The Bird With the Crystal Plumage (1970)

Episode 69, 2 Guys and a Chainsaw Horror Movie Review Podcast

Todd:  Hello, and welcome to another episode of 2 Guys and a Chainsaw. I’m Todd. 

Craig:  And I’m Craig. 

Todd:  Today, we decided to go back to the giallo genre, which is, something that we visited, oh, sometime last year, I guess. Craig, I think I introduced you to this, type of film, did I not? 

Craig:  Yep. Yep. 

Todd:  And it is an Italian style of film, was very popular during the early seventies, late sixties, and this arguably is one of the films that really set it off. It’s called The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, and it’s Dario Argento’s debut film. And, compared to the other giallo pictures, I think it’s maybe the most accessible, maybe the most conventional. Cielo pictures, for those who hadn’t heard our previous podcast, giallo means yellow in Italian, and that’s a reference to the covers that these cheap pulp detective novels used to be, printed. They used to be printed yellow, basically, so that you could see them on the shelf, they’d be they’d jump out at you. And so these films are in the same vein, in many times, actually based off of stories in these cheap crime novels that would have lots of sex and violence and usually some kind of detective story along with it. This is a story about a killer. Like I said before, I think in the the previous one that we saw, which was, Deep Red, which was also by Dario Argento, that being his more popular one, this one has a lot less violence.   It’s it’s not as gory as the other one, and, also, it has a plot that makes sense, I think. What do you think compared to the other one? 

Craig:  Yeah. Compared to the other one, sure. I would say that this one’s a little bit more straightforward, kinda crime procedural. In fact, I I don’t know. I I almost think it’s a little bit of a stretch to call it horror. I think that this would fall more neatly into the category of mystery thriller. There’s like you said, there’s not a lot of graphic violence. There’s some, but most of it is, implied.   There’s a little bit of blood. I don’t think does this have an American rating? I couldn’t tell. 

Todd:  I don’t know. I’m sure it does, but I no. I I I couldn’t find anything. 

Craig:  Because I would say, you know, PG PG 13. I mean, this is pretty tame stuff. I mean, especially yeah. It was 1970, so there were different sensibilities and what then, but, based on stuff that you would just see on prime time television in America today, this is very tame in terms of, violence and blood and, sex and and all of those things. 

Todd:  He does really seem to be holding it back here a bit. There’s there’s at least one scene in here that I would say is probably would thrust it into the PG 13, if if not, maybe into the R section. So I think it’s the second victim, that gets a little sexual and a little, suggestive there. 

Craig:  Yeah. 

Todd:  There’s no nudity, but it’s it’s almost nudity because what she’s wearing is so see through, and the killer starts kind of cutting her clothes off. But yeah, you’re right. Aside from that, he really holds it back here. I think, of course, this being his first movie, maybe that’s what he was doing, but we know that later on, Dario does a few more giallo pictures as well as, some more straight conventional horror pictures like Suspiria, and those are really well known for their depictions of violence as the whole jalo genre becomes. When this film came out in 1970, this film was so successful that it actually played at the theater in Milan for, like, over 3 years, and it spawned a ton of copycat pictures, a ton of them. And again, that’s why it’s really it really kicks off the Jell O genre. Another thing that’s interesting about this movie that is good, especially to introduce people into this who may not be familiar and who might be a little hesitant, to come into these kind of pictures is that it Todd, an American actor. And while these pictures, like a lot of Italian movies of this of this day and age, a lot of westerns came out of Italy around this time, tend to be shot fairly cheaply, which means that often there’s not onset sound recording.   So most of the sound and dialogue gets dubbed in later, which can lead to a really strange effect. Even though you have, people speaking, English, or in the case of many of the Italian actors, they’re speaking English phonetically, but if you could actually hear what they were saying, it would probably sound horrible. But then, of course, they’d be dubbed in later by people who could speak better English. So mouths wouldn’t quite match up, and, you know, it would have that sort of dubbed feel even though you could tell while they’re still speaking the same language. Plus, sometimes the acting of the voice actor, just clearly something’s off. It doesn’t quite seem to match the acting of the person on the screen, you know, if that makes sense visually. The sound doesn’t quite match it visually. It leads to something you kind of have to get used to and you kind of have to overlook when you’re watching a lot of Italian films from this era.   This film, I think, doesn’t really have that problem. I mean, it’s still clear from the way the quality of the audio and the way that it is that the set most of the sound wasn’t recorded on set, but the dubbing is fantastic. And it seems like most of the actors in here probably did their own voices after the fact. 

Craig:  Yeah. It’s a I I mean, you notice right away, and I expected it. You know, I knew that it was an Italian film, so I expected it to be dubbed, or for there to be subtitles. But, you know, as soon as they started talking, it was very clear that the actors were actually they were mouthing the words in English. You could tell. And even though it was dubbed, I agree with you. It wasn’t distracting. It didn’t take me long to get used to it at all.   I mean, within a a couple of minutes, I kinda forgotten. You just, I don’t know, you just kinda roll with it and kinda forget, and it wasn’t I didn’t find it distracting at all. 

Todd:  Yeah. It also leads to a really interesting aesthetic, which is, again, where I’m gonna gush over it again like I normally do with these kind of movies because I love them so much. They’re such a guilty pleasure of mine. But one of the aesthetics about watching one of these films that appeals to me is the sound design. And when you have this where the sound is recorded after the fact, they don’t seem to take a lot of interest in adding in incidental sounds, like the sounds of rustling through the papers, or the sounds of the guy walking through the apartment, or just the the kind of normal tiny little sounds that that you overlook, but you notice when they’re missing. And Right. All you hear is dialogue and everything else is fairly quiet. And that’s something that I think in some cases, particularly in some scenes, really adds to the atmosphere and the feel of these movies.   And this movie works with sound in kind of an interesting way as well. 

