Italian cult director Dario Argento, master of arty gore, brings this eerie and stylish story plagued by depraved gore murders, it concerns about a composer(David Hemmings) who observes a chilling assassination of his neighbor, an Occultist-medium (Macha Meril). When he gets clues , the musician visits a woman and discovers that she has been cruelly killed , as well. The composer along with a reporter(Daria Nicolidi, wife to Argento and mother of Asia) start following the tracks on a strange mansion.Other key roles are his friend Carlo(Gabriele Lavia) and the psychic's assistant Doctor Giordini.
One of the best ¨Giallo¨with oneiric,effective esthetics packs lots of gore, guts and twists plots. This is a trademark terror work for the Horrormeister Argento with high tension quotient and equally high suspense by means of an ever-fluid camera that achieves colorful shots similarly to Giorgio De Chirico paintings. Noteworthy for intelligent edition work that tightens the mystery, glimmer use of color and distinctive utilization of shock images. Sometimes weak screenplay is added by nice but gory special effects by Carlo Rambaldi(ET).Screeching musical score by Goblin with stereophonic whispers combining to fortissimo soundtrack which help achieve incredible creepy moments.The terror pieces are well staged with eye-opening flair-play and contain obscure tracks to the denouement of the script.As trivia, Argento appears as murderer's hand. The motion picture is originally directed by Dario Argento, one of those film-makers(other examples are Mario Bava and Riccardo Freda ) who set off simple for frightening us to death. His period of biggest hits were the 70s when he directed the animals trilogy: ¨Four flies over gray velvet,The cat of nine tails, Bird with the crystal plumage¨, after he directed ¨Suspiria, Inferno, Tenebre¨ and of course ¨Deep red¨. This bloody fun plenty of graphic gore and weirdness may not be for all tastes but to be liked for Argento connoisseurs especially.
