Leofwine_draca Here's yet another bizarre movie from Italian director Antonio Margheriti, made with funding and actors from both France and West Germany. Margheriti - who co-wrote the film, basing it partly on a novel by Peter Bryan - throws a hodge-podge of ideas and clichés into the movie making for an unconventional mix. On one hand, the film is a very old-fashioned old dark house mystery, with a group of interesting characters being assembled and picked off one by one for no known reason. All it lacks is the reading of a will to be complete.If you look at it from a different angle, this film is a throwback to Margheriti's early '60s Gothic horror movies like CASTLE OF BLOOD, what with the spooky old castle setting and lots of atmospheric trips through midnight graveyards, torch-lit cellars, dank tombs, and secret passages in the crumbling walls. You can almost feel the atmosphere drip from the screen in some cases. The film is littered with horror clichés, from the rotting rat-eaten corpse hidden in a back passage to empty broken coffins to heavy groaning noises in the dark and surprise attacks by bats and other assorted creatures of the night. The village superstitions are there too, with lots of mumbo-jumbo talk about vampiric family curses and the like, although it's plain that the killer in this film is strictly human. Bizarrely, someone also decided to throw a caged killer gorilla into the bubbling stew, purchased by one of the characters from a passing circus (!), which keeps escaping to play peekaboo at the windows and scare our pretty young heroine. It's like watching some cheesy '40s Monogram quickie all over again.Finally, and most strongly, the film is a gory giallo, in which the leading protagonists are killed off one by one by a mystery assailant whose identity is kept secret until the surprise finale. The script is littered with red herrings to keep you guessing as to his or her identity which makes for one confusing viewing experience. The film is quite violent for the time, with blood splattering on nearby walls during the murder sequences and lots of shots of mutilated corpses, although these now seem quite tame in a modern day light. And on top of all this, Margheriti throws in touches of humour and self-referencing to keep the audience on its feet.The acting is typical of the genre, the dubbing pretty good for a change. Jane Birkin is the pretty but vacant young heroine who is no Barbara Steele but quite cute in her own way. The various supporting characters are a clichéd mixed bunch, including a sinister doctor with his own hidden agenda (played by genre favourite Anton Diffring, great as ever), a priest, two old ladies, a prostitute, and an unlucky coachman who gets his throat slit with a straight-razor. Being an early '70s movie, there's also a fair amount of sex and sleaze thrown into the brew to keep it simmering nicely. The music is almost unnoticeable while the camera-work at times disorientating and annoying, but SEVEN DEATHS IN A CAT'S EYE is a worthwhile watch for Italian fans as a film which throws just about everything but the kitchen sink into the story - and remains consistently entertaining, despite the slow pacing, as a result of it. Remember to keep an eye out for that cool feline who gets to witness (along with the audience) the film's string of gore murders...

oowawa Q--What is a "red herring?" A--A rotting fish dragged across a fugitive's trail in order to confuse the pursuing hounds. Figuratively, in literature and film, it is a plot device used to mislead the reader/viewer into drawing false premises as to what is really going on. How's this for a "red herring": a huge gorilla peeks out the castle window as the heroine arrives, and hairy hands are later seen committing murder. Throats are slit with a straight razor. Do we have a suspect? Or how about this: vampirism is repeatedly mentioned in hushed tones as a suspected plague in the MacGrieff family. Moreover, when a family member is buried, if a cat follows the coffin to the tomb, it is rumored that the corpse will come back as a vampire. Well, the cat follows a family member's corpse to the graveyard, and the tomb is later found to be empty. Could vampires be involved? And so it goes. The red herrings are dragged around so frequently that the whole film smells very fishy. Of course, the real killer is . . . (spoiler???) . . . the one character who smells the least fishy.Okay--so this is not a film to challenge your deductive reasoning. It is however, fun to watch. The Gothic atmospherics are plastered on with a very large spatula. The detective, as brief as his appearances are, is a real original, and could have easily become the main figure in a Poirot-Columbo style film series. There is also a bit of appealing gratuitous nudity, featuring the striking German actress Doris Kunstmann. Lurid? You bet!!!