Craig:  Yeah. And it’s also got an interesting score, behind it a lot of the time. It’s like, if I remember correctly now I’ve only seen it once, so I I may not remember as well as you do, but, there was a lot of, like, a capella voices singing in the background, but it wasn’t, it wasn’t songs. It wasn’t that, like, they were singing songs with lyrics. It was just, like, lots of la la las and and stuff like that, and it did add kind of a spooky atmospheric feel to it. And and it was it was different. And, I don’t really know how I feel about it. I mean, it was it just kind of I was like, wow.   This is weird music for the background of this, but it did make it kind of spooky. And I don’t I don’t know. It just kinda made me a little bit uncomfortable, which I think is good for this type of movie. 

Todd:  Yeah. The score in this film was done by Ennio Morricone. I might not be saying that right, but, I mean, he did a ton of scores for even American films. He’s very popular at this time. Maybe, his big American crossover at this time was, I think, score for Romeo and Juliet. He he did a a lot of really good music, and, this is a little different from from what he had been doing before. He dives a little bit into jazz. He he goes into a little bit of, I would know, slightly new agey for the time, some stuff that’s very recognizable as seventies type stuff.   Later, Dario Argento would enlist the help of Goblin, which is a sort of progressive rock band of the era who would do a lot of his other scores. And it’s interesting. It almost feels like they might have watched this movie first to get an idea of what he was after and copied some elements of it for his later films. Because, for example, like the Suspiria soundtrack especially, that has a lot of the voices kind of going. It has one of the creepiest soundtracks, I think, in horror history where Goblin, they’re just going 

Craig:  That yeah. I mean, it’s it’s not it’s not that kind it it’s almost like it sounds almost like children in the background or or it’s it’s higher in pitch. 

Clip:  Oh, yeah. 

Craig:  But it is exactly, you know, what you were just doing. That’s the type of thing that I remember hearing in the background here. And it’s it’s different and not really like much that I’ve heard before, but it has an interesting effect, and so that’s cool. 

Todd:  It is cool. Well, again, saying that this movie is very conventional, it’s gonna be a really easy movie to break down, I think, much easier than Deep Red was, which really goes off on tangents of unbelievably as far as how the detective puts things together and figures it out. There are tons of leaps of, like, how did they get from here to there? And then also just straight out coincidences, like he’s looking through a book, and something he sees in the book leads him to a building. I mean, it was just weird stuff. And a lot of the giallo movies are really like that. They’re a little more interested in atmosphere than they are with plot. But this movie is very well plotted, I thought, at least in comparison. And it’s well filmed.   It starts out with a woman walking and we see that she’s walking down the street and the credits are rolling, But in the meantime, there’s occasionally, like, the screen freezes like a snapshot, and you can tell that we’re looking through the eyes of who is going to be the killer, who’s taking photos of this woman as she walks. And the next shot is of his hands selecting a knife. And this is again Right. 

Craig:  Very I Gloved hands. 

Todd:  Yeah. Exactly. We talked about this the last time. Right? Mhmm. That it’s something that Dario may have started, but it’s something that was picked up by a lot of the other Giallo directors, and that is that, there’s a lot of killer POV stuff, and there’s even lots of shots of the killer doing his or her thing in between, the detective work, but we never see their face, of course. But what we often see are black gloves and even like a black, like, leather jacket or slicker or something that they’re wearing, which is convenient because then you can’t really tell if it’s a male or female. And, the killer is selecting a a dagger from, like he’s got, like, a a menu, I guess, of of daggers that he likes to use for his murders. But it’s it’s a stylish effect.   It’s really cool. And, well, a little bit of trivia about, our director here is that he always insists on playing the killer’s hands, in the in the movie. That’s funny. It’s always him, so it it is a little weird. Actually, it’s kind of weird when you think about it. He’s never really said why, which just makes him seem a little creepier. But 

Craig:  I I maybe it was maybe it’s just for convenience. I mean, you know, like 

Todd:  Could be. 

Craig:  He doesn’t have to worry about, you know, directing an actor. He just gets what he wants and and can move on. 

Todd:  That’s true. Well, as she’s, after that shot, we get a scene of a man, and he’s talking with a friend of his. His name is Sam, and he is an American in Italy, talking with a guy named Carl, who’s a friend of his. 

Clip:  I was going through kind of a bad period, a little short on inspiration. Go to Italy, he said, waxing poetic. You need peace, tranquility. That’s Italy. Inspirational come to you. Nothing ever happens in Italy. May he roast 

Todd:  in hell. 

Clip:  So anyway, I came here. I believed him. Toward the country, saw all the monuments, then spaghetti, wine, the atmosphere. Great. Only I’m dead broke. I haven’t written a line in 2 years. 

Craig:  Did he say something in that scene about that he wrote pamphlets about the preservation of rare birds? Or did I just make that up in my mind? 

Clip:  Slam Dallas, great hope of American Carl? 

Todd:  Yeah. I’m it 

Craig:  about Carl? 

Todd:  Good for Carl and his bird thing. 

Craig:  Right. 

Todd:  So Sam is walking home, and it’s nighttime by now. And, I love this shot. And this is what actually makes the movie for me. I just think this is a really clever, creative, kill scene, even though it turns out there’s no kill happening. He walks by a large it’s like a museum, and the entire face of the storefront, I guess, of this museum is glass. And as he’s walking by, he sees a struggle happening. There’s, kind of a loft in there. It’s very well lit and that’s one creepy thing about this whole scene, I think, is that it’s completely dark outside.   There doesn’t seem to be anybody else on the street, although there could be, except for Sam. And this museum is extremely well lit and bright. It’s paint it’s like white all around the inside, and except for the giant creepy artwork statues that are in there, you can’t help but see what’s happening in here. And what’s happening is there’s a killer with a hat on and, like, probably a mask and a shiny kind of vinyl jacket and black pants and everything and gloves, and he is struggling with a woman, and there’s a knife between them. She ends up, stabbed, and she comes stumbling down the steps as the killer leaps off and runs away. In the meantime, Sam is trying to get in. He could see this happening right in front of him, but he can’t do anything about it. So he’s banging on the window.   He he opens the door and finds a way into the the door, but there’s another it’s like, there’s another glass partition there in another door that he can’t get into. And so he watches this whole thing play out in front of him. He’s totally helpless to stop it. And, at this point, the victim, who’s the woman, is just crawling towards him. He’s she’s bloody. He even turns around and is trying to yell for help, but, there’s a guy who walks by and kind of looks in and he’s more focused on Sam than what’s going on inside because Sam’s banging on the window and he’s yelling, but on the other side, it’s like the guy can’t hear because he can’t hear through the glass and kind of walks on. So here’s Sam trapped between 2 planes of glass hoping to try to get the police’s attention, and finally, he just slumps against the wall, and it turns out the police do show up. Maybe the guy found somebody or or put the 2 together or whatnot, but the police do show up a few moments later.   And there, they find Sam with this woman, ostensibly dead, laying down on the floor inside. 

