Before 2018 ended, I finished Dario Argento’s ‘animal’ trilogy with Four Flies On Grey Velvet (1971). This is a giallo thriller about a drummer in a rock band (Michael Brandon) who is blackmailed by a masked stranger for an inadvertent murder he may or may not have committed against someone following him. The hero here is a long haired hunky block of wood that isn’t as interesting or sympathetic as previous Argento protagonists. Much more fun is Bud Spencer as a wisened shack-living bum who helps the drummer navigate the mystery (Bud Spencer’s parrot has a rude word for a name which is a good gag). Argento’s camerawork glides and there are some effective shots and sequences (the climactic slow motion crash to Ennio Morricone’s score is a high point). However, it is a bit slow and repetitive while taking a wild turn into sci-fi with a bizarre eye experiment to copy a victim’s retinal impression of the killer to identify them (that could be a whole movie in itself but is just a short scene!).
VHS Tracking 