Simply A Masterpiece

Sadly Over-hyped

People are voting emotionally.

Awesome Movie

Finding The Strange Vice of Mrs Wardh to exceed all my expectations,I started searching for other gialli by Sergio Martino to view this October. Looking round on eBay,I was thrilled to spot a Martino DVD on an auction about to end,which led to me getting out my paint kit.The plot:Losing her baby in a car crash, Jane Harrison has been receiving counselling with support from boyfriend Richard. During the counselling,Harrison begins opening up about her mum being murdered when she was 5 (what a cheerful opening!) Talking to her sister Barbara about recurring nightmares she is having of a strange man trying to kill her. Jane is advised that she can be freed from her troubles by attending a black mass. Taking part in the mass,Jane soon finds her nightmare to become living colour.View on the film:Given the challenge of carrying a one woman film,the super sexy Edwige Fenech gives an excellent performance as Jane Harrison. Chasing Giallo mystery and (loose) religious Horror,Fenech captures a fracturing of fear over Jane's face with a lingering of the sorrow just underneath the surface. Taking the traditional role of the girl in a Giallo, George Hilton reunites with Fenech to give a very good performance as Richard,with Hillton giving some rugged fear to the darkness.One of only two gialli to have the leads be parents who lose a child,the screenplay by Ernesto Gastaldi/Santiago Moncada and Sauro Scavolini bend the mystery into devil worshipping yelps. Whilst the devil antics give the flick a trippy vibe,the writers never explain how it is helping Jane, (apart from the wild sex!) which leads to the masses distracting from the building unease.Delving into Jane's scrambled state,director Sergio Martino expands the psychedelic flourishes of Wardh a with dazzling,ultra-stylised spray of colours across the screen painting the blending of fantasy and reality in Jane's mind. Pulling the mask off the killer early on,Martino finds other mysteries for the Giallo thrills,via expertly framed reflecting shots, designed for the foreground to unveil the sinister slithering in the background of Jane's life,as Martino paints with all the colours of the dark.

"The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh" (1971) was the film that first turned me on to giallo director Sergio Martino, as well as the charms of cult actress Edwige Fenech. I just had to have more, and so checked out "All the Colors of the Dark" (1972) just as quickly as I could. This film reunites not only the director and star of "Mrs. Wardh," but also costars George Hilton and Ivan Rassimov from that previous film, as well, and although "Dark" is not the 10-star masterpiece that "Mrs. Wardh" is, it still has much to offer, even to the casual viewer. In this one, Edwige plays a woman named Jane who, when we first meet her, is something of an emotional mess. She had recently suffered a miscarriage following a car accident, and is now having persistent nightmares about the blue-eyed, knife-wielding whacko who killed her mother many years before. And soon, Jane meets the man of her dreams, as Ol' Blue Eyes (and I don't mean Frank Sinatra!) starts stalking her through the streets of London. After psychiatry fails to calm her, she takes a friend's advice and attends a local Black Mass (!), but, not too surprisingly, her new devil-worshipping acquaintances only add to poor Jane's problems.... Anyway, Martino again directs his picture with abundant style to spare, and Fenech is astonishingly beautiful throughout. Twenty-three in this film, she looks a bit like Carolyn Jones' better-looking sister, or a brunette Karin Dor, but in truth is far, far prettier than either of those lovelies. When she's on screen (which, happily here, is most of the time), you just can't take your eyes off her. Thus, we have a slightly overly plotted giallo that combines a stalker, devil worshippers, a psychedelic Black Mass, nightmare sequences AND beautiful Edwige in the buff. Can't be all bad, right?

