To me, this movie is perfection.

Sadly Over-hyped

This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

The story is garbage. The acting is horrible. The main actor cannot act, it's like they just took some dude from the street and put him in front of the camera. And his character is a dirtbag. Who sleeps in his jeans? Who takes a nap with a fully loaded gun in his hand? The wife, cannot act, not pretty, just a plain face, nothing to look at, just plain nothing. When she got the call that the maid was dead and told the husband, nothing, no shock, no oh my god, just plain nothing. Nothing. What's the story with the bum friends? The best line is when one of the bums asks for a light and switched the cigarettes! The comedy sucked. Some of the killings were OK, nothing great. The maid in the park idea was good, but seriously poorly executed. The rock music was horrible, Truly horrible. Some mentioned that Deep Purple was thinking about doing the music. I am glad they didn't get stuck in this garbage movie. The rest of the music sucked too, especially the drum/bongo crap towards the end. Truly annoying. Then we get to the part of the dead eyeballs capturing the last thing the victim saw. Was this supposed to be sc-fi? What the hell was that? Then the wife comes in with the medallion of the flies. Oh, now it all makes sense. She's crazy, so she concocts this elaborate scheme to torture and kill her husband. Then she tries to take off, and for dramatic effect, crashes her car into a truck and gets decapitated, with poor effect. After the car crash a head is shown rolling in the street, no blood anywhere. Very poor. Give me a break! Characters are show telling boring stories. Some of these characters are shown before the big reveal, a red herring. Editing is crap, real choppy. The scene where the main character is shown confessing to his wife about killing someone, and the wife's cousin casually walks in and he does not stop talking. Does this seem realistic? No! So, what we have here is someone who got a budget with no talent, and hired a bunch of people with no talent to produce a film, for all the no talent film viewers to see and say, "It's art". It's not art, it's crap.Inferior story, acting, cinematography, lighting, sets, editing, music, you name it, it sucks.I've watched enough giallo films and understand that not all the story is supposed to make sense. But at least the good ones present decent cinematography, acting and music. I recommend Don't Torture A Duckling by Fulci, or All the Colors of the Dark, by Sergio Martino This movie should be the basis of a semester in film studies. Scene by scene should be torn apart for what should not be done. To be fair there are some parts, like the park scene that had good ideas, but bad execution.I've read some of the IMDb reviews and most like or love this movie. I hate it. And I hate Argento. This is only the 2nd movie I've seen from him. First was Suspira, a complete garbage of a movie. Color gels for lighting and that's his set design. I can only guess that fans of Argento might be looking at his movies and disregarding the story and the acting. And they praise the cinematography and scenes. Sorry, he fails on all fronts. He does not produce art, or abstract art, it's just garbage. If you watch a film with black screen and no audio, you would have a better time, use your imagination and produce your own abstract art film.I've read most of the critic reviews. So far only Entertainment Maven and Bloodcapsules have given it a low or negative rating. So, I can only conclude that most reviewers here are deaf and blind and ignorant of true art. Most state that the story is lacking and the acting is amateurish, but disregard these important elements of movie making by giving it a positive review. So, I guess you need to make up your own mind. Please, do not be fooled by garbage disguised as art.

