Four Flies on Grey Velvet Reviews

Four Flies on Grey Velvet is the final film in Argento's "animal trilogy" and probably gets the honor of the best opening and closing credit sequences in the maestro's canon. Let's start with that opening sequence, set to a rollicking jam session in a recording studio, cut to a random beating heart with no real connection to anything. Okay that's weird and why are we looking at the band through a hole? Oh wait, that's actually a POV shot from inside a guitar! Argento, you genius! Add to that a pesky fly that keeps attacking the drummer, who dispenses of said fly with a well timed hi-hat. This drummer turns out to be the main character, played by Michael Brandon who is a little too stoic and serious to be a likable lead. Luckily there is a plethora of oddball characters to make up for it. You have a vagabond mentor named Godfrey, played by spaghetti western staple Bud Spencer, who is introduced with Jesus Christ Superstar style theme music. There's also a gay private eye and a battered mailman. What it lacks in blood and gore it makes up for in scares, there's a recurring nightmare about a beheading execution, a woman gets trapped in a park after dark, and the eyeball of a victim is preserved to capture the last image seen before death. Really creepy stuff. All leading up to that amazing slo-motion car crash decapitation finale set to a haunting Morricone score.

Argento score card:
Blood - 2
Scares - 5
Music - 4
Lusty women - 5
Camera work - 6
Color palette - 2
Crazed animals - 2 (two points for creepy cats and "One Fly on a Drummer's Face")

Total score: 26/70