The Crimes of the Black Cat (1972)

A blind pianist overhears a suspicious conversation in a bar. Shortly afterwards his girlfriend is mysteriously murdered. This leads to a series of serial killings that have some connection to a fashion house.The above synopsis is one that you could come up with if you were to toss a dozen giallo scripts in the air and see what random parts fall onto your head. In fact, this film borrows elements from several popular gialli from the time. Throw in adultery, blackmail, an enigmatic drug addict, lesbians, fashion models and dark secrets from the past and you have the makings of a typical effort. However, this movie does have some tricks up its sleeve to differentiate itself from all others. Chief amongst them being what is perhaps the most insane method of murder ever devised. I won't spoil it for first time viewers but it is truly deranged. In addition to this there is also a mind-bogglingly vicous shower murder that comes out of the blue and genuinely shocks. Further strangeness comes with the fact that the blind protagonist appears to be working on a score for Lucio Fulci's A Lizard in a Woman's Skin. We see clips from this film on a couple of occasions, which is rather bizarre.Everything is wrapped up at the end with an explanation that I found completely baffling. But, that's hardly a surprise in these flicks to be fair. At the end of the day, it couldn't be said that this is exactly a prime example of the genre. But it still remains entertainingly batty and does have some visual flair and some good set-pieces. It's unfortunate that the current legitimate DVD release appears to be a non-anamorphic copy of a VHS tape though. A better transfer would improve this one.

I have also significantly reduced the amount of money I spend on movie tickets. Now I only see films I think will be good (like Drive) and have shifted to purchasing blu-rays. This has spoiled me into expecting great picture and sound quality which is infrequent in multiplexes. I don't want to be too out of touch, so I will rent some quotidian movies, probably on Saturday, while I invest in better films. Here is an obscure gialli The Crimes of the Black Cat.Sergio Pastore's only giallo is a fun exercise for genre adherents. Play a game of identifying steals from better directors' better movies. Even for a genre film, Crimes of the Black Cat presents very little to justify its existence. A bunch of fashion models start to be killed off by an unknown assailant a la Blood and Black Lace. A blind hero tries to determine who the killer might be, and the only his lack of glasses differentiate him from his counterpart in The Cat o'Nine Tails. The plagiarism doesn't stop! There is even a shot of someone moving through a room of mannequins that is filmed from the same above canted angle as in Hatchet for the Honeymoon. Pastore was either an opportunist, hired help, or a hack with this film, mistaking his idols' manipulations of mise-en- as reasons for their successes. Bava and Argento arbitrarily added these characteristics to their movies, either out of intrigue into their underlying phenomena or artistry.Pastore has does have some imagination, and his derivative movie may have actually been an inspiration for Lucio Fulci's The Black Cat which uses features more feline murder. This killer surprises his victims with his tabby who poisons them with curare claws. It reads better than it watches. Every time this happens the victim gets a quick scratch and dies. Admittedly, it's hard to imagine a cat killing someone, and Argento and Fulci got around this by evading worldly logic. They also threw in some nudity and a lot more gore that are strangely absent here. I haven't determined if this was a made-for-TV film or edited for its DVD release. If neither is true, the film doesn't subvert or otherwise justify its sophomoric conservatism. This is exacerbated in retrospect by his odd decision to typecast Annabella Incontrera as the aggressive lesbian she frequently played without showing using her implied love scene as a justification for some nudity.Crimes is an investigative melodrama for the majority of its runtime. Once the killer's identity is revealed, we get an "apology" of sorts in form of an amusing riff on Psycho. The killer attacks a woman in the shower and slices her in plain view. I remain confused as to why we must endure 85 minutes to see this, but I was in need of relief by this point. The razor cuts her breasts graphically in close-up, ironically imprinting the film unjustly into our memory. It ends in a final nod to Four Flies on Grey Velvet with a freeze frame as the credits roll. The last attack is the only inspired part of the movie, and I encourage you to skip to that part if you rent it.If you live in the United States, Crimes of the Black Cat can only be seen on DVD in a shoddy VHS transfer by the now-defunct DAGORED company. It looks as if they used an Italian tape as the master source as tracking is visible and the subtitles appear superimposed below the image and there are no other language options.