Craig:  I gotta say, this was a weird scene. Now I liked it too. I liked the fact that, the the action was so framed, you know, just up against this white wall. And I knew, having seen, the other one that we watched, Todd Red, that this was gonna be significant, that, Sam can’t I mean, he he can he can see what’s going on, but at first, he’s on the other side of the street. So there’s, like, buses going by between him and the storefront, and, we’re just kinda getting flashes of what’s happening. And eventually, he gets closer, and he kind of, you know, he sees the end of the struggle, and he sees the guy run away. And I and it becomes a plot point that he I feel like he even says that, I know that I saw what I needed to see to solve this mystery, but I just can’t remember what it was. 

Todd:  Oh, yeah. 

Craig:  And the same thing was true in Deep Red. We knew that the investigator, whoever that was, whoever was the person doing the investigating in that movie, we knew that they had seen and that we had probably seen the key that was gonna solve this thing. And so I was watching really closely knowing there there’s gonna be something in this scene that’s gonna be, you know, the the tip-off. And as it turns out, there is. I I don’t know if that’s a trademark of his, if that’s kind of, is that common in these movies? 

Todd:  It is. It is common. I mean, it’s not in all of them, but it is a common thing. And and Argento himself does like to do this where he likes to frame the plot around the the man who gets thrust into it, you know, character, which there always is one. It’s sort of like, the man who knew too much, you know, over and over again. Right. Having seen something and having to eventually, the clue comes out of his mind. Right? It’s all something something visual that he needs to remember, which is, you know, it’s a convenient way to do it because at any point in the movie, no matter how the investigation is going, the guy can, oh, yeah, see something and remember it, which then brings the brings it to a close.   Right? 

Craig:  Right. And that’s the thing, like, I wouldn’t call it a criticism, but it’s almost frustrating as a viewer knowing that, like, just figure it out. Why do we have to go through all of this to get to the answer when I know that at the end you’re just gonna remember? And, like, that’s gonna be the thing that tips it off. Now here, arguably, you know, there’s something that happens at the end that sparks the memory, and and that makes sense. It’s not nonsensical, but just knowing that all of the evidence is there, it just, I don’t know, it’s frustrating to me. I’m like, Get there faster. 

Clip:  We should be able to figure this out. 

Todd:  But, you know, for me And the other It’s almost like an encyclopedia Brown story. You know, where part of the fun of reading it is knowing that you should have all the clues, to piece it together. You just you yourself can’t remember. You know, you yourself can’t figure out what it was that you saw. 

Craig:  I feel like when we were kids, there was a TV show or or or something where they would do this. There would be some mystery, and at some point in the story, they would pause and say, You have all the clues you need now. Like, I don’t know, maybe it was like a video board game or something, but, it’s that type it’s that type of thing where, alright, you’ve got all the clues. Put it all together. And it is fun. It is fun to try to put this stuff together. So it’s not a criticism. It’s just kind of an observation.   The other thing about this scene, and this was weird throughout, and again, I don’t know for me, and I don’t know if this is just the style, but there’s a lot this scene, like, after the killer has run away, it’s pretty long. He’s trying to get people’s attention, and he keeps looking at this woman, and this woman is just slowly like, first, she’s kind of stumbling around, and then she falls on the ground. And, like, I couldn’t even tell at first if she was stabbed because there wasn’t very much blood. Eventually, you see that there is blood, but she’s kind of writhing on the floor and crying and moaning, and it goes on for a while. And that happens at other points in the movie too. There’s one of the kills. I think it was the one that you, referenced earlier, where the the girl is almost partially nude. When the killer comes in to kill her, she’s laying in bed, and he’s standing there, and she just screams and then just lays there and continues to, like, scream and moan.   Like, she doesn’t jump up, she doesn’t try in any way to defend herself. The killer just, like, kind of approaches her and starts messing with her, and she just lays there moaning and crying. 

Clip:  And 

Craig:  then there’s another there’s another scene nearer towards the end of the movie where Sam’s girlfriend is in peril. Somebody the killer is trying to break into her apartment, and she just does a lot of laying on the floor and crying. Like like, this killer’s trying to break in, and she’s just, like, laying on the floor crying. I’m like, girl, you need to, like, get a knife or, you know, something. I mean, to be fair, she does try to escape, and it’s the fact that she can’t get out that that makes her so upset. But I’m I I just kept, like, asking the TV, what good is are you doing laying there on the floor crying? Like, you’re just waiting for the killer to get in to get to you. So I don’t know if that’s just, you know, typical of the genre or what, but it for me, it was almost humorous. And that was something else that I wanted to ask you because I know that you’re a fan of this movie and have seen it a bunch of times.   There are so many moments where really silly things happen. Like for example, when the police do arrive, the main inspector is named, Inspector Morris Sr. Or something like that. And they come in and they’re all standing around this woman on the floor. They haven’t moved her, they haven’t turned her over, nothing, and they’re just standing there around her and the inspector goes, it wouldn’t appear to be serious. Like like, she’s just stabbed on the floor, not moving. We haven’t, like, assessed her really in any way, but it doesn’t look like it’s that 

Clip:  bad. Like, 

Craig:  I I really got the feeling at several points during this movie that it was trying to intentionally be funny. Oh. Am I right? 

