Saturday, March 23, 2013

A Blade in the Dark (1983)

Director: Lamberto Bava

Starring:  Andrea Occhipinti, Anny Papa, Fabiola Toleda, Michele Soavi, Valeria Cavalli, Stanko Molnar, Lara Lamberti, Giovanni Frezza, Marco Vivio

More info: IMDb

Tagline: When the lights go out, the knife goes in.

Plot: A film composer hires a country house to write the soundtrack for a horror B-movie. There he discovers something about a mysterious girl called Linda and suddenly people around him begin to be killed. Maybe the solution is in the final scene of the movie he's working on.



My rating: 5/10

Will I watch it again? Nope.

I'll give them this much, there are barely any movies that deal with film composers and this is one of them.  This is Lamberto "son of Mario" Bava's second picture, his first being MACABRE (1980) which is the other film on the DVD I have (soon to be 'had').  That one was worse than this but better in that it was 18 minutes shorter.  Either way you lose.  The story on this one is inventive and it's got a neat little ending (love the brick to the head shot) but it soon loses it when one guy has to explain everything to another ala the ending in PSYCHO (1960).  The score by Guido & Maurizio De Angelis helps but not enough.  There isn't a composer out there that could salvage a near two hour leisurely paced thriller.  I guess I have something else positive to say after all...Bava did get a little better on this second outing.  Maybe I should skip the rest of his pictures and watch the 34th and most recent one.  At this rate it should be a damn fine film.

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