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The Fifth Cord is a giallo from director Luigi Bazzoni, who was also responsible for another entry in the genre, the excellent Footprints on the Moon. This film is a lot more conventional than Footprints. In it, an alcoholic journalist becomes entangled in a series of murders that seem to be connected somehow. This plot-line is pretty unremarkable and typical. But three things make this one stand out. Firstly it has the charismatic Franco Nero in the central role, secondly it's got another impressive Ennio Morricone soundtrack and thirdly, and most importantly, it has exquisite photography from the great Vittorio Storaro who previously shot The Bird with the Crystal Plumage and later did Apocalypse Now. The cinematography really is fantastic here. Geometric spaces are shot with consummate skill and every frame seems to have been considered in detail. Aesthetically, The Fifth Cord is an unarguable triumph.

It's not particularly violent for a giallo. The murders are not very graphic at all. Although it does have some impressive suspenseful moments such as the sequence where a disabled woman - played by the always interesting Rossella Falk – is terrorised in the dark by an unseen assailant. Otherwise it does have the usual combination of crazy components that are typical to the genre, such as sex parties, astrology and blackmail. Although I guess the story holds together more solidly than most other gialli. Bazzoni hasn't made a classic of the genre to be fair but he has directed a very stylish one. It comes from the slightly more restrained side of the genre but it should definitely interest seasoned fans of this type of thing.