Leofwine_draca THE THIRD EYE is a proto-giallo made on a low budget and in black and white. This is more of a psycho-thriller in the Hammer mould than a Bava-style giallo. There's a debt of inspiration owed to Hitchcock's PSYCHO. If a sense of familiarity comes to you while watching, it's because Joe D'Amato virtually remade the movie for his 1979 nasty, BLUE HOLOCAUST.As a psychological thriller this is an interesting little film, with the usual bunch of nasty characters holed up in a rambling mansion. There's the dominating old mother, the conniving housekeeper, and the wayward son; the son's innocent bride-to-be soon learns of the madness inherent in the household. The requisite number of plot twists hold the attention throughout, and there's plenty of style to boot. Some of the violence is explicit for the period and the taxidermy theme can be unpleasant. Some of the acting is a little histrionic but overall this is an interesting, albeit neglected, curio. Franco Nero headlines the cast prior to achieving fame as DJANGO.

melvelvit-1 A troubled young Count (Franco Nero), living in a crumbling villa with his domineering mother, takes comfort in taxidermy (sound familiar?) until he falls in love with a girl (Erica Blanc) his mother naturally doesn't approve of. The old battle ax tells a servant she treats "like a daughter" that she'd be forever grateful if the girl would make her son's fiancée disappear and not only does the servant kill the son's intended, she offs his mother, too. The Count takes his mom's death hard but not as hard as his fiancee's, whose body he stuffs before he starts strangling strippers. The servant tells him she'll help cover up his crimes if he'll marry her and he agrees but when his dead fiancee's look-alike sister (also Erica Blanc) shows up looking for answers, complications ensue... To say THE THIRD EYE was inspired by Alfred Hitchcock's PSYCHO would be an understatement but it does go off on a crazy tangent of its own and was obviously capitalizing on a spate of Hammer "mini-Hitchcock" thrillers popular at the time (MANIAC, PARANOIA, HYSTERIA). In black & white with cool-looking red subtitles, the damn thing was never dull, that's for sure. Cult director Joe D'Amato "unofficially" remade this as BEYOND THE DARKNESS in 1979.

HumanoidOfFlesh Franco Nero plays a young taxidermist named Mino,who lives with his domineering mother and a loyal family servant Marta in a Gothic residence.The elderly widowed Countness doesn't want his son to marry his beloved Laura.To achieve her goals Marta cuts the brake cable on Laura's car causing the vehicle to roll off an embankment and into a lake and murders the Countess pushing her down the stairs.This is the beginning of Mino's madness.He takes Laura's body and preserves it and starts picking up women and choking them to death in the presence of his preserved love."The Third Eye" is strikingly similar to "Buio Omega",but nowhere nearly as gruesome and disgusting.The cinematography is elegant and stylish and the use of romantic score is a nice touch.A must-see for fans of "Buio Omega".8 out of 10.

Witchfinder General 666 ***SPOILERS!*** Franco Nero truly is an amazingly versatile actor, and his films from 1966, probably the most important year for his career, are a perfect proof for that. In the same year when Nero became an immortal cult-icon as the cynical and super-tough eponymous antihero in Sergio Corbucci's "Django", he also played an insane mother's boy with a Norman Bates complex in this amazing psychological chiller "Il Terzo Occhio" (aka. "Third Eye"). Released several years before the heyday of the Giallo in the early 70s, and only few years after Mario Bava's genre-defining masterpieces "The Girl Who Knew Too Much" ("La Ragazza Che Sappeva Troppo", 1963) and "Blood And Black Lace" ("Sei Donne Per L'Assassino", 1964), "Il Terzo Occhio" is sometimes referred to as an early Giallo with Gothic elements, but it isn't really, in my opinion. Giallo or not, "Il Terzo Occhio" is doubtlessly an amazingly morbid Psychological Horror Film with a wonderful Gothic atmosphere and a stunning mood of insanity that should definitely appeal to all those who love the Giallo genre.Nero plays Mino, a young count whose life is dominated by his possessive Mother (Olga Solbelli). Mino's plans to marry the beautiful Laura (Erika Blanc) are a thorn in the flesh both of the malicious old countess and the murderously ambitious Maid Marta (Gioia Pascal)... The film begins exquisitely macabre, when the murderous plans of two possessive women get out of hand, and carries on morbidly when the young count himself goes absolutely nuts. Terriffically set in an eerie country mansion, "Il Terzo Occhio" very obviously copied some elements of Alfred Hitchcock's masterpiece "Psycho" (1960), but, as usual for Italian Horror Films, it is in many ways more explicit and morbid than the acclaimed American film. As famous movie-Psycho Norman Bates, mother's boy Mino enjoys stuffing animals, but, as opposed to "Psycho", we also get to watch his hobby in explicit detail, for example. Franco Nero is, as always, brilliant in his role, and the rest of the cast is terrific too. Fans of Italian Cult-Cinema will be delighted to see the beautiful Erika Blanc ("Kill Baby... Kill!", "The Devil's Nightmare", "The Night Evelyn Came Out Of The Grave", etc.) in the role of Laura. THE great female performance in this film, however, comes from the equally beautiful Gioia Pascal, who sadly never appeared in any other film. Olga Solbelli is great in the role of the horrible old witch of a countess. "Il Terzo Occhio" is probably most famous for spawning a more (in-)famous remake, sleaze-deity Joe D'Amato's notorious and ultra-nasty Exploitation highlight "Buio Omega" ("Beyond The Darkness", 1979). Buio Omega, which tells basically the same story, but focuses more on (very) explicit gore, necrophilia and detailed perversions is also highly recommendable, but only to those with a good stomach. While both films are definite must-sees for my fellow Italian Horror buffs, this one is also recommendable to those who are not into extreme nastiness and nauseating gore. Even though it does not (yet) get the attention it deserves, "Il Terzo Occhio" is an amazingly creepy film with a great ensemble cast that must not be missed by fans of Italian Horror. Highly recommended!