Todd:  Undoubtedly so. Yeah. There there are moments of flat out, yeah, humor, and and some of it falls flat, some of it’s a little bizarre, and some of it hits the bar. But you’re right. I I think it’s clear, yeah, that that he’s he’s trying to inject some humor into the proceedings, which is a little different actually from some of his other films in that one thing that I think makes his movies so stark is the bleakness of them in in many ways. This sort of, I don’t want to say nihilistic, but just kind of a, yeah, bad things are happening and there’s really nothing funny about it and we’re just gonna keep showing you bad things, which is something that you find a lot in Asian horror, you know, that that we that we expect, I think, in western horror, which is we always inject a little bit of comedy, a little bit of winking, something in there to kind of soften the blow, I think, a little bit of this type of subject matter that we’re doing. Here, it seems like he’s trying to cop an American style in some ways. I feel like, that that’s maybe what he’s doing.   There’s a lot about this movie, I think, that that feels like he’s intentionally trying to make it a marketable film worldwide by making a little more Hollywood conventional, and that’s one of the things I think is sticking the humor in. 

Craig:  Well, it makes sense and apparently it worked because like you said, it was so popular for so long, and it has a really big following, I guess, even people today, which I gotta say, you know, this is one of those things. I know you’re a huge fan of the genre, and I I don’t wanna disparage it in any way. It’s just not really my cup of tea. 

Todd:  Yeah. 

Craig:  But, the, the I I appreciated the humor. I thought it was really silly in some parts. But I found myself, you know, cracking a smile and even laughing out loud a couple of times. And so for somebody who’s not a huge fan of the genre anyway, that was kind of, refreshing to me. 

Todd:  Yeah. I agree. Now what about about the girl rioting, I feel like in this case, at least, the girl really had no choice. She’d been stabbed already. She really didn’t have anything to do but but collapse, try her best to reach out. But in any case, we do kind of assume that she’s dead until the detectives come in and assess one way or another that she’s going to live, and they take her out of here. So it’s not really a murder that we watched. It was more of an attempted murder.   But again, it’s not like he came by in the nick of time, unless he was the one who was able to attract the police’s attention. He wasn’t much help to her. Right? And I think 

Clip:  Right. Right. 

Todd:  And I think that’s what, you know, would get under your skin if you were a guy in this situation. And I think that just the way that the the shot is that it’s framed with that glass wall, it’s like the 4th wall there. You can do nothing about it. You can’t cross it. All you can do is watch in helplessness. And that’s what I like about this scene. It’s just the way that it’s visually and and conceptually set up that way. I would hate to be a guy in this particular situation. 

Craig:  Oh, sure. Sure. Yeah. Oh, I like that. I thought it was effective too. I just thought that it was kind it, like, it lingered kind of for a strangely long time, on it. I I I don’t know. Maybe that was, you know, just kinda build the suspense or the dread and and, you know, it’s fine.   This woman who was stabbed, we find out her name was Monica. She and her husband well, I guess her husband owns this gallery, and her husband, Alberto, shows up, pretty much right away as soon as the cops show up, which to me made him suspicious right from the beginning. Yeah. But I also thought if it was him and he’s shady throughout, like and I feel like Argento or or whomever, you know, kinda goes out of his way to make this guy shady throughout. And, you know, there’s some payoff there in the end, but, I I wasn’t really sure what to make of it because after this, anytime you see Alberto and Monica together, it almost seems as though he’s trying to keep her from talking with the investigators. Like, he’s keeping her very sheltered, and so you wonder, is he maybe in some way, involved in this? But anyway, Sam, the police are interested in Sam because he was the only one there on the scene, and because he was virtually trapped there. I mean, somehow he had gotten locked in that kind of, I don’t know what you call it, lobby or vestibule right outside the gallery. So the police kind of think that maybe he’s a suspect, maybe he stabbed her and then he tried to run away, but he had gotten caught.   And so they take away his, passport, and that’s what, keeps him there because he had been planning to go. 

Clip:  You’re out of your mind. You can’t just grab a foreign citizen and accuse him of murder. No one’s accusing you. Giving me the 3rd degree. It’s illegal. I want to call my consulate right now. Go ahead. Call anyone you want.   Call the president of the United States. 

Craig:  And that’s also what kind of motivates him to try to wanna find out who the actual killer is so that he can get out of Italy with his girlfriend, Julia, as they had planned. But when the police are questioning him, we kinda get the backstory. There have been 3 unexplained murders, all women, so the police believe that there’s a dangerous maniac at large, and and now Sam is potentially a suspect. They they do a lineup, for him to see if he can because he says that he didn’t get a good look at the guy, but they they keep they keep saying, keep trying to remember, try to remember, and they question him over and over and over again. And finally, they, have him look at a lineup. And this is another one of those parts that was so funny. For the lineup, the the inspector says, bring out the perverts. And these these guys these guys come walking across the stage behind the two way glass, and so we can see them.   And, the last one I thought was a woman, but he goes, hey. Hey. Not her. I I’ve told you. Holga belongs with the transvestites, not with the perverts. I was just cracking up. I thought it was so funny. And then another right after that, they’re talking about all these clues that they have, and somehow they have figured out that based on the evidence, they found a black glove at the scene of the this last crime, the one that, Sam thwarted.   They found a black glove and they analyzed it, and they found, like, residue from cigars. So they know that this guy is left handed and that he smokes cigars. And then I didn’t even really understand what they were doing here. They, like, typed all this information into this computer, and this is a computer in the seventies, so, like, it takes up an entire room. And it’s like, blip blop blip blop. And they’re like, this will give us an explanation of who the killer is. And it, like, prints out this, like, it’s not even a character sketch. It’s all like just zeros and ones.   You know, this is rough outline of like a shady criminal and then some stats underneath it. I I you know, their very advanced technology was helping them with this, but it didn’t really seem to help them all that much. 

Todd:  I I I liked this scene. I felt like it was a charming, like, 19 seventies version of CSI. Like, the computer room that they’re in has is like a total classic computer room with the reel to reel tapes spinning behind them and the guy in the white coat who’s running the computer and all that. And they’re doing as best as they can without, you know, DNA at this time. So he does the blood microscopic examination. My impression was that what they were doing was really matching this against a database of known killers, or Gotcha. Of people in the city, because it did spit out that there were 5 people with criminal records that matched this profile, and a 150,000 people in the city that it could match as well, which was, you know, not a lot to go on. 