Cats, and particularly the black-colored ones, are quite popular animals to feature in horror movies. Mainly thanks to the influence of Edgar Allen Poe's legendary writings, but also because they're sinister and mysterious animals whose actions are largely uncontrollable. Particularly the Italian horror industry used a lot of (black) cats and the story lines often try to fool us into believing these vicious animals are responsible for the ongoing terror, even though there's always – duh – a human culprit behind it. Sergio Pastore's "Crimes of the Black Cat" is a very competent Giallo, perhaps a bit standard and obviously borrowing ideas from similar efforts, but nevertheless entertaining enough to please the majority of fans of this marvelous Italian horror sub genre. What story aspects are borrowed from other Giallo-titles? Well, the victims of the maniacal killer are nearly all gorgeous models working for the same fashion house, as it was the case in Mario Bava's "Blood & Black Lace"; generally considered as THE movie that started the whole Giallo-madness in 1964. Also, the male lead – who begins to investigate the murders on his own – is blind, like Karl Malden's character in Dario Argento's "The Cat O'Nine Tails". The most important elements in Sergio Pastore's script are original however, like the modus operandi used for the killings and the large amount of red herrings & convoluted plot twists when approaching the finale. The lifeless body of a young model is found in her dressing room. She seemly died of a sudden heart attack but closer investigation shows that the claw of a cat dripped in poison caused her premature death. Since the police don't seem to be in a hurry to find the person behind this fiendish murder, the girl's former boyfriend Peter (a blind pianist) starts his own search, assisted by his loyal butler and the murdered girl's roommate. They slowly unravel a whole criminal network involving adultery, blackmail and drug-addicted circus artists. "Crimes of the Black Cat" is reasonably well paced and features a satisfying amount of action and excitement. The first 15 minutes are rather tame, but this is widely compensated by the outrageous and suspense-laden climax. The cat-claw murders aren't very spectacular, but there's a truly sadistic and stomach-churning scene near the end in which a poor girl is stabbed to death in her, "Psycho"-style in her shower. This particular murder surely belongs in the top ten grossest Giallo-moments! Unlike other contemporary Giallo-highlights, the musical score is unmemorable and there isn't that much female nudity on display. Pastore's direction and the performances of the ensemble cast are just adequate without surpassing any exceptional boundaries. "Crimes of the Black Cat" perhaps shouldn't be the first film to watch when you're new to the Giallo-sub genre, but it's definitely a good film that I warmly recommend.

One thing you can say about Italian gialli: they never resort to killing someone with a simple shooting or stabbing--the villains always use some ridiculously elaborate Rube Goldberg method for doing their victims in. And this giallo features what might be the most ridiculous of them all. I don't want to give too much away, but I will say that the English title "Crimes of the Black Cat" can be taken completely literally. (Obviously, the people who thought up this movie were not cat owners--have you ever tried to get a cat to do ANYTHING?). Aside from the especially absurd murders this is a typical giallo. It is set in the European fashion world, it's highly stylized, the plot makes little sense, and the motivation of the villain turns out to be even more ludicrous than the method of murder. The protagonist is the blind male lover of the first murder victim. (How come blind people never complain that they are always being stereotyped as good-looking and resourceful individuals who always get to solve the crime and sleep with many attractive members of the opposite sex along the way?). The only name star is Sylva Koscina, but she is barely in the movie. The best actor though is the cat (perhaps the self-same feline thespian who played "Satan" in "Gently, Before She Dies"). After he exits the film, it quickly spirals downward with a truly tasteless shower murder and one of those abrupt freeze-frame endings that were so big in the 70's (maybe they ran out of film a lot back then). If you like gialli at all though, you'll probably like this one. It's very typical for its kind.