Opening with a knockout dream sequence (featuring a blue-eyed killer stabbing to death a grotesque old lady with rotten teeth, a pregnant woman on a doctor's table and a nude woman on a bed), this giallo seems to be taking a unusual path by twisting around the conventions set down by the genre. It actually works pretty well even though there's about one too many convoluted plot elements squeezed in at the very end. Edwige Fenech (previously seen in Martino's STRANGE VICE OF MRS. WARDH) fits comfortably in her usual mentally-screwed-up-beautiful-lady-in-distress spot as Jane Harrison, a nightmare-plagued woman living in London whose mother was murdered when she was a child. Her live-in fiancé Richard (George Hilton) seems kind, patient and understanding, but he's also away most of the time at work. Jane's sister Barbara ("Susan Scott"/Nieves Navarro) also appears to be sympathetic and protective of her sister and takes her to see a psychiatrist (Georges Rigaud) who attempts to unlock the secrets of her past. After her session, Jane is pursued in a subway by the same sinister man from her dreams with the cracked blue eyes (a wonderfully creepy Ivan Rassimov in some interesting contacts). He follows her home and starts keeping watch outside of her apartment house. Jane is befriended by a new tenant named Mary (Marina Malfatti), who claims she has the answer to all of Jane's problems and then things start to get even weirder.So before long, Jane finds herself up to her neck in a black magic cult working out of a secluded castle and headed by a guy (Julian Ugarte) who wears Freddy-like claws on his hands. During her initiation, they make her drink fresh dog's blood and pass her around during a sex orgy, where she's fondled by zombie-like pasty-faced cult members. After she's pursued by the killer once again and apparently unperturbed by her first traumatic encounter with the Satanists, Jane becomes desperate enough to return to the cult, where they convince her she'll be "free" from the killer if she does just as they say. The cult leader has sex with her again and give her a knife. Mary kills herself by falling over on it and then Jane is informed she's obligated to take her place. And guess who else is involved in the Satanic sect? Why the mysterious blue-eyed killer, of course! When Jane tries to escape them, he sends Doberman's after her to chew up her arms and then chloroforms her. She wakes up back in her apartment. Are these events actually taking place or are they simply delusions in her pretty little disturbed head? After a rapid-fire succession of murders, plot twists and maybe even a prophetic dream insert, a police inspector finally reveals our answer.As usual with the majority of giallo efforts, the script is far from rock solid, but technically speaking, this movie is quite good. Martino's direction is smoother, more stylish and much more assured than it was in STRANGE VICE. Miguel Fernandez Mila and Giancarlo Ferrando's vivid, surreal and sometimes psychedelic cinematography and Bruno Nicolai's score are both huge pluses and add immensely to this film. And while there's the requisite amount of Fenech flesh on display and some blood, the film is more concerned with style and story than it is providing cheap thrills. All around, the cast is very good.  TUTTI I COLOR DEL BUIO/ALL THE COLORS OF THE DARK originally made it to US theaters in 1975 under the title THEY'RE COMING TO GET YOU. It was then released to VHS as either DAY OF THE MANIAC or DEMONS OF THE DEAD. The Shriek Show DVD contains a lot of goodies, like separate interviews with the director (who claims ROSEMARY'S BABY was a chief influence) and star George Hilton, a photo gallery, alternate US title sequence, the original Italian trailer and radio spots, plus four other unrelated trailers.

There's isn't any black-gloved killer butchering one fashion model after the other with an exceptional weapon here, yet that certainly doesn't make "All the Colors of the Dark" any less of a genuine Italian giallo! This solid thriller, directed by the almighty Sergio Martino ("Torso", "Blade of the Ripper") , benefits most from its extremely stylish cinematography and, of course, the mesmerizing looks of lead actress and reigning giallo-queen Edwige Fenech. With this natural beauty running around hysterically all the time – often scarcely dressed – you almost feel forced to forgive the story for being overly confusing and the violence for being too tame. Jane is a young woman, still recovering from a traumatizing accident in which she lost her unborn child, and suffers from re-occurring nightmares as well as hallucinations of being stalked by a blue-eyed creep. With her lover Richard out of town a lot, others try to help Jane with her mental problems. Her sister recommends seeing a psychiatrist and a befriended girl in the apartment even advises her to join a satanic cult. This last initiative obviously isn't a very good idea, as lovely Jane becomes involved in an occult mess of rape & murder, starring all the people of her unexplained hallucinations. Sergio Martino creates and sustains a powerful atmosphere of paranoia and morbidity, yet it's truly regretful that there isn't any more gore on display. Jane's nightmares are remotely bloody, but true fans of Italian horror cinema require a bit more sadism. There are several suspenseful scenes to make up for this, notably the one where Fenech awakes in a countryside cottage and painfully realizes she STILL isn't safe. The screenplay makes several intriguing twists & turns near the end, just in time to make it a great giallo after all. I have to admit that the first hour of "All the Colors of the Dark" nearly wasn't as compelling and involving as other contemporary gialli. The music is great as usual and, apart from Edwige, this movie also contains great performances by George Hilton, Ivan Rassimov and Nieves Navarro.