A Blade in the Dark

A BLADE IN THE DARK (La casa con la scala nel buio) from 1983 kinda falls into the "so bad it's good" territory. It's really not a great film, but I had fun watching it and thought I'd give it a little shout out here. 

The plot is super simple. A music composer is put up in a villa to score a horror movie. The woman making the movie visits every once in a while as does the "wacky neighbor" and even more wacky girlfriend....and some other people that are lingering around. And, yup...people start to get bumped off one by one and the bodies are disappeared. 

For me, I pretty much knew exactly where this was going at the first kill. By the second, I had no doubt in my mind. Towards the end, I had my wife giggling as she half paid attention and I called out exactly what was going to happen right before it happened. 

 

It's ham fisted and basic, but it had a sort of charm to it. It's a competent film and looks very nice indeed, but the plodding, lumbering plot and set pieces are painful for the most part. There are some great gialli moments that are well worth the viddy. Some of the more tense moments are handled really well. It's just the jumbled, forced filler around these moments that tend to be hard to sit through. 

Lamberto Bava's direction was grand, but doesn't have the fun, kinetic qualities DEMONS and DEMONS 2 had. The writing of Dardano Sacchetti and Elisa Briganti  was really the real killer here. hehehe  Odd, too - I love HOUSE BY THE CEMETERY, ZOMBI, DEMONS, and THE BEYOND. Sadly, A Blade in the Dark leans more towards MANHATTAN BABY's drifting plot lines.

Worth taking a look if time allows.