I must be in the mood for older Italian movies lately. After Zombi 2, I might have had enough of the sort of crazy that comes from Italian horror, but The Criterion Channel has The Bird with the Crystal Plumage listed under a giallo collection, meaning it’s less a horror movie and more of a psychological thriller. My understanding is giallo movies often feature the sorts of elements that are typically seen in exploitation movies, and if they are considered horror, it’s more likely to be of the slasher type. Then again, my experience with these sorts of movies, limited though they may be, is they can go all over the map.
As it is, Bird with the Crystal Plumage is also the directorial debut of Dario Argento, director of the original Suspiria, and that one for sure is a horror movie.
Sam Dalmas (Tony Musante) is an American writer vacationing in Rome with his English girlfriend Julia (Suzy Kendall). One night while walking home alone, he passes an art gallery and sees a woman inside being attacked by a man with a knife. He manages to get someone to call the police, and the woman will live. That’s good. However, Sam is now the only one who has caught so much of a glimpse of a nasty serial killer targeting random women across Rome. That makes him a valuable witness, and the police decide to hold onto his passport for the time being.
As such, there really is only one thing for Sam to do: help the police find the killer by basically conducting his own investigation. He didn’t quite get a good look at the man with the knife, and the woman he saved, Monica Ranieri (Eva Renzi), isn’t going to talk to Sam if her husband Alberto (Umberto Raho) seems to have anything to say about it. A visit to an antique shop where the first victim works offers a possible clue in the form of a painting of a woman being attacked by a man with a knife. However, Sam’s investigation leads to threatening phone calls from the killer against Julia. Can Sam find the killer before the killer finds Julia?
I came into this expecting something a bit crazy, and aside from a scene where Sam goes to see the artist who created the painting from the antique shop, it’s really a very standard serial killer investigation movie. Sam looks for clues, finds them, and every so often, the killer strikes again. Sure, Sam and Julia seem to spend a lot of time, shall we say, enjoying each other company given what’s going on, but the movie was not what I was expecting, and that strikes me as a good thing here. If I am expecting all kinds of things but get something that is actually somewhat standard-looking, then I can still be surprised.
And that is not in any way, shape, or form a bad thing. There are some very suspenseful moments, and the reveal of the killer is a rather clever twist. I’m not sure why The Criterion Channel had the movie in dubbed English–something that struck me as odd since Criterion usually runs movies in the language they were made in–is about the only thing I would complain about, and “complain” is far too strong a word as it was a bit obvious that many of the characters weren’t speaking English. This is a well-made thriller, one that showed some real talent for a director in his first feature film. I may have to look into more of this stuff.
Grade: B+
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