"Flies on Grey Velvet" is the third film of Argento's 'Animal Trilogy.' It was intended to be his swan song to the 'Giallo,' however this would change once The Five Days (1973) failed at the box-office.It would be a couple of years before Argento would make the game-changing decision to use 'Goblin' as composers on Deep Red; but he was veering towards rock here with 'Deep Purple' considered, but once again Morricone composed the score. They had a falling out over some of the tracks though, and as a result would not work together again until The Stendhal Syndrome (1996). This may also explain the noticeably sparse use of music throughout. '…flies' is as egregious as the weird science that can photograph the last image from the retina; the conceit of the film. Argento's unusual opening credits cut between the image of a heart pumping atop a black title card, whilst a rock group's rehearsal is seen via various point-of-view shots (POV) from musical instruments. Rock musician Roberto Tobias leaves the rehearsal studio and follows a mysterious figure into an empty theater where he struggles with a knife wielding man. Roberto accidentally stabs the man, whilst a masked figure captures the moment on camera. If Argento's signature use of a black-gloved 'Giallo' killer is absent, the disguise of the photographer in the theatre prefigures the mechanical doll from Deep Red.Argento continues to toy with gay stereotypes, introducing Private Detective Arrosio, a flamboyant homosexual who brags of never having solved a case, he meets his demise in the stereotypical public toilet; which however serves to illustrate the film's concern for gender confusion, with our eye being led to the male/female indicators on the toilet door. On the same track the long- haired Tobias's locks are contrasted with his short-haired wife Nina's. Tobias is never accused of murder despite the incriminating photographs of the opening sequence. If Mark Lewis' obsession for film in Michael Powell's seminal Peeping Tom has a direct link to his past, the photographs in '…flies…' are more pedestrian, being no more than an attempt to unnerve Tobias (it works), and the pseudo-science of the camera that photographs images on a retina doesn't go anywhere. As is hinted at in the opening credits, Argento wanted to play with the camera and nowhere is this on display as obviously as the bullet tracking shot. It went on to influence so many, including Sam Raimi (The Quick & The Dead), who became a huge fan of tracking anything and everything to delirious effect.'…flies…' tour-de-force is a set piece where Roberto's maid smokes a cigarette whilst waiting in a park. Jacques Tourneur's (and Val Lewton's) The Leopard Man (1943), is evoked as she falls prey to both time and montage; sounds evaporate and people disappear, the gates are locked for the night and there is no-one to save her.

Dario Argento, master of slasher-surrealism, made the interesting Four Flies on Grey Velvet in 1971 … and it combines the low-key elements of his early Giallo period with the more colorful visual experimentation of his later films.Roberto, a drummer in a psychedelic rock band, is being stalked by a man in fedora and sunglasses. When Roberto eventually tracks down and confronts him in an empty confetti-strewn opera house, there is a struggle: his stalker immediately wields a switchblade, but Roberto defends himself and somehow ends up accidentally stabbing the man, causing him to fall into an orchestra pit. SEEMINGLY dead! Meanwhile, some person with a camera, wearing an impish mask, is taking pictures of all this from the opera house balcony.Obviously afraid that he'll be incriminated in the murder, Roberto avoids going to the police. It is not long before someone else begins toying with him, slipping into his home to plant a photo of the killing. This person even sneaks in while he's asleep and kills his cat. Roberto first assumes that he's being blackmailed, but it soon dawns on him that he is now the victim of some sick cat-and-mouse game designed to drive him bonkers. As he sorts through all the suspects (maid, wife's cousin, mailman, etc.) with the assistance of his earthy bohemian friend and a swishy gay private investigator, the culprit does (not surprisingly) turn out to be right under his nose.Like in all of Dario Argento's work, it's the filmmaking style that is the true star, not the actors. Argento rarely pays much attention to his performers, and this film is no exception, but there are a few treasures among the actors to be found here. Michael Brandon is apt (in that he's not very expressive) playing the vapid, macho, and boring Roberto. Mimsy Farmer, who plays his wife, Nina, does eventually come alive at the end of the film (although in an overreaching manner) when she has her big meltdown/confession scene - otherwise, she's pretty bland playing the "dedicated wife." In many ways, you can't blame Farmer since her character is so one-dimensional. A few of the supporting actors, however, stand out. Bud Spenser as Roberto's comical friend, Godfrey, and Jean-Pierre Marielle as Gianni, the overly broad, flaming private investigator, are both very engaging.While Four Flies is not as elegantly garish as Argento's subsequent Suspiria, it's still visually playful enough to give you a hint of the baroque direction Argento would soon take. Charming moments include an opening montage of Roberto jamming with his band (its highlight is a witty POV shot taken from inside a guitar, looking out into a recording studio, as its strings are being strummed) intercut with a pulsating heart over a silent black screen and Roberto being surveyed -- in his car and in the park -- by his stalker. As Roberto drums away, a fly vexes him, which he eventually squashes between his drum cymbals; the build-up to the park murder of Roberto's inquisitive and opportunistic maid stands out with its New Wave jump cuts (think Jean-Luc Godard making a thriller) where late day suddenly becomes night and a populated playground suddenly becomes empty, all within a split second; the climactic scene where the killer's car accidentally collides (in super slow motion) with a truck – we see the killer's stunned face through a crashing sheet of twinkling windshield glass, poetically juxtaposed with Ennio Morricone's haunting lilting music. Four Flies' naturalistic photography is also a charmer, focusing on earthy colors, unlike the much lauded theatrical look of Argento's best known works.Four Flies' script is moderately interesting with odd touches throughout: Roberto's recurring nightmare of a public execution/beheading washed in white sunlight, directly influenced by his friend's grisly party anecdote; a goofy mailman constantly misdelivers Swedish pornography to the wrong addressee; Roberto and Godfrey attend a coffin expo that showcases ornately designed (some - futuristic) caskets; Roberto's cute and cuddly bathtub romp with Nina's cousin, Dalia; an implausible sci-fi device that can record the last image retained on a dead person's retina, possibly revealing who the killer is if a murder is committed. Despite all this nice stuff, the script still has its weaknesses: basically, its flat lead characters and eye-rolling conclusion where Nina reveals herself to be Roberto's stalker. Nina explains her motives in an overly broad monologue that sounds as Freudian as the explanation given at the end of Psycho... and its theory of gender psychosis. She reveals that the reason she is torturing Roberto is because he reminds her of her macho dead father with whom she hates – her father always wanted a son, and would dress her up as a boy when she was little and put her through constant male endurance tests, etc. It's also interesting to add that Nina sports a boyish haircut, where her husband, the manly Roberto, has long locks.For a Dario Argento film, Four Flies' violence is pretty soft (it is PG-rated) except for a few nauseating close-ups of a jumbo needle penetrating a hairy chest's spongy layer and a thick wire being entwined around a man's coarse neck, its leathery skin in rolls. The murder that stands out the most, however, is when Dalia gets sliced on the forehead (an elegant slash like the mark of Harry Potter) right before falling down a flight of stairs (head-first, face-up) her skull plopping musically and cartoonishly against each step as she descends backwards. The coup de grace to this scene is when Argento's camera tracks the killer's perfectly vertical knife, dropping midair, disembodied, like a torpedo, silencing its victim's scream.As I stated before, the style is the most striking thing in a Dario Argento flick -- often, the skeletons of his films just aren't very impressive. Again, it's all in the way he dresses them up!

