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Four Flies On Grey Velvet (1971)

Dir: Dario Argento.

The story starts with Jazz/Rock drummer Roberto Tobias, (Michael Brandon) leaving a recording session and noticing another man in a leather trench coat (hey it is an Argento film!) watching him. This happens to be the same man he spotted earlier following him around. Angered, Roberto chases the man into a deserted theatre and confronts him. The man pulls a knife and in the struggle ends up stabbed with his own blade. A shocked Roberto looks up and sees a masked figure in the balcony taking photos of the fight. Roberto flees home where he lives with his wife, Nina (Mimsy Farmer) and wonders what to do.

Soon he receives the dead mans ID in the post, someone breaks into the house and slashes up the furniture and even puts a garrotte around Roberto's throat and whispers to him (in that wonderful Giallo rasp we all know and love) that his life will be made hell. When some of the photos turn up in his belongings he confesses what happened to Nina, and is now paranoid about who he can trust as he is certain that the masked figure is someone who knows him. The strain makes a rift between Nina and himself and Roberto ends up in the arms of Nina's cousin Dalia (Francine Racette).

He visits a bizarre friend named Godfrey (Carlo Pedersoli, here using his famous 'Bud Spencer' moniker) who lives in a shack and eats raw fish, and is known as 'God'. Hardly the obvious choice for some sanity, he never-the-less tells Roberto to hire a private detective (Jean-Pierre Marielle) and with 'Gods' equally bizarre friend, who is named 'Professor', the detective follows Roberto to watch his back.

This strange bunch set out to unravel the mystery…

 

The final part of Argento's so called Animal Trilogy, (which starts with "The Bird with the Crystal Plumage", and is followed by "Cat 'O Nine Tails") "Four Flies on Grey Velvet" is the least seen and hardest to find of Argento's early horror films. And it's easy to see why.

This was Dario's last pure Giallo before the wonderfully bombastic elements he would add to his next entry, "Deep Red", and it's laboured pace shows. True, early Gialli were made in a very conventional way, the unusual elements came in the form of the twisted plots and added violence and sex that were absent from their British and American counterparts. This however did not stop the wonderful "Bird with the Crystal Plumage" and even the lesser "Cat 'O Nine Tales" from being compelling, but here the structure is messy, the pacing extremely slow and the charm completely missing.

Brandon makes for a very plain lead, and this is fatal during his scenes with the typically outlandish support characters that populate Argento's early films (especially the wonderfully strange pimp and painter from "Bird"). The dreadfully camp, cliché homosexual detective and the peculiar friend of Godfrey seem to have stepped out of one of those Italian comedies of the 70's, that Lucio Fulci started his directing career with. And where as Tony Musante was a strong enough presence to not let the strange characters in "Bird" swamp the scene, Brandon isn't and they overwhelm the movie to increasingly embarrassing degrees.

Mimsy Farmer is also poor, giving a shrew like performance that goes nowhere, only during the end does she come across to the viewer and even then mainly due to her expressions more so than her vocal performance. Bud Spencer, a bull of a man who is still best known outside Italy for the silly but fun comedies he made with Terrence Hill, makes more of an impression and is helped in the dubbing by a voice-over artist who will sound familiar to any fans of Italian horror cinema. But his character also seems out of place in the sombre pacing of the rest of the film.

Ennio Morricone's score (which was going to be performed by the rock group Deep Purple) has its moments, but as with most of his work away from Sergio Leone, it is for the most part dull or just plain annoying. It also creates THE most dreadful scene in the film where a comic 'Hallelujah' chorus bursts onto the screen when Godfrey is introduced by Roberto shouting "God, God"!

The final solution to the plot is rushed, almost as if Argento had noticed he was running out of film, and is a far cry from the grand unveiling and clever twists of most of his other films. The psycho's motives are cloudy and unimpressive and not worth the build up of the last 90 minutes.

But we're talking Argento here so not all is lost. The opening credit sequence is suitably original with Morricone's cheesy Jazz/Rock playing away as Dario shoots the members of Roberto's band from the inside of a guitar or through the drums. The first murder by our psycho has a wonderful nightmarish build up as the doomed character runs through a deserted park maze made of dark hedges and ominous cobweb enshrouded alleyways. Sadly though this build up leads to an off-screen murder that fails to deliver the expectations of the audience. All foreplay and no climax does not a happy viewer make. The second murder is a lot more violent and bloody and has a sadistic streak as the victim dies slowly, similar to what we see in "Cat O' Nine Tails" and "Deep Red". The later knife murder is also a welcome bit of shock violence in the stodgy middle point of the film.

The actual finale is very well done, and is even poetic in its execution as Dario uses clever time changes to draw us in to the scene, but this really needs to be seen at a cinema or at least a re-mastered widescreen print (the VHS here is a bad pan and scan) for its full effect to be felt.

So after the wait to actually find a print of this I felt let down by Argento. The pacing is dreadful and the denouement weak, and although it is worth seeing for some of Argento's artistic flourishes, this can only really be recommended to completists.