lazarillo This a strange movie. It was directed by Anthony Margheretti who specialized in Italian Gothic horror films, but it was made at the height of "yellow (giallo) fever" in the early 1970's. As a result it is kind of a strange cross between a 60's Gothic horror movie and a 70's giallo. It is set in a 19th century Scottish castle rather than in a more modern-day Rome fashion house,for instance, but it has both a number and an animal in the title(the calling card of a giallo) and it features a series of nasty murders right from the opening credits when a man is butchered and his body fed to rats in the cellar. It also has an ape wandering around through secret passages in the castle, which doesn't fit either the giallo or the Gothic horror genre but might be some kind of homage to Edgar Allen Poe's "Murders in Rue Morgue". The story starts off when a young woman (Jane Birkin) returns home to her family's castle and is reunited with her neurotic mother, lecherous uncle, and angry young cousin (who owns the ape), and before long people start dying left and right. Oh yeah, there's also a cat wandering around who witnesses (some of) the murders, thus the title.This was OK I guess, but I had a few problems with it. First, off they pretty much wasted the ape. If you're going to have an ape in your movie (or a man in an ape suit anyway) you should do more with him. Second, this is the only movie I've ever personally seen Jane Birkin in where she does NOT take her clothes off. As this made the movie significantly more boring I had a lot of time to ponder why this was and it finally occurred to me that she might have been pregnant with her daughter, the equally sexy actress Charlotte Gainsbourg, at the time. (And speaking of Gainsbourg, Serg Gainsbourg also has a cameo in this movie as a dubbed Scottish detective).Finally, I was disappointed with the titular cat a little bit. It was kind of fluffy white cat like the one Blofeld is always stroking in James Bond movies. They should have used a more sinister black cat like the one named "Satan" that appeared in two gialli the previous year ("Gently Before She Dies" and "Crimes of the Black Cat"), but maybe he'd gone to kitty heaven or just refused to travel to Scotland (at least it wasn't a guy in a cat suit). Anyway, it seemed like they kind of forgot about the cat anyway towards the end. This was an alright movie, but it could have been better.

missmonochrome Giallo are not really known for heavy reliance on plot, but here it is in a nutshell: Lovely schoolgirl Corringa (Jane Birkin), comes home to her ancestral castle to meet with family. Before long, the eccentric collection of guests (crazy lord, hired hooker, doctor who can't keep it in his pants long enough to treat anyone, etc.) is being murdered one by one, with no witnesses except the titular cat.I'd be able to forgive a lot if the atmosphere was sufficiently creepy, but Margheriti's idea of atmosphere is poor indoor lighting, a rather cuddly looking house pet, red paint "blood", faux Argento killer's P.O.V. shots and a never fully explained attempt at making random shots a gorilla peeking through a doorway a legitimate red herring.Aside from the random primate, all of the red herrings might as well have glaring neon signs, from the terse dinner conversation about Lord Magrieff's (Hiram Keller)insanity and the resulting argument with the doctor (Anton Diffring),to Suzanne's(Doris Kunstmann) pillow talk with that same doctor, to the untterly inane vampire nonsense (White pancake and a wind machine....scary!).The acting is B movie competent. Birkin looks prettily wide eyed,Kunstmann stalks about poutily, the only horrid performer is Keller. His vacant eyed, shaggy haired pretty boy comes across as the euro precursor/inspiration of the equally empty eyed Ashton Kutcher.All in all the plot and the mood are equally forgettable (even the power of random monkeys and the final hackneyed "twist" couldn't save the film) and this movie didn't deserve the Blue Underground treatment or any more than three stars. (Awarded for Orlatani's score,the cool poster art, and the 2 sexy females).Chalk up another one in the "loss" column for one of cult film's most over rated filmmakers.