source: The Third Eye

Moviecut—The Third Eye

source: The Third Eye

THE THIRD EYE is a proto-giallo made on a low budget and in black and white. This is more of a psycho-thriller in the Hammer mould than a Bava-style giallo. There's a debt of inspiration owed to Hitchcock's PSYCHO. If a sense of familiarity comes to you while watching, it's because Joe D'Amato virtually remade the movie for his 1979 nasty, BLUE HOLOCAUST. As a psychological thriller this is an interesting little film, with the usual bunch of nasty characters holed up in a rambling mansion. There's the dominating old mother, the conniving housekeeper, and the wayward son; the son's innocent bride-to-be soon learns of the madness inherent in the household. The requisite number of plot twists hold the attention throughout, and there's plenty of style to boot. Some of the violence is explicit for the period and the taxidermy theme can be unpleasant. Some of the acting is a little histrionic but overall this is an interesting, albeit neglected, curio. Franco Nero headlines the cast prior to achieving fame as DJANGO.

A troubled young Count (Franco Nero), living in a crumbling villa with his domineering mother, takes comfort in taxidermy (sound familiar?) until he falls in love with a girl (Erica Blanc) his mother naturally doesn't approve of. The old battle ax tells a servant she treats "like a daughter" that she'd be forever grateful if the girl would make her son's fiancée disappear and not only does the servant kill the son's intended, she offs his mother, too. The Count takes his mom's death hard but not as hard as his fiancee's, whose body he stuffs before he starts strangling strippers. The servant tells him she'll help cover up his crimes if he'll marry her and he agrees but when his dead fiancee's look-alike sister (also Erica Blanc) shows up looking for answers, complications ensue... To say THE THIRD EYE was inspired by Alfred Hitchcock's PSYCHO would be an understatement but it does go off on a crazy tangent of its own and was obviously capitalizing on a spate of Hammer "mini-Hitchcock" thrillers popular at the time (MANIAC, PARANOIA, HYSTERIA). In black & white with cool-looking red subtitles, the damn thing was never dull, that's for sure. Cult director Joe D'Amato "unofficially" remade this as BEYOND THE DARKNESS in 1979.

Honest to God. So at the 1:09:17 mark the cops dial a house where earlier a woman had been stabbed maybe 2 dozen times. The camera is outside the house and we can hear the ringing. Then cut to a close up of the woman inside covered in blood and her eyes open. What.? She's alive?? Frustratingly ridiculous but okay. But now she decides to start her lllllong crawl to answer the telephone. The cops hang up and dial again. But on she writhes. Dragging herself down the hallway toward the endlessly ringing phone. I think we are now at the 97th ring. On she goes leaving a gory trail of blood behind her. Merciful heavens. On and on and on she goes. Ring ring ring And finally - FINALLY - at the 1:13:21 mark (yes FOUR minutes later) she manages to answer the damn phone. AND she's unable to speak into it anyway. What in the name of all that is holy were they thinking?? And Is this the only bit of business that goes on too long? Noooooooooo. EVERYHING TAKE of this movie goes on too long. But it is the most extreme example. A movie Not remotely scary - just a lot of Italian tedium. Insanity can explain away Franco Nero's bizarre behavior (and maybe even his overacting) but why does EVERYONE behave in such bizarre ways. Good luck figuring out anyone's motivation for doing anything. I tend to love 1960s Italian horror. But this.

Now, here we have a fully fledged Italian nasty in 1966! Didn't see that coming, and with Franco Nero in a starring role too! Nice. This one starts like it's heading off into Psycho territory, what with the twitchy young man (Nero) due to be married to his fiancé (Blanc) who is hated by his domineering mother (who has a spyhole to her son's room - that's a bit sick for starters!), also, there's the maid Marta, who loves Nero and will stop at nothing to have him for herself. There's no masked killer here as Marta basically kills Nero's mother and causes Blanc to die in a car crash, which causes Nero to become insane and bring lovely Italian babes home to murder while a stuffed version of Blanc lies in the bed next to them. It all becomes a game of 'Who's the Craziest Murderer' before Blanc's twin sister turns up and throws everything into chaos as Nero thinks she's his fiancé. This film is full of bizarre and brutal images, from Nero bringing a sexy dancer home only for her to wander his creepy mansion (no film from this era could exist without one!), to the very brutal stabbing of a main character (who survives to drag themselves around the house!), to the terror of Blanc's twin sister suffering at the hands of a psycho and a bizarre rape on a beach, The Third Eye was full of crazy imagery and basically paves the way for the 'no holds barred' films we would be subject to in the seventies. Franco Nero is pretty young here, and he's almost got his 'staring emotionally' thing almost down to a tee, but not quite. He's still pretty good though. I'm surprised that Gioia Pascal didn't make more films, because she's really good as Marta, the crazy maid who brings all this madness down on everyone's head. It looks like the version I watched might have been one of those 'rebuild' films as the soundtrack switches from Italian to German at the more violent points, but this is a nice hidden gem worth looking out for Nero fans and fans of crazy Italian films.