Craig:  Right. 

Todd:  Oh, and there’s a scene between here where he’s walking home and he almost gets hacked with a meat cleaver 

Craig:  Oh, right. 

Todd:  Except a woman screams at one point. So we know that he’s kind of in danger as well. 

Craig:  So Sam goes to visit Monica after she’s released from the hospital. She’s the woman who was stabbed, but the husband, Alberto, won’t let him see her. Again, he’s just acting really shady. And then Sam, apparently being, you know, the sleuth that he is, very sneakily tosses Alberto’s cigarettes to him, and Alberto catches it with his left hand. And it’s almost like the the camera lingers there, and Alberto, like, looks at his left hand like, oh, no. I’ve revealed too much. Like it’s it’s 

Clip:  it’s it’s it’s frankly 

Craig:  a little bit heavy handed, but it didn’t bother me because it felt very much like a pulp novel, you know, where they really are kind of not even laying on clues really thick, but you have you wonder if these are clues or if they’re red herrings. And it could go either way, because you’re getting so much, thrown at you. But Sam at this point is becoming obsessed. At one point, he even says, I’m obsessed. 

Todd:  That’s true. 

Craig:  So he and Julia research, the previous victims, and one of them had worked at an antique shop. So Sam goes there. Another really funny scene where the owner of the, antique shop is this older guy who’s, like, flamboyantly gay and is clearly, kind of flirting with Sam and making making Sam uncomfortable. 

Clip:  Oh, good morning. Can I help you? Yes. I’d like to see something here. You’re interested in porcelain. Oh, are you? You have marvelous taste. These pieces are beautiful, simply divine. How much is this one? 300. Oh.   Oh, but I won’t be unreasonable about it. Not with you. 

Craig:  Sam asks about this woman who had been killed, and he said, 

Clip:  lovely girl, but, a little unusual, you know. Oh, well, yes. It was said that she preferred women. Oh, I couldn’t care less. Of course not. I’m no racist, for heaven’s sake. 

Craig:  Oh, gosh. I just thought 

Clip:  it was so funny. 

Craig:  Now, you know, now that we’re going back over it, I’m remembering how many of these parts there were that were really just laughed out loud funny. But he finds out that this woman had sold a painting, that night right before she had left and she had been murdered right after that. And Sam gets a copy of the painting, not a copy really, a photograph, of the painting. And, it it was really difficult for me at first to tell what it was. Eventually, you can see that it’s kind of like this pastoral scene, but down in one, towards the bottom, there’s imagery of a man perpetrating violence against a woman, killing her or something. There’s blood and and stuff. And so he takes it home and hangs it on the wall. I guess he thinks that that’s going to be a clue.   And Julia doesn’t like it, but we get the camera closes up or or zooms in rather on the picture of the painting. And when it zooms up, it or zooms out, excuse me, it colorizes and we see that this painting is actually hanging in the killer’s apartment. So, we know that he’s at least kind of on the right track because things are falling into place. 

Todd:  That’s right. We’d even seen some interstitials here of a girl being scoped out at a racetrack. So more of those photographs being taken of a woman from the killer’s point of view. And from this point now, where we’re in the killer’s apartment, we get, the build up to our next victim. And this is the victim I was talking about earlier. Again, just another random person who’s, who’s coming home, being dropped off at her apartment and walking inside, and going inside, getting undressed. I thought that the whole lead up, the whole build up to this next kill was really stylishly shot, and again, that’s what I love about these films. You get I was almost film noir ish.   You get lots of darkness here. You get close ups of different things. Really well framed scene, I think, here of which is looks like it’s from the killer’s point of view of the girl getting dropped off going into her apartment. And then the shot moves back a little bit and it reveals the killer in the corner. And then about a moment later, you see the woman pass by the window in the top part of her apartment in shadow. Just just really stylish. I know that at the time, Argento was was labeled, the Hitchcock of of Italy at at one point. I don’t know if that’s completely fairly deserved, but it’s things like this, I think, that, is is real deliberate shooting style that, gave him that title.   It’s it’s very Hitchcock y and it’s very reminiscent of that, how Hitchcock would really set up visually these these really elaborate and really stylish scenes, which give you a lot of information and which really unfold the plot visually for you within a single frame. It’s really really good. Mhmm. But yeah. Yeah. 

Craig:  And I think that we see I think that we see kind of hints of that in this movie. I think that his style continue to now again, I’ve only seen this and the other one that we watch, deep red, and I have seen Suspiria. But by the time you get to Suspiria, I think that he had really kind of honed his craft and and much, you know, there was much more of this strong stylized stuff. It’s here, but it’s a little bit few and far between. Yes. I agree with you in this kill scene, and then in the next or one of the other kill scenes. There’s also some really interesting stylized stuff with a woman and a very interesting, staircase and you kinda you can see up and down the staircase and some really neat framing and and stuff there. I I frankly, I would’ve liked to have seen more of it here, but what was what was there was really good and and interesting to to watch. 

Todd:  Yeah. You’re right. It it it pops into this when there’s something interesting going on. Otherwise, it’s it’s pretty pedestrian, you know, shot of this guy talking to this guy kinda stuff. You’re right. 

Craig:  Right. Right. 

Todd:  The kill here, the woman, like you said, is kind of laying there on the bed in her in her very skimpy negligee when the killer comes in. It doesn’t seem to put up much of a struggle. He Todd of gets on top of her, puts his hand over her mouth, and then, with her arm still to her side, again, you think she’d be fighting back in some way, shape or form here, he cuts her negligee open and then goes down to her panties, and cuts those as well and tears them off. And the way it’s done, it’s, I think it’s extremely uncomfortable, especially Knives around genitals, you know, just all that penetration imagery here. It kind of looks like, in many ways, an implied rape scene, but Yes. But it’s not gross. It does cut away before we see anything happen. 

