There's Always Room for Giallo: A BLADE IN THE DARK

 by Patrick Bromley

Close out Junesploitation 2025 with a gem of Italian horror!

There are Beatles people and Stones people. Star Wars people and Star Trek people. Apple people and Android people. And while I really don't think any such division exists between the two, let's say for the sake of argument that there are Mario Bava people and Lamberto Bava people. While I know that Mario Bava is the "better," more important filmmaker -- the Italian horror genre more or less wouldn't exist without his contributions -- I consider myself more of a Lamberto guy. This is probably because I came of age in the 1980s when the younger Bava made most of his movies, so his work is infused with the exact sensibilities to which I'm drawn. While his father is great at atmosphere and slowly mounting dread, Lamberto is more about lurid shocks and faster-paced storytelling. He's of a different generation, which makes his work not better, but different. 

In only his second outing as a feature director (following 1980's Macabre and some uncredited work on 1977's Shock, Mario's last movie), Lamberto Bava -- along with Dario Argento, on whose film Tenebrae Lamberto worked as an assistant director -- helped bring the gialli of the 1970s screaming into the new decade with more graphic violence and a tone that has more in common with the '80s slasher than it does with the classic giallo film. A Blade in the Dark is sometimes referred to as a slasher, in fact, though I maintain it fits within the framework of a giallo by virtue of its basic elements: mysterious killings, amateur detective, elaborate murder set pieces. It's missing a few components such as the traditionally urban locale or the ongoing police investigation taking place concurrent with our amateur's findings, but there's enough gialli DNA in the movie for me to feel comfortable including as part of this (very inconsistent) series.

Bruno (Andrea Occhipinti) is a film composer hired to write a new horror movie score. To get inspired, he rents the villa from his friend Tony (Michele Soavi, himself an accomplished director of some great Italian horror films) and hunkers down to get to work. Unfortunately, he keeps getting interrupted by beautiful women who then go missing, as well as by his girlfriend Julia (Lara Lamberti) and Sandra (Anny Papa), his boss and the film's director, neither of whom are particularly convinced about his story of the missing women -- whose only connection, it seems, is to the woman who previously rented the villa. As Bruno investigates the disappearances, more bodies pile up -- or do they? And what's the connection to the movie he's working on? And what's with Giovanni, the creepy groundskeeper who collects stories about the murders?

A Blade in the Dark was originally designed to be aired in four thirty-minute installments on Italian television and it shows in the structure, particularly in the longer cut available on home video. Characters will linger and stall for 20 minutes, and then a spectacular murder set piece will take place; rinse, repeat. When it was deemed too gory for the Italian censors, however, Bava cut the film down and opted to release it theatrically. I made an error in judgment and watched the longest possible cut on Vinegar Syndrome's incredible 4K release, which runs just under two hours and feels padded in a lot of spots, particularly when Bruno is just wandering around his villa looking for clues. The 95-minute theatrical cut is much tighter and more concise -- it's Bava's preferred version of the film for a reason. It reminds me a little of the difference between the Italian and the American cuts of Argento's Deep Red: the longer European version adds some more welcome business with Daria Nicolodi, but there's no question that the shorter American cut is the superior film. This isn't to say that the longer cut of A Blade in the Dark is without merit or less than totally watchable, simply that it lacks the punch of theatrical version. That's the one you should watch.

One of the aspects for which A Blade in the Dark is most famous nowadays is the terrible translation of the film's English dub, which results in some dialogue that feels written not so much by humans or even AI but by Martians attempting to approximate our language. Here are just a few of the all-timers:

"This is all the whiskey you possess?"

"Is it possible you're such a vacant nerd?"

"Your satisfaction is to sit like a frog in the sun!"

Yes, I know I can avoid this by switching over to the original Italian language track and watching the film with subtitles (I try to be a purist in most cases), but when it comes to Italian horror and kung fu movies, the dubbing is part of the aesthetic for me. Maybe it's because of how I was introduced to these movies in the first place, but I welcome the disconnect between the obviously European actors and locales and the very American-sounding actors providing the vocal performances. It gives these movies a dreamy, otherworldly quality to which I totally respond. It's all part of the charm.

As is so often the case with the giallo films of the '70s and '80s -- particularly those with psychosexual underpinnings -- there are major aspects of A Blade in the Dark that haven't aged well at all. It kind of goes with the territory, but I understand why it may be a dealbreaker for some viewers. Discussing the particular issues this movie faces in more detail would require spoilers, but anyone familiar with the genre -- even some of its biggest, most well-known entries -- probably won't be surprised at the reveal of the killer even if the motives aren't made exactly clear. The use of scenes from a movie-within-a-movie muddy things further; I think it has something to do with tennis balls? 

Though not often discussed in conversations about great giallo films, the influence of A Blade in the Dark reaches everything from Wes Craven's original Scream -- a scene in which Bruno answers a phone call and can hear a near-lifeless body being dragged through the grass outside is practically repeated verbatim in the opening sequence with Drew Barrymore -- to Astron-6's The Editor, an Italian horror spoof set around the production of a movie (one memorable kill actually involves a victim being strangled by a roll of film). Like Tenebrae, the film combines the basic elements of a giallo with the '80s slasher and comes out the better for it. I'm not suggesting it's Tenebrae Good -- that's arguably the best giallo ever made -- but it deserves more love than it gets.

The same could be said for Lamberto Bava, who, outside of Demons and Demons 2, rarely gets the respect he deserves even among us horror fans (even his non-horror stuff like Blastfighter is super fun). Both Cauldron Films and Severin Films are releasing boxes of Lamberto Bava films, all unseen by me, that I'm really hoping to someday to check out (if only money wasn't an issue) and test my theory about which Bava I prefer. I kind of think I already know the answer.