Director: Antonio Bido
Year: 1978
Country: Italy
Alternate Titles: Solamente nero
Genre: Giallo
Plot:
Arriving in a remote Venice community, a professor visiting his priest brother finds him implicated in the middle of a crime spree as a vicious serial killer strikes those around him for a special crime committed in the past and forces him to look into the ongoing spree to help his brother’s sanity.
Review:
There was a lot to like with this effort. Among the film’s best features is the use of its localized setting to help bring about a sense of communal harmony in the face of the murders. The notion of a closed-off society with a backward mentality when it comes to keeping everything contained within the confines of the community by a corrupt aristocracy creates the kind of regional community that lets the deranged secrets present build up into the fiery outburst shown here. This is every bit the kind of interconnected community that restricts involvement with each other and tends to look at everything outside as being suspicious and worthy of blame, except when it comes to the religious aspects. With the community mostly disinterested in what’s going on, especially through the advent of a Church confessional for secret-keeping, there’s a wholly intriguing and worthwhile setup here when it comes to the community present here.
As well, the film generates plenty of fun times with its giallo frameworks in the stalking and murder scenes. The instigating attack in the village courtyard through the driving rain is a classic genre sequence that is quite inventive and genius overall, focusing on the crime being committed from a vantage point that makes identity impossible before compounding the pouring rain and lightning strikes to help obscure the identity further. Other scenes, where one victim is stalked through their house only to be speared to death while in a collection of armored statues, another finds a wheelchair-bound victim confront a break-in attempt that sees them shoved face-first into a fireplace or the spectacularly over-the-top sequence of the victim being crushed between two speedboats in the Venetian canals, come off with plenty of strong thriller elements and leave the film with memorable moments. Combined with technically impressive skills and a wonderfully engrossing mystery, there’s a lot to like here.
The film does have some negative aspects. One of the more obvious factors involved here is the exaggerated running time that makes this last far longer than necessary due to several unneeded sequences. A conversation with the girl on the train while arriving on the island goes nowhere and serves this no purpose other than a meet-cute that could’ve been arranged in other manners, much like the continuous trips back-and-forth to the Count’s house for counselling on the mystery that result in his being thrown out for fear of using his visit as a chance to preach at him, leaving the entire excursion pointless. Such scenes conflict greatly with the more intense and focused investigation into the crime spree as those disappear for such long stretches of times that it feels somewhat leaden due to that. That also takes into account the finale, which is somewhat long and feels like it runs on forever after the revelations are made when it could’ve been shortened significantly to tell the same story. Overall, though, it’s still a rather enjoyable entry.
Overview: ***.5/5
Despite suffering some pretty noticeable flaws, there’s still a lot to like with this giallo effort and renders it one of the more unsung entries from this time-period overall. Give this one a chance if you’re a fan of the genre or of Bido’s other genre effort, while those put off by the flaws or aren’t big genre fans should heed caution.
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