Director: Lamberto Bava
Year: 1983
Country: Italy
Alternate Titles: La casa con la scala nel buio; House of the Dark Stairway
Genre: Giallo
Plot:
Deciding to rent a house in the countryside, a writer trying to work on the score for a new horror movie, but the longer he stays there getting inspiration to compose new music a series of strange disappearances around the house forces him to use the film he’s working on for help to figure out the truth.
Review:
Even though this is a late-era entry in the giallo, it’s one of the better ones. Among its better elements is how it displays many of the stylish elements that made many of the early classics so memorable and compelling. We get a stylish killer, where we only get a small series of clues to his identity along the way, a great series of red herrings to play upon the viewer's deductive powers, and, of course, super-stylized shots. A shot watching a woman wanders into a pool and seeing the whole thing from below the water level and looking up was pretty creative as were the series of scenes focused on the exploits around the house where his stumbling upon something in the area and investigating leading to some somewhat overlong if still reasonably tense sequences taking the character through the elaborate house for a stylish look.
This carries over into the quality found in the stalking and murder scenes, which are typical of giallos. A sequence where the victim first encounters the killer outside the house and through a series of escapes and chases, winds up being killed while stuck behind a mesh fence is pretty effective, while a later encounter down in the basement works nicely as well due to the fact that the killer’s shadow was used predominantly in the scene which ends up heightening the tension as it got closer and closer. The jump with the knife caps it off, and the bloody carcass that remains is a great cap on the events. The off-screen noises we hear are masterfully delivered, especially the breathing that is heard during these chases that occur throughout here. With scores of brutality and some great reveals in the finale with how this all comes together to have a lot to like here.
There’s not much to hold this one down but it does have some issues. The one real complaint against the film is that it’s way too long for its good. At times, it seemed to include scenes that unnecessarily stretch out its running time which comes about mainly from the suspenseful stalking that comes about through way too many scenes of people wandering around the house for what feels like ages or other times where he’s sitting alone in the house trying to piece together the mystery that goes on. The detective angle is well-played, but too many times it felt that it could’ve been trimmed and not harmed the movie or its plot too much regarding how this works out the kills which are somewhat clumsy and awkward with how some of them go so exaggerated for it’s running length. This is the only real thing against it.
Overview: ****/5
It has some sequences that probably didn't need to be in here, this is a pretty great giallo. It features a lot of the techniques of the genre and a lot more for others. All Giallo and Italian horror movie fans should look into this one as well as fans of the creative crew while most others out there should heed caution with this one.
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