Rock bottom! My obsession to track down obscure and completely unknown Italian Gialli movies has hit rock bottom with the search for "Reflections in Black". I absolutely wanted to own this relatively late entry in my favorite cult/exploitation subgenre, because it supposedly is one of the gorier, filthier, and sleazier Gialli out there. Well, I can't confirm nor deny whether this reputation is truthful, since the version I found was nearly unwatchable. "Reflections in Black" is - to my knowledge - only available on a bootleg with terrible sound and picture quality. Most of the time, the screen was so blurry that the faces were unidentifiable. The DVD faltered frustratingly often, and the awful English dubbing was regularly interrupted by long stretches of footage that were in the original soundtrack in Italian (and thus incomprehensible for me).
During "Reflections in Black" I often wondered why I am doing this. There are so many great movies out there, in fancy and highly qualitative BluRay releases, but I spent my time and money on stinking old sleaze-movies that nobody even bothers to restore.
The film itself is also very mundane and derivative, even by mid-to-late 70s Giallo standards. The plot revolves around beautiful and almost always naked women getting brutally killed by a "mysterious" figure dressed in black and waving around a razorblade. The police investigation is dire and slow-moving, and it takes the coppers an awfully long time to figure out all the murdered women were having lesbian affaires with a married countess.
What's so upsetting about "Reflections in Black" is that the unknown and inexperienced director Tano Cimarosa (who also plays one of the policemen) confidently assumed that he was making a good Giallo. He inserted all the typical trademarks, and figured that would be enough. He threw in gruesome kills, lesbian sex, gratuitous nudity, and the killer's usual disguise in black. Too bad he forgot that Giallo-lovers also (and primarily) seek suspense, style, and convoluted plot twists (and, most of all, decent picture quality).
