Four Flies On Gray Velvet (1974)

Argento's final film in his animal trilogy is a decent thriller but not one of his top films by any means. Roberto Tobias is a drummer whom one night upon leaving practice with his band detects someone following him. Upon confronting the individual, the man pulls a knife and threatens Roberto to leave him alone. The two struggle, with Roberto accidentally plunging the knife into the man. Roberto stands there in shock when a new figure appears on the scene. Wearing an odd looking dummy mask, this person snaps photos of Roberto holding the knife, and looking very, very, guilty. Pretty soon, people start turning up dead around him and he feels of course that he is the next victim in line.

The main thing I disliked about this film was the character of Roberto. The guy really is just not very likeable. He acts like a prick to his wife, and even cheats on her with her cousin at one point. To tell you the truth, I wanted the killer to off the self-absorbed asshole. The violence is fairly restrained in this film, though there is one nasty clobbering by a mallet that was pretty painful to watch. You can sort of guess the killer fairly easy, though I will say my initial guess was off the mark. Not to brag, but usually I can guess the killer pretty good in these films. Not that you give a shit, right? Actually, I'm sort of at a loss on what to say about this one. This is one of Argento's rarest films, and the print I watched was a real scratchy French version with sound dropping out at certain points. Maybe if I was able to watch a better print I may have enjoyed it better (you hear me Anchor Bay?). I'm also not sure how complete it was, I think it ran about 106 minutes, so if anyone knows what the uncut length is let me know.