Breakinger A Brilliant Conflict

Kailansorac Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

Anoushka Slater While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

Mandeep Tyson The acting in this movie is really good.

Bezenby The first Giallo, or so I've heard. Before the Giallo was the German Krimi films, also murder mysteries with a fair bit of comedy, I understand. Of course, the Giallo were based on the yellow murder mystery books on sale in Italy at the time, and before that was Agatha Christie, and so on and so forth. However, the Giallo Mario gives us is full of future clichés, but almost right away Bava starts messing with the genre! Oh, you, Bava.Nora arrives in Rome from New York and immediately starts having a really bad day. The guy hitting her on the plane was smuggling drugs, the Aunt she was visiting dies of a heart attack that night, and she gets mugged on the Spanish Steps. Not only that, but while reeling from a sore head after getting mugged, she thinks she sees a woman getting stabbed in the back by a fella! The only good thing that happened was that she met Marcello, a hunky young doctor played by John Saxon. Saxon's all out to help Nora get to the bottom of the mystery (there's no body and nobody believes her) but I think Marcello is just trying to get into her pants.Nora moves into an apartment next to the Spanish Steps and Bava clues us in right away that this is a bad move by sliding the camera towards a mysterious locked door before Nora even notices it, then a framed picture of the man Nora thought she spotted during the murder. Uh oh! Bava does this a lot during this film, and to be honest that's why I'm such a fan of his work. Every part of this film is beautifully constructed, from the scene were Nora is drawn to an apartment where the bare lightbulbs sway in the wind of an open window while an unseen voice talks and taunts Nora, to the use of shadows even in the most routine of scenes (like the printers, were a simple 'tracing a character' scene becomes a lovely display of shadows on fabric). The only thing that doesn't work out is some of the comedy, although it is funny that Saxon ends up with various injuries as the film carries on.My favourite scene is when Nora visits someone else investigating the murders, and from outside the apartment hears the hammering of a typewriter. After trying to get the person to open the door, she finds it open, and the camera pans across the room...to a disused typewriter...then to a tape recorder playing the sound of someone typing. I love it when Bava does this and he takes it to extremes in later films.This early Giallo was not successful, and it would take until the international success of Dario Argento's The Bird With The Crystal Plumage to launch the genre into overdrive. However, it does give me the chance to use the phrase Chiaroscuro and sound well wanky, for Bava use of the contrast between light and dark hints towards theory I have that these guy involved in Italian cinema aren't that far removed from the artists that populated Rome back in the days of Caravaggio.

haraldteveldhuis-663-846959 i,m a big fan of giallo movies,but this one is terrible. the movie opens with a good murder but then the movie becomes really boring.nothing much happens,no gruesome murders,no suspense and a very weak plot.also the great john saxon cannot save this movie,the direction of the movie is not thight and the movie goes by like a babbeling brook.halfway trough the film i had figured out who the killer was,and the motive is very thin.the attempt of putting humor in the movie at the end is not well done and laughable(in a bad way).so at the end of the movie i was very disappointed and the 86 minutes feel like 3 hours.there are much better giallo movies out there,like deep red,a blade in the dark and what have you done to solange? to name a few.

Lechuguilla There are at least two film versions of this story. One is the English translation known as "The Evil Eye" a watered-down version of the original Italian construction called "The Girl Who Knew Too Much." The two versions differ in score and plot points. This review pertains to my viewing of "The Girl Who Knew Too Much."I would describe the film as a suspenseful murder mystery, one of the first Italian Giallos. Probably the best element is that wonderful B&W lighting consisting of overhead and side lighting that puts faces and objects in deep shadows. Outdoor settings at night are especially creepy. Water-glass camera effects suggest hallucination and delusion. And there are some terrifically unsettling POV camera shots.In one sequence the lead character enters a building at night. She arrives by elevator on an upper floor. No one else is visible, but hallway lights hanging from the ceiling sway back and forth, and someone is talking to her. As she approaches the room to which she had previously been invited, the light in the room suddenly goes dark. We see her silhouette as she stands at the entrance of the darkened room.The script contains relatively few characters. The two leads are a young female American tourist named Nora Davis (Leticia Roman) and a youthful Italian doctor named Dr. Bassi (John Saxon). The plot is acceptable. But I successfully guessed the identity of the killer fairly early which, to me, suggests that the plot could have been a little more subtle and the murderer less obvious. On the other hand, part of the plot was repeated in a subsequent Giallo that I had previously seen; so maybe I zeroed in on the killer's identity here as a result of the later film.There's some humor in this film as well. At one point the resourceful Nora makes use of talcum powder in an attempt to trap the killer, with unplanned results. Various murder mystery clichés in combo with explicit humor suggests that the story is something of a spoof of the genre.Casting is acceptable. Overall acting is only fair, except for the wonderful performance of Valentina Cortese. Didn't notice any problems with editing or prod design; and costumes really hark back to the 1960s. Love that jazzy score.This film deserves at least one viewing for those who enjoy murder mysteries. It has some negatives, but they are definitely outweighed by an interesting story and especially by the terrific visuals.

chaos-rampant Coming out in 1963, The Girl Who Knew Too Much is not as ground-breaking as other Mario Bava efforts but it's still every bit as stylish and suspenseful. The plot of the film, convoluted and filled with twists and red herrigns galore, anticipates the giallo cycle of the late 60's. Of course one year later the director would practically define the style with Blood and Black Lace, introducing other genre staples like the black-gloved killer, the garish colours and the gore but that doesn't detract from the ifluential status of this proto-giallo.As the title imples, The Girl Who Knew Too Much is with one foot firmly set in Hitchcock territory, but whereas Hitch films had a tendency of trying to be too many things at once (little bits of comedy, romance etc) something I always considered distracting, Bava allows nothing to come between him and his goal: a suspenseful horror thriller.The chiaroscuro photography is simply beautiful to look at, light and shadow play off each other in expressive ways, not unlike film-noir. Leticia Roman's face is at times only half-lit to stress her confusion, while in other set-pieces dark figures stand out against fully lit backgrounds. Bava is famous for being one of the best visual directors in the history of the medium for good reason. His black and white work is as good as his colour films.Minor quibbles I had with the film include that many scares turn out to be false, the first person narration (another film-noir influence) and the implied possibilities in the ending *was it all a dream?* Leticia Roman and John Saxon hit it off with great chemistry, the DP work is fantabulous, the opening 15-20 minutes leading up to the first murder are among the best 20 minutes in 60's horror and this an all around accomplished horror film that deserves every fan's attention.