, I think that constitutes physical evidence of foul play, don't you? That at least warrants a police investigation. Maybe if they did a search of the area, they could find out where those bodies are? <
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>I know that if the police had gotten involved, he would have been asked to leave the house, and there would be no movie. Call me an armchair quarterback if you want to. I'm not trying to say that if I found a bloody dent in my bathroom, I would react more rationally. But Argento was able to create characters that were believably obsessed with solving the puzzle. This guy's only motivation is his safety, and that's a problem that could be easily solved by calling the police. <
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>Let's quickly review this movie's strength's: for one thing, it has the hot babe who played Eva in Aenigma, the Lucio Fulci film that borders on the absurd. (I say that as if it's the only one.) Not that I really care about that hot babe, or anything, I just thought you might. Also, the death scene in the bathroom was very well done. Lamberto managed to do the blade-through-the-hand thing even better than the master Argento did in "Phenomena." That's pretty impressive, because I don't think I ever recall watching any horror movie and saying to myself, "they did that better than Argento!" even if it was in "Sleepless." <
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>Getting back to other things that really annoyed me...there is a red herring that makes no sense whatsoever. We find out that one character has been telling ridiculous lies about where she's been. The main character even goes to the trouble of finding a PHONE BOOTH to make the call to find this out. Anybody who watches giallos knows that a phone booth means serious business, and an important plot point is about to be revealed. However, as it turns out, these gigantic lies have nothing whatsoever to do with the story, and we never even find out why she told them! Now I can appreciate the red herring. And I know that if you don't have at least one, Dario Argento will kick you out of his Super Secret Giallo Society. But if you're going to have the main character enter a phone booth to discover someone else was lying to him big time, you obviously want us to think she's the killer. Then, when you pull the rug out from under us, (you really had me going with that phone booth) could you at least explain what the heck was going on there? <
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>Lamberto Bava's finest moment was by far the supernatural horror flick, "Demons." In that movie, people enter a theatre and begin to transform into Demons for reasons that seem to exist, but don't really make much sense. But that part doesn't matter, because it's fun. Unfortunately, "A Blade In The Dark," is a giallo, and when giallos don't make sense, they just don't work.

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You Are A Female! You Are A Female!
Lamberto Bava's A BLADE IN THE DARK from 1983 is one of the greatest giallos of all time regardless of the dubbing, which is rather incongruous and weird at times. This movie is a combination of the great Dario Argento's DEEP RED (my favorite giallo) and TENEBRE (Awesome ending!), where a composer is drawn into a bizarre murder mystery involving the former tenant of the villa that he's rented to compose a horror movie score. This movie had me on the edge of my seat whenever the killer was on the loose; the box cutter clicking made my skin crawl and the bathroom scene made me cringe with fear! The scene where the director of the horror movie in question gets strangled by the film of her own final reel, the one she doesn't anyone to see, left an impression on me; this was perfectly ironic and kind of humorous when you consider that the director is killed by her own movie! I also like the humorous tone of this movie (I actually read the booklet that came with the DVD, which is how I learned about the sense of humor); this must be a precursor to SCREAM in that respect.
Lamberto Bava learned a lot from his father Mario and Argento, with whom he worked with on INFERNO and TENEBRE, which is why this film is so good. I loved the music score in this one as well and I still have it stuck in my head as I write this review! In my opinion, although I knew about this movie since I read about it on Terrortrap.com (which summarized the entire film), the way the killer is revealed made me scream just like the ending in TENEBRE did! A must for giallo buffs and horror movie fans alike!