Whilst much of this b/w film is well shot with interesting angles and perspectives, I didn't feel that the director truly had a grip on things. There are good moments and frankly duff moments and despite the presence of franco Nero there were times when I wondered if I was even going to stick with this. First real problem is that as things get under way we are introduced to the overpowering mother of Nero's character, played by Olga Solbelli and she is fantastic, like some Fellini grotesque and , of course, the splendid, EriKa Blanc, and they both disappear from the picture. Almost in the blink of an eye the best are gone and we are left with a struggling Nero and a conniving maid. Nero works very hard in his role as a latter day Italian Bates but the director doesn't seem to help and he sometimes seems to overdue things, to become just too 'crazy'. Worth a look as a supposed forerunner to D'Amato's Buio Omega and it probably features the longest struggle towards a ringing phone in movie history.

The Third Eye has been pretty much forgotten; but many fans of Italian horror will have heard of the film it heavily influenced; Joe D'Amato's notorious exploitation effort Beyond the Darkness. This one does not have the gore and savagery of the later film and it has to be said that Mino Guerrini's film is rather more arty than horrific. The film is also often seen as a precursor to the Giallo genre, though the links between the two are weak at best. Personally, I would describe this film as Gothic horror, and a precursor to later Italian exploitation. The plot focuses on Mino; a young nobleman that lives in a big house with his mother and their maid. His fiancée, Laura, is not well liked by either the mother or the maid, who seem jealous of her presence. The mother, therefore, decides to sever Laura's brakes and this results in a car accident that kills Laura. Meanwhile, the mother and the maid have a fight and the mother dies are being thrown down the stairs. This leads Mino into madness and murder; he kills a couple of women, before Laura's twin sister arrives at the house... The film stars the great Franco Nero in an early lead role and of course he delivers an excellent performance that mirrors the one he would go on to play a few years later in Elio Petri's A Quiet Place in the Country. The atmosphere is also a major part of the film and the central location is a great place for a Gothic horror film to take place; director Mino Guerrini makes good use of it and creates a claustrophobic feel for the film. The influences for the film are clear; with Edgar Allen Poe and Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho being foremost among them. The Third Eye features some really rather morbid elements such as necrophilia, but through the way it's shot, the film always manages to retain an artful feel and this is a bit of a downer in my opinion as the film could have used a bit more impact. It does remain interest for the duration, however, and everything eventually boils down to a fitting conclusion. Overall, this is a rare film and sourcing an English language version is not easy; but it's well worth the effort for Italian horror fans.

Mino (Franco Nero) is a wealthy nobleman and oddly enough taxidermist living under the domineering rule of his mother (Olga Solbelli) who decides to escape by marrying his fiancée Laura (Erika Blanc, pretty much the queen of Italian gothic horror). This also upsets his maid Marta (Gioia Pascal), who cuts the brakes on Mino's car. She dies in a crash yet Mino saves her body, stuffing her and placing her body in his bed. While he's preoccupied with that, Marta - why is the name Marta or Martha always filled with dread in Italian movies? - shoves his mom down the steps. In his grief, Mino starts having sex with ladies of the evening in the same bed as his stuffed wife. When these girls find out that they're part of a necrophilic threeway, he strangles them and Marta puts them in an acid bath. He agrees to marry her and make her a countess, but then Laura's twin Daniela shows up and ruins her plan. When she tries to kill his love come back from the dead, Mino flips and repeatedly stabs his maid turned wife, then kidnaps Daniela and leads the police on a manhunt. Italian censors were bewildered by this movie, saying "In addition many scenes of almost full female nudity and excessively graphic intercourses, the film features episodes of necrophilia, close-ups of horrific scenes with blood and brutal violence, presented with real sadism and a protracted insistence which conveys a sense of complacency by part of the makers." Imagine how they felt when Joe D'Amato remade it thirteen years later as Buio Omega, a movie that outdoes the depravity of this film on nearly every level. Directed by Mino Guerrini from a script by Piero Regnoli based on a story by Gilles De Reys, this is one dark movie and you know, I love it. It's wild to see Nero play such the villain.