Four Flies on Grey Velvet (1971)
Directed by Dario Argento
Roberto, a drummer in a rock band, keeps receiving weird phone calls and being followed by a mysterious man. One night he manages to catch up with his persecutor and tries to get him to talk but in the ensuing struggle he accidentally stabs him. He runs away, but he understands his troubles have just begun when the following day he receives an envelope with photos of him killing the man. Someone is killing all his friends and trying to frame him for the murders.
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What critics compared Four Flies on Grey Velvet to
(This is the country, after all, that delivered such deliciously and deliriously titled giallo , or slasher, films as "Four Flies on Grey Velvet," "The Perfume of the Lady in Black" and "Seven Blood-Stained Orchids.")
That's setting the bar too high: Although "Mother of Tears" is of a piece with other Argento films, particularly in its use of elaborate set pieces, it's not nearly as stylish, fanciful or elegant as the movies Argento made in his glory days, the '70s and '80s, like "Bird With the Crystal Plumage" and "Four Flies on Grey Velvet."
His first slasher films -- "The Bird With the Crystal Plumage," "Four Flies on Grey Velvet" -- revolutionized the Italian "giallo" genre with intricate tracking shots and over-the-top gore.
But to most people who aren't rabid horror fans, Argento remains unfamiliar, a depressing legacy for someone whose influence has been freely acknowledged by filmmakers such as John Carpenter and Richard Donner (The Omen borrows a slo-mo decapitation from Argento's Four Flies on Grey Velvet).
He'd just completed his "animal" trilogy of gialli ( The Bird with the Crystal Plumage , The Cat O' Nine Tails , Four Flies on Grey Velvet) and nursed a belief that the genre had, if not run its course entirely, at least run its course for him.
The elements of Argento's “animal trilogy” ( The Bird with the Crystal Plumage , Cat O' Nine Tails and Four Flies on Grey Velvet ) don't particularly lend themselves to explanations within any system of associations implied by the rest of the filmic experience.
Though one of Argento’s lesser known works, in part because Paramount chose for decades not to allow its release for the home market, Four Flies on Grey Velvet is in fact a key film in the giallo king’s oeuvre, representing a crucial bridge between his earlier, more conventional mystery thrillers and his subsequent explorations of the oneiric, the outrageous and the irrational (in films like Deep Red, Suspiria and Phenomena ).
When it comes to suspense and blood and gore, there is plenty implied, but the moments of horror are not quite as striking as they are in, say, Deep Red or Tenebre (Four Flies on Grey Velvet shares key plot points with both of those later Argento gialli) — however, there is some good creep-factor in the use of masks and puppetry, shiny, sharp blades, and chortling over-the-phone taunts.
There are elements here that work extremely well including the camera work and overall atmosphere that Argento would use to far greater effect just a few years later in Deep Red .