Craig:  It does, and I was expecting sexual violence, and that always makes me uncomfortable, in in film period, but it doesn’t go that far. It’s just it’s sort of implied, you know, that with with the ripping off of the clothes, but that’s as far as it goes. And then, well, I mean As far as we know. That he kills her. Yeah. Yeah. Right. 

Todd:  So at this point, it’s clear that Sam is not the the killer here. And so Right. He, the detective visits his apartment, says, look, we had another murder here. Can you be of any more help? Please come back to the station. And he basically just asked him the same thing. I know you saw something. I know you said something. Can you remember what it was? But really, it’s just a last ditch effort to get something more out of Sam Todd try to jog his memory.   And when it doesn’t happen, he hands him his passport back and says, look, here you go. Basically, Sam is free to go. And I love this point in the movie. It’s an interesting turn where Sam is now so obsessed with this that he decides to stick around. And that really this is the point at which the relationship this is another thing I like about this movie is I think there’s a nice kind of cute relationship between Sam and the detective. It’s this professional but also friendly. They joke around a little bit here and there. They seem to lean on each other.   It’s not this kind of movie where the police are bumbling idiots and it’s up to this, you know, one guy to solve the Craig, And it’s also not a case of where the police are hostile towards him for any kind of reason, that that maybe he’s still under suspicion or whatnot. But there’s just really a friendly, collaborative relationship that develops between these two guys that that I really liked. 

Craig:  Sure. Sure. 

Todd:  Sam, ends up saying well, the the the detective says, is there anything I can do for you? And Sam says, well, I would really like to see this prostitute’s pimp. There was a prostitute, who was one of the it was another one of the victims, and he said that can be arranged because the guy’s in jail. So he goes to visit this guy in jail, and here’s another element of humor I think you’re talking about. Yeah. This guy is is weird. He’s weird looking and he has this weird tick. He has trouble talking, kind of Tourette’s maybe, like sort of a Tourette’s syndrome. 

Craig:  Well, he calls it a stutter and he does stutter, but he also punctuates nearly every sentence with so long. 

Clip:  Yeah. She was my girl so long. Where are you going? You you said so long? I always say that. I if I don’t, I start. Oh, I see. What do you want to know? I’m trying to help, trying to help the police find the killer. That’s good, sir. 

Craig:  As far as I know, that’s not really a thing, unless it is Tourette’s, but it’s funny. And he he is weird looking and comically so. And he even says something like, do I look like a pimp? And I’m like, yeah. You look exactly like a fib. So, yeah, it’s funny. I and I feel like he doesn’t really get much, information out of that guy. But then there’s a weird I have written in my notes. I have no idea what’s going on here because we know that the inspector is having someone tail Sam, and Sam knows it too.   It’s it’s it’s for his safety. And at one point, he and Julia are walking down the street together and the tail is behind them, walking behind them, And this car comes around the corner and runs down the bodyguard and starts chasing after Sam and Julia. And I feel like Sam gets around a corner and stashes Julia somewhere, and he keeps running. And eventually, the guy who’s driving gets out and starts chasing him. And I had no idea what was going on because we see this guy’s face clearly. 

Todd:  Yeah. 

Craig:  And and I thought, are are are they now revealing who the murderer is to us? I mean, the murderer has been taunting the police at this point. He’s been calling and saying there will be more the killer has completely been shrouded in mystery, and I was really confused as to what was going on here. And there’s this long chase scene through, like, the streets and then, like, a big parking lot full of buses, and then eventually they kind of they kind of run out into public and Sam sees some other people and says, there’s a guy following me. And, everybody, you know, kinda looks around, and he turns around, and the guy is there, but the guy just turns around and starts walking away. And then he starts following the guy, and they end up, like, at this hotel. And this guy is wearing this really distinctive yellow jacket. And so he he follows him into this hotel and he asks the bellhop, have you seen a guy in a yellow jacket and a blue cap? And the guy’s like, oh yeah, he’s in there. So Sam goes and he opens he starts to open these sliding doors, and he sees the yellow jacket right in front of him.   But when he opens it further, it’s like this whole convention of these guys in these yellow jackets, and apparently it’s like a convention of ex prizefighters or something. And he never does find the guy that was following him. I still am confused as to what was going on there. I I feel like maybe we have to get to the end of the big reveal before you can explain it, but will you be able to explain that to me? Because I was I was really confused. 

Todd:  Well, I think what happened here is that that the car that was that ran over the tail and then was chasing after them, that this guy who hopped out of the car was a passenger in the car. So he was somebody that the killer was, like, dropping off, to run after and kill Sam, like a hired thug, basically. 

Clip:  Okay. 

Todd:  Okay. Because he says something into the car and the car speeds off. You’re right. You’ve got to know the minute you can see his face, you know, okay, we’re not dealing with the killer here, but he’s definitely in danger. I like this scene, I it is a long chase scene, it is maybe a little too long and it’s maybe a little unbelievable at times, but again it’s just shot with some serious style, and I love at this point the music behind it. There’s this it really turns into this great jazz score, very cool. As he’s chasing him around and, really what this is, is it’s just another device to move along the Todd, because Sam Sam actually goes back to the pimp and explains what happened, and here is where the pimp can help him out. He’s like, oh, yeah, these guys, these prizefighters or whatever, you need to talk to this guy named Feina, and I’ll send him to you.   So Feina Feina comes later. But in between that whole aspect, we get another kill, which is, what you had mentioned earlier about the woman who climbs a style her her cool staircase up to her house, and, she gets caught up with a razor. This is maybe one of the most brutal, I think, of the kills because we actually see more. And also, it’s just kind of brutal anyway. She is coming home to her apartment and then she can’t, the elevator’s not working, so she has to walk up this really long but cool staircase to her apartment, and then about halfway up, the lights go out. So she has to light a match. She’s got like a light or something on her that she has to light in order to see her way up. So it’s all darkness and shadows, and, we know what’s coming, and it’s pretty suspenseful.   When then, on one of these floors, she finally sees the elevator. It’s there and it’s lit, and she’s gonna go inside to try to go the rest of the way up. When she goes inside, the killer’s like right there, and he pulls out a razor, like the kind of razor you’d shave your face with, like a straight razor. 

