I’ve always had a soft spot for Italian horror (a.k.a. giallo slasher) and world-renowned writer/director Dario Argento in particular. Not all his films are winners, but he has a real knack for setting up great shots and bringing all the elements together. He’s particularly good at crafting unsettling visuals in addition to matching interesting music to fit the scenes.

The story is pretty simple: a star opera singer gets hit by a car and her young understudy, Betty, takes over. Things go sideways as a crafty killer starts to off people associated with the Macbeth opera as well as people connected to Betty. Who is the killer? Can Betty figure it out before she gets killed? Is she even a target of the killer?

I rather enjoyed the cinematography as there was some truly unique camera work as is often the case when Argento is involved. The pins taped to the eyelids was a nice touch of making me squirm. I also was super jazzed for the soundtrack score, which included Claudio Simonetti (Goblin) doing the main score, as well as added bonus tracks from Bill Wyman & Terry Taylor, Brian Eno, and Roger Eno.

Where the movie fails slightly is some of the implausible plot elements, wherein Betty does some questionable things when faced with awful scenarios. It could be attributed to shock or other things that I won’t go into due to possible spoilage. I’m willing to give some leeway, because even though I was scratching my head a bit, I don’t think it’s necessarily bad writing.

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