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EYEBALL
d. Umberto Lenzi, 1975
26 July 2009
A Giallo will charm you with either breathtaking style, or, in the case of something like EYEBALL, a jaw-dropping level of absurdity.
Aside from TV airings of Mario Bava's BLOOD AND BLACK LACE, this was the first Giallo I ever saw, and the only one I ever saw theatrically in its initial run - in Baltimore in 1978, no less, on a memorable double-bill with NIGHT TRAIN MURDERS. I loved it then, but appreciate it a lot more now, having seen quite a few more Gialli in the meantime.
Dario Argento - master of visual style - yeah yeah, sure sure. I have watched the hack Umberto Lenzi's EYEBALL more times than BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE. There's something sterile about Argento which, no matter how much I appreciate his work in the abstract, puts me off multiple screenings. Yes, BIRD is a nearly perfect Giallo, while Lenzi's EYEBALL lurches around clumsily from scene to scene, logic left far behind, hitting all the Giallo marks the way a drunk manages to keep his footing while stumbling home from a tavern. Sometimes I'd rather watch a drunk stumbling about than a ballet.
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A large part of the fun in a Giallo is watching the filmmakers go to crazy lengths to make red herrings out of every character in the story. (An element perhaps descended from the Edgar Wallace and Agatha Christie novels which are at least part of the Giallo heritage.) Everyone in a Giallo is potentially the murderer, and since the Giallo universe is as corrupt as the Noir universe - plus quite a bit more salacious - the result is that quite a few Giallo characters, innocent though they may be of the murders, come off as guilty of something.
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