Craig:  A straight razor, yeah. 

Todd:  And just hacks her. It’s hacking her face up. Oh, again, it’s not super gross, but there are at least 1 or 2 close ups there that we see of the knife cutting her and some blood splattering around, and and it’s just a it’s kind of a brutal thing anyway. 

Craig:  And that leads to another scene, that I was a little bit confused about. So this guy, that the pimp recommended, Fiena, he comes and there’s a little bit of comedy there where he, you know, kind of talks in riddles and stuff. But, eventually he sends Sam to this apartment where Sam finds a syringe 

Clip:  and there’s a dead guy there. I don’t know who that what what what was going on there? 

Todd:  The dead guy was the killer who was chasing him, was the the prizefighter. 

Craig:  Oh, okay. 

Todd:  Yeah. Okay. Okay. He gives he gives Sam a name, and an address or he gives Sam an address, I think. And he goes to this place. Yeah, and you’re right, it’s kind of in a rundown part of Todd. It almost looks like a bit of a junkyard that somebody set up shop in. And, when he goes inside, finds the syringe.   I’m not sure what the syringe had anything to do with. As far as I can tell, this guy was just hired to get Sam. He doesn’t seem connected to any of the other murders because we’ve seen the other murders, and this guy’s not involved. 

Craig:  Right. 

Todd:  But I don’t know if it’s something about taking drugs or whatnot. But, anyway, you’re right. And that was really kinda cool too because anytime a guy’s wandering around an empty apartment, you do expect somebody eventually to jump out at him or something like that, and instead, what happens is this dead body is kind of flopped down in this pretty spooky position. So clearly, what’s happened here is the killer has offed this guy before he can say anything, to Sam because Okay. You know, he failed. Alright. So, as you mentioned earlier, the the killer is taunting the police a little bit in that he’s made at least one phone call, to the detective, which they recorded. He also makes a phone call to Sam and actually it says Sam he needs to lay off or he’s going to basically kill his girlfriend, Julia.   So Sam gets threatened, but he also is, prescient enough to record that as well. So that we go back again to this this awesome high-tech 19 seventies computer room, where they’ve been doing the voice analysis on the 2 phone recordings. And, the best that they could come up with from here is that there are 2 different people behind the recordings. Even though this person was using a voice changer, and even to the viewers, this sounds exactly the same, he shows him an oscilloscope and talks about vocal ranges and blah blah blah blah blah blah. At the end of the day, he’s convinced that these were actually 2 different phone calls. The other thing was that in the beginning in the cops phone call, he had heard something in the background, some kind of noise that he couldn’t make out. Nobody clearly knew what it was, and he had asked their technician to analyze it. And the technician had said, we’ve compared it against database recordings of like millions of things from construction sites to all this stuff, and we still can’t figure out what that sound is in the background.   So we’re going to keep looking. 

Craig:  Right. Right. And Sam also plays it for for his friend from the beginning of the movie. Was it Carl? Is that his name? 

Clip:  Yep. 

Craig:  Yeah. He also plays it for that friend, and the friend says, gosh, that’s really familiar. I I can’t place what it is, but I I know I can figure it out. And so, we figure that’s probably gonna be pretty significant. Then there’s a little, side Sam kinda goes No. He’s still interested in that. Now Oh, sorry. Go ahead. 

Todd:  Real quick. That bit with Carl, I thought also was another interesting cast some suspicion on somebody because in that scene as Carl’s sitting and listening to the thing, we see that he’s smoking cigars and he sees and and they make kind of a deal out of the fact that he wants to take the tape. Right? I mean, you want you wanna think that it’s it’s it’s because he’s trying to help his friend, but he also takes the tape and walks away and it kinda lingers on that fact. So there was a point here which I thought, that would be that would be a very jello thing to do to bring in this guy that we’ve only seen, like, once or twice before who seems like a total ancillary character and somehow try to connect him with 

Craig:  this. Sure. Sure. Yeah. I I kinda miss that. Well, and it would make sense. It’s a good red herring because this guy seems really friendly, so you wouldn’t expect him. So if it had turned out that it was him, that would have been a good twist.   Not that the twist isn’t Todd. It is, but it’s not Carl. 

Todd:  Yeah. 

Craig:  But so, Sam is still interested in this painting. So he finds out who painted it and he goes to visit this artist, this, Berto Consalvi or something like that. And this whole scene, it’s a funny scene because it’s this eccentric artist who, like, keeps cats because he eats them, but it doesn’t really advance the plot very much except for that it gets Sam away from Julia. And so we get a scene where the killer comes and is is trying to get into Sam’s apartment where Julia is, but at the last minute, Sam, arrives and the killer runs away. And this really is where things start to become clear because Carl figures out what the sound on the tape is. 

Clip:  I think I finally figured out what that creaking sound is.   Sam, it’s very peculiar. What is it? It’s the call of Hornetus Nivalis, a magnificent bird with long white feathers that look like glass. What’s so strange about it? Well, the only place in the world that bird can live is Northern Siberia. Are you sure? Positive. In any case, it’s almost impossible to keep one of those birds alive in captivity. In fact, there’s only one specimen in the whole of Italy. 

Craig:  And conveniently, only 1, and it’s at the local zoo. 

Clip:  So 

Craig:  they go to the zoo. They they see this bird, and, Sam immediately realizes that the apartments right above this bird’s enclosure is the apartment of the couple from the beginning, Monica and Alberto. And so he thinks that they’ve got it figured out. They go up there. He’s got the police with him, and Monica and Alberto are, in fact, struggling with one another, again. And somehow, I feel like Monica gets away, and the police and Sam, the inspector and Sam are struggling with Alberto at the window, and Alberto falls out the window. They’re able to catch him momentarily, and he’s dangling out the window saying, please help me. I don’t wanna die.   I don’t wanna die. But they can’t hold on to him, and he falls probably, like, 5 or 6 stories. And the next thing we see is him down on the ground and the police standing over him and he says, I’m the murderer. I did it. Please take care of my wife. She tried to stop me. I love her. And we think that that’s it.   We the police think that the, murder is solved. It’s a little bit convenient, but, you know, all the clues have logically progressed here. Knowing, however, what little I do know about the genre, I knew there was gonna be a twist. And when Monica goes missing, Sam goes off trying to find her and that’s where the big twist comes. 