"Four Flies on Grey Velvet" focuses on Roberto, a drummer in a rock band who is grappling with feelings of guilt for his responsibility in a man's death after he believed him to be stalking him. Following the death of the stranger, he finds himself being blackmailed by an unknown, hellbent assailant.This was one of Argento's films that I had neglected to view for many years, and I was surprised when watching it how complex it was, especially given that it was such an early film of his. Somewhat like "Deep Red," "Four Flies on Grey Velvet" weaves an intricate, winding narrative that spreads out in varying directions before closing back in on itself for the final resolution. The narrative here is for the most part coherent, and there are enough through-lines to really engage the audience from beginning to end.There are some phenomenal and legitimately frightening scenes involving the threatening killer, and the murder scenes are jarring and well handled. Unusual, borderline experimental uses of parallel editing and jump cuts give the narrative a dynamic flair, and atmospherically, every frame bleeds with Argento's unique aesthetic choices. The opening confrontation in the opera house is stunning, and several of the murder scenes are particularly memorable and understated; the film does seem to have some stilted elements to it, including characters and moments that really serve no purpose, but the upshot is that they lend Argento more time to wallow in stylistics. Solid performances from Michael Brandon and Mimsy Farmer really help bolster the proceedings, and Jean-Pierre Marielle is memorable as the flamboyant gay detective.I've read some criticism of the film's conclusion, and while I do find it to be fairly easy in terms of expectancy, it is a clever twist, and the slow-motion finale is mildly remarkable.Overall, "Four Flies on Grey Velvet" is an intriguing giallo with some great, understated murder scenes and a puzzle of a plot that engages the audience in ways which Argento would come to refine even more with "Deep Red." In charting Argento's career, the film is highly important, but even outside the context of his directorial trajectory, it stands as a solid, weirdly memorable effort with some rock'n'roll spirit and an extremely sinister doll mask. For most genre fans, I think that's more than enough. 8/10.