All the Colors of the Dark (1976)

Wow! Such a good movie.

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

The first five and a half minutes of 1972's All the Colors of the Dark (also known as Day of the Maniac and They're Coming to Get You!) subvert what I called the "graphic beauty" of the giallo in some intriguing ways.An outdoor scene of a stream slowly darkens, replaced by an old crone with blackened teeth, dressed as a child and a dead pregnant woman are both made up to be anything but the gorgeous creatures we've come to expect from these films; even star Edwige Fenech (The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh, Five Dolls for an August Moon and so many more that I could go on and on about) isn't presented in her normal role of a sex symbol. She's covered in gore, eyes open and lifeless. As the camera zooms around the room and begins to spin, we see a road superimposed and hear a car crash. Even when Edwige's character in this film, Jane Harrison, wakes up to take a shower, we're not presented with the voyeuristic spoils that one expects from giallo's potent stew of the fantastique and the deadly. She stands fully clothed, the water more a caustic break with the dream world than an attempt at seducing the viewer or cleaning herself.Again — in a genre where words possess little to no meaning — we are forced to wait five and a half minutes until the first dialogue. Richard, (George Hilton, Blade of the Ripper) her husband, bemoans that he must leave, but feels that he can't. His therapy is a glass of blue pills and lovemaking that we watch from above, his penetration of her intercut with violent imagery of a knife entering flesh. Instead of the thrill we expect from this coupling, we only sense her distance from the proceedings.As Richard leaves her behind, we get the idea of the madness that exists within their apartment: a woman makes out on the sidewalk with a young hippy man, who asks when he'll ever see her again. Mary, (Marina Malfatti, The Night Evelyn Came Out of Her Grave, The Red Queen Kills Seven Times) a mysterious blonde, glares down at him, somewhat knowingly. His wife looks lost and trapped. Without dialogue, we've already sensed that some Satanic conspiracy is afoot. Echoes of Rosemary's Baby? Sure, but you could say that about every occult themed 1970's film — the influence is too potent, a tannis root that has infected all of its progeny.Last year, a car crash took the life of Jane's unborn child. Her sister Barbara (Nieves Navarro, Death Walks at Midnight, Emanuelle and the Last Cannibals) has advised therapy, something that Richard laughs at. As Jane waits to see the doctor, she sees a man with the bluest eyes (Ivan Rassimov from Planet of the Vampires and Django in Don't Wait, Django…Shoot!) — eyes we've seen before, eyes that hint at blood and murder and madness.Even when she's surrounded by people, such as on the subway, Jane is lost in her thoughts and in another world, one of inky blackness and isolation punctuated only by the cool blue eyes of the sinister man who tracks her everywhere she goes. Even the teeming masses of the city make her feel more lost; only the light of the above ground world erase the nightmare of her stalker. That is — until he finds her in the park, where she screams for him to stop following her. The camera is detached, following her from high above, watching her run away, needing the refuge of her home. Even then, the man is still there, banging on the door, demanding to be part of her reality.Read more at bandsaboutmovies.com/2017/09/06/all-the-colors-of-the-dark-1972

This is a high-grade example of all of the movies that came out excitedly influenced by Roman Polanskis Rosemarys Baby, which should be seen before viewing this one. It's a very similar story, though the only baby involved is lost by miscarriage. Sergio Martino botches the satanic ritual scenes, Euro movies always seemed to have to make Satan into a goatish Baphometan pretty boy, and hes pretty weak here, but he beautifully expands the menace in the recruiting part and then the escape from the cult part of the basic story (both involving being stalked by Ivan Rassimov). Edwige Fenech (whom I found trivial and overly enamored of herself in Strip Nude For your Killer) is quite effective as a very troubled woman who actually submits to going to a Sabbath as if to therapy, and to being group groped and more by pastyfaced acolytes, but then balks disgusted at having to ritually kill her friend Mary, because in an interesting twist now that Mary has recruited her, she is free to leave (meaning this life). Fenech is apparently famous for her physique aka great sloping breasts but its mostly her Venus reclining profile that caught audiences eyes and she exploits that to the full here by appearing often reclining in bed or crouching in corners on floors, though there is only modest nudity. And yet she spends most of her time in bed suffering, sex with her husband is so unsatisfactory to her (except once) that one suspects him of not good things. Martino seemed most excited by Mia Farrows exclamation in RB that this is not a dream, this is really happening, and uses what the dumb American trailer called Chillorama otherwise known as wide angle shots to blur reality and paranoid fantasy in a way that does unnerve. He also makes great symbolic use of the old apartment bloc including its roof, a great English castle and its grounds (a chase scene reminiscent of Demon of the Night) and London (its interesting how the legacy of Hammer satanism from Witchcraft all the way to Satanic Rites of Dracula turned England into the land of horror so that even Italian directors felt they had to shoot there (see also Seven Deaths in a Cats Eye) to reinforce the blurring.

"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?

Having expected at least a decent horror film, I knew at the opening credits that the film itself would be way below average, probably somewhere near the throw away horror bin at a soft porn shop or near the incinerator units in hell, as from watching 4 minutes of nausea inducing, amateurish opening dream sequences complete with atrocious over acting, a nude pregnant woman rubbing chicken feces on her belly, overuse of zooming, and a woman vomiting fake blood, I didn't know whether to laugh or cry at the time I was pouring down the sink. After about 45 minutes of pure filler, including boring dialogue found in most homes or grocery stores, a long, dull chase sequence commences. The whole film is a sluggish chase sequence between some 70's skinny weirdo wearing fake blue contacts and the screaming neurotic bimbo played by the cardboard actress Edwige Fenech, who is nude half the time, and even that becomes tedious. She also screams about 68% of the time (use MUTE) in the film instead of picking up a gun or doing anything remotely intelligent such as tossing a hand grenade in the Satanist house. Also found are a psycho babbling old geezer whose recitation of Dr Freud is incompetent and shallow, at least he winds up dead later.No script, no luminosity, and certainly no aptitude are ever found in this film, and it even has George Hilton, who stared in other rotten horror films, who plays another wooden idiot, all his films seem like they are all the same, cheap and particularly dull. The Satanists finally enter, in a stupid orgy scene which has them dancing around the nude Edwige Fenech to some boring 70's music while showing their ugly teeth and robes (filmed in England). They are puffed out with white make up and they get too many "zoom ins" that look amateurish, the whole effect is about as scary as having your car washed or being beaten on the head with French bread. This is a very lethargic, cheaply made, badly acted film that is not even a Giallo type and it goes nowhere since frame one. The only people who should bother with it or those in comas in hospital beds, or those who have lost their TV remotes.The extras on the DVD are even worse, they have the egomaniacal self-indulgent, Director Sergio Martino single handily taking credit for 'dream type of films' and elevating his other bad films, which were also rip-offs of superb films. Also to note are the idiotic radio ads used for blind people.