Todd:  That’s right. He goes into this building and he’s wandering around in darkness. And, finally, he ends up in an in one room and the lights flip on and it is actually the art gallery. Now they’ve since installed some new art there, including this giant wall that has all these these spikes all over it that’s that’s at the ground floor, but he’s up at the top floor in exactly the same spot that the previous struggle happened and he gets attacked by the person with the knife. He sees Monica and he remembers the knife. This is where he remembers the crucial point, from the scene before. And that is that the knife was pointed in the wrong direction. It wasn’t Sam trying to kill Monica, but it was Monica.   Alberto. It I’m sorry. Alberto. 

Craig:  Right. It wasn’t Alberto. Right? 

Todd:  Yes. It wasn’t Alberto. It was Monica trying to kill Alberto because the knife was pointed in that direction between the 2 of them. So anyway, there’s a bit a bit a bunch of a struggle. They fall down the stairs, they go down, and this giant art piece with all the spikes all over it tips over onto Sam. She pushes it over onto him. And he Mhmm. Thankfully, no.   None of the spikes go through him miraculously. Right. But he’s trapped, under there, and she starts playing with him. But conveniently and, of course, I’m thinking the whole time, you know, again, this is another this is the same place. It’s it’s still a terrible place to kill somebody because you’re completely exposed to the street. But conveniently, at this point, the cops have caught up with him, and they jump in right away, from behind, and they get her. So it’s really the cops coming in and save him at the last minute. 

Craig:  Right. And then, we see the inspector on, a local news program and he explains, you know, once they figure out who it is, he explains what had happened. Apparently, Monica had been assaulted at some point earlier in her life, and, the assault had led her to kind of collapse mentally, and she spent some time, in a hospital or an institution, but but eventually she was deemed sane enough to go back out into the world. And she was fine until, being an art dealer, she had gone to this antique shop and she had seen this painting of a woman being attacked and that had, again, triggered a mental breakdown. And for whatever reason, instead of identifying with her mental snap had caused her to identify with the attacker. And so that had led her to do all of these things and her husband, had found out about it and had tried to control and contain her and cover up for, for her crimes and, and maybe he was the one who hired the hit man to try to kill Sam, to try to get him out of the way, maybe he thought Sam was too much on the trail. But one way or another, Monica ends up in a mental institution and, Sam and Julia fly off to America to live happily ever after. 

Todd:  Yes. Now the the painting at least was the painting of her own assault. Because the one It was? Yeah. You didn’t catch that. The the one thing that 

Craig:  we No. 

Todd:  The one piece of information that we got from the artist over at his house was the origin of the painting. 

Clip:  A maniac. Got Todd of a girl I knew. Tried to cut her up, just Todd him in time, put him in an asylum for life. 

Todd:  And so it was a painting of her own assault that she saw. And that’s Oh, 

Craig:  well, that makes even more sense. 

Todd:  That’s why it triggered her. Yeah. And, of course, being an art dealer, she was a friend of this painter. So 

Clip:  Well, there there you go. That makes perfect sense. 

Todd:  So, yeah, it’s, again, and it makes a lot more sense than, you know, if you dive down this this rabbit hole of giallo pictures, you’re gonna find that most of them don’t neatly play out like you would expect a TV crime drama to play out, and and this one does. A lot of times, there’s such supreme leaps of logic and believability that you just kinda have to go with it. And that’s what I do because Right. I, again, I would not say that this is the best picture I’ve ever seen. I couldn’t tell you why it was so popular for 3 years, except maybe it was the first of its type, really. But I can say that, that I love it just for the style and the watchability. And it’s the beginning of a great career. Freaking love Argento.   Love the stuff he’s done. When you get tired of seeing conventional type horror movies or or mysteries or things, you can always turn to, somebody like him, some foreign director who just by nature of the fact that they’re out of the Hollywood system and in kind of a different world over there, just, I don’t know, just comes up with different ways of filming things, different ways of acting and styling. It doesn’t always work, but I would say it’s always interesting. And for me anyway, it’s always pretty entertaining. 

Craig:  Yeah. Oh, I, you know, like I said, not exactly my cup of tea, not my favorite genre, but I do really appreciate, Argento’s style, and I think that he has a really unique style. Maybe, you know, as far as I know, probably his most well known film is Suspiria. And, I’ve only seen that once, but, I was really impressed with the art the artistry, of that movie. Lots of really cool cinematography, excellent use of color, and I think that, he really, you know, he’s he’s established his legacy, and rightfully so because, he brought a lot of interesting things to the table. I know that they have finished, shooting on a remake of Suspiria, which I am both excited and very nervous about because, his style is so unique to him, and I think that it would be something that could so easily be screwed 

Todd:  up. Yeah. 

Craig:  But but I guess we’ll see. 

Todd:  Well, the movie is nothing but style. I mean, there’s very little to it. It’s almost like a big long dream is is is how it’s always sort of felt to me. So it’ll be interesting to see how a remake is gonna is gonna retweak that for a modern audience. Yeah. I’m not looking forward to it. 

Craig:  No. Me either. I’m not. But you know, I’m I’m glad you picked this one for today. It was kind of a nice departure from some of the things that we’ve been doing, lately and I like to shake it up. So, thanks for picking this one. 

Todd:  Thanks, Craig. Alright. Well, thank you again for listening to 2 Guys and a Chainsaw. If you like this episode, please share it with a friend. You can find us on iTunes, Google Play, and Stitcher. You can also find us on our website, 2 guys.red40.net, and you can find us on our Facebook page. Please like us there. Again, another great place to share us and another place to start up a conversation with us.   Tell us what you thought of this film, and put in your request for any other films you’d like us to review. Until next time, I’m Todd. 

Craig:  And I’m Craig. 

Todd:  With 2 Guys and a Chainsaw.