A Blade in the Dark

A generic, forgettable giallo. The english version is horribly dubbed.

Misogynistic, poorly made, terribly acted and (worst of all) BORING. Apparently, this was supposed to be a giallo television series, but it got rejected for being too violent/low quality so they spliced the available episodes together and plopped it into Italian theaters. They didn't do a very good job at editing it; a murder conveniently happens about every 30 minutes, like clockwork. It's jarring.

Too uneven to really work, has some good gory moments, never quite puts it all together.

Big ol' snooze fest! Sooooo boring and the dubbing is just plain awful; "If we had some whiskey, now would be the time to drink it!" It's so slow and boring I really didn't give a fuck by the end who was killing everyone, it could have been Father Christmas for all I care. This film has practically NOTHING going for it. Maybe the killing scenes were OK but that's it.

Great premise that felt ripe for all the necessary giallo tropes but something is seriously lacking here, it drags far more than it should. Between Mario and Lamberto there are a lot of Bava movies you should see. This is not one of them.

"Considering how low the budget obviously was, Bava does a great job crafting a classic giallo mystery."

Uma lâmina no escuro estreava há 40 anos na Itália. Olha, eu gosto do Lamberto, por ser filho de um gênio e o peso disso até que ele se deu bem como cineasta, mas esse é um giallo muito do genérico. Box Versátil Giallo Volume 12.

Minor giallo by Bava junior. A backstory is that this film originally was intended as TV mini-series, but was recut as a feature film after it was deemed 'too violent' for TV. It's probably just hype created by producers, because kill scenes are nothing to write home about. Untypically for giallo, cinematography is very dull. Goblin-like score creates some atmosphere, but ultimately watching this film felt like a chore.

watchable

I know plotholes are par for the course when it comes to gialli, but this is ri-goddamn-diculous. Add to this some of the worst dialogue ever spoken in a horror film and you have a movie that actually makes me glad that the generally less inventive slashergenre killed off the giallo.