"Four Flies on Grey Velvet" **** (out of ****)There are three scenes in the Italian horror movie "Four Flies on Grey Velvet" (1972) worth discussing.
In the first scene, it is late a night. A man is home sleeping but suddenly hears a noise in another room of the house. He gets up to investigate. The house is pitch black. The lights are out. The man can barely see his hand in front of him. Someone grabs him and suddenly the man is being strangled with a wire. The strangler says he can kill the man but won't.
The second scene takes place at a park. A woman is sitting on a bench waiting for someone. The time passes and soon it is late and the woman is all alone. The park closes. The woman hears something and starts to run. She is caught in a maze. As is typical in horror movies, the audience cannot see the killer and neither can the victim. No matter how fast the woman runs it is not fast enough. Eventually she comes to a wall. She is trapped. She calls out for help. A man on the other side of the wall hears her and says he is going to help. But it is too late. We hear the woman scream. She is dead.
Finally, in the third scene a different man is walking into his apartment, speaking to someone the audience cannot see. The man is going to expose the off-camera person's scheme. Soon the man is hit with a bottle multiple times. His face is covered with blood. He too is strangled with a wire.
What is remarkable about the first two scenes is they were directed by Dario Argento, the famed Italian horror filmmaker known for making ultra gory movies where his camera lingers on blood like a animal going after its prey. Argento almost has a fetish for blood. This time however the violence is off-screen.
But then there is the third scene. This time the audience must confront the violence. "Four Flies on Grey Velvet" was the third movie directed by Argento and is in a way the bridge between his two styles. In his first two movies Argento largely kept violence off the screen. By his fourth movie, "Deep Red" (1975) Argento becomes the filmmaker we known him as today. The man who directs elaborate death scenes.
Also unique about "Four Flies on Grey Velvet" is the amount of humor Argento injects into the story. Borrowing from Alfred Hitchcock, Argento would sometimes breaks tension in his movies to add humor, "Cat O' Nine Tails" (1971) is an excellent example but "Four Flies" takes it a step further. One character is named Godfrey (Bud Spencer) whom everyone calls God for short. Another character, Gianni (Jean-Pierre Marielle) is a private detective however the character is portrayed as a homosexual. This is meant to gets laughs as it suggest how tough can this detective be? And Mr. Marielle really goes all out giving us the usual exaggerated, stereotypical interpretation of a gay man with all the wild hand throwing gestures and delicate feminine voice.
Not so unique however is the story-line, which Argento had done some variation on in his first two movies and "Deep Red"; an innocent man who observes a murder and is stalked by a serial killer who happens to see him at the scene of the crime. This time we follow Roberto (Michael Brandon), a drummer in a rock band, who notices a man has been following him for a week. Finally fed-up, Roberto decides to confront the man and chases after him, when he sees the man lurking around a corner.
Their chase ends inside an empty theatre. The man denies ever following Roberto and demands to be left alone but Roberto refuses he let him off that easy and is relentless in his pursuit for an answer. The man pulls out a knife on Roberto and in a struggle Roberto accidentally kills the man. If that weren't bad enough, a mysterious person wearing a mask, standing in the balcony, is taking pictures of Roberto.
Now photographs of the dead man are being mailed to Roberto's home. The phone rings late at late with no answer on the the other end. Photos of Roberto with the knife in his hand are discovered in his home. Who is doing this? What does the person want?
Argento takes these scenes and cuts to flashbacks of an insane asylum. We see a room with rubber walls as a strong male voice is heard speaking sternly telling a young boy he must learn to be tough and how disappointed he is to be the boy's father.
This leads us to one of the theme's in the movie, masculinity. We assume the boy being verbally abused by his father has grown up to become the murderer and the one stalking Roberto. Is this his way to prove he is a man and tough? Is that why Argento created the homosexual detective? Is that a comment on masculinity as well? What defines a man?
It is usually a disturbed childhood that leads individuals to become murderers in a Dario Argento movie and "Four Flies on Grey Velvet" is no exception. Freud would be proud.
For his third movie Argento demonstrates he is a filmmaker confident in his story telling ability and understanding of the horror genre. Despite some plot holes the movie genuinely intrigues me even after multiple viewings. The scene in the park exhibits Argento at his creative peak proving in horror films sometimes less is more, which builds suspense.
Argento also proves he is able to walk that fine line of suspense and dark humor, always finding the right moment to go for a laugh.
"Four Flies on Grey Velvet" is a good example of why Argento was often compared to Hitchcock in the early part of his career and called "the Italian Hitchcock". It is one of Argento's best movies, addressing themes he would touch on for nearly the rest of his career.
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