Every horror fan has had this moment: you stumble across an Italian giallo, maybe with a lurid title like A Blade in the Dark. You pop it in, expecting lurid kills, stylish cinematography, and that uniquely Italian cocktail of sleaze and art. And then you sit there, realizing you’ve actually committed yourself to nearly two hours of slow piano noodling, awkward dubbing, and a body count that trickles in at the speed of drying paint.
Lamberto Bava’s A Blade in the Dark isn’t the worst giallo ever made—but it’s certainly the one that makes you question whether you should be watching one at all. Originally conceived as a TV miniseries, the film was chopped up, restitched, and released theatrically after censors realized, “Hey, maybe bloody throat-slashings don’t belong between commercials for spaghetti sauce.” The end result feels exactly like what it is: a Frankenstein project that lumbers around in a villa, occasionally stabbing someone, and then collapsing back into incoherence.
Bruno: The World’s Least Interesting Protagonist
Our “hero” is Bruno, a musician hired to compose a horror soundtrack. Already, the premise promises self-referential fun—a movie about a man making music for a movie inside a movie. Instead, we get Bruno shuffling around a villa with the charisma of wet laundry, tapping at piano keys like a bored teenager. Watching him “compose” is about as exciting as watching your uncle fiddle with GarageBand on a Sunday afternoon.
Andrea Occhipinti, bless him, does his best, but the script gives him little to do beyond looking confused. At times, you wonder if Bruno even realizes women are being murdered around him, or if he just assumes it’s part of the artistic process. He treats blood on his pants like a minor inconvenience—about on par with spilling Chianti on white linen.
The Murderer With a Wig Problem
The killer, revealed late in the film, is Tony—Bruno’s landlord—who moonlights as “Linda,” a wig-wearing, nail-polish-rocking alter ego with mommy issues. This is supposed to be shocking. Instead, it plays like the punchline to a very long joke you stopped caring about an hour earlier. By the time Tony/Linda explains his inner torment, the audience has already suffered their own.
Yes, gender-bending killers are a giallo staple, but Bava stages the reveal with all the subtlety of a soap opera cliffhanger. One half expects a studio audience to gasp. Instead of menace, Tony radiates awkward camp. When he mutters “I’m not a female child” with his dying breath, it lands less like tragedy and more like a rejected therapy session taped at 3 a.m.
A Murder Every Commercial Break
Because the film was originally intended for television, each half-hour ends with a murder. Sounds like fun, right? It’s not. The pacing becomes absurdly predictable: Bruno wanders, piano tinkles, someone pokes their nose into the villa, and bam—time for a box cutter or kitchen knife to do its thing. You could set your watch by the kills, which robs them of tension.
Worse, the murders themselves lack the flair that made Italian horror infamous. Argento gave us baroque lighting and operatic set pieces. Fulci gave us surreal gore that felt like nightmares splattered onto celluloid. Bava gives us… tennis balls. Literally. One set piece involves an avalanche of tennis balls pouring down from the ceiling, meant to unsettle the victim. It’s less Psycho and more “sports equipment store clearance sale.”
The Villa of Boredom
The setting—a sprawling villa—is supposed to be creepy. Instead, it feels like the world’s most tedious Airbnb. Characters wander aimlessly through rooms, down staircases, and into the basement, each scene dragged out as if Bava was paid by the minute. Watching the film, you begin to understand why Italians invented espresso.
What could have been claustrophobic becomes monotonous. The villa isn’t menacing—it’s just badly lit. Half the time, you’re squinting at the screen wondering if the killer is in the shadows, or if the cinematographer simply forgot to bring a lamp.
Dubbing from the Depths of Hell
No review of A Blade in the Dark would be complete without mentioning the English dubbing, which critic Troy Howarth correctly labeled as some of the worst in giallo history. Imagine Siri trying to imitate soap opera actors after a three-day bender, and you’re close. The voices rarely match the faces, the intonations are bizarre, and occasionally the dialogue sounds like it was written by someone playing Mad Libs.
When Bruno’s girlfriend accuses him of cheating, the line delivery has all the conviction of a teenager reading Shakespeare in detention. When victims scream, they sound less like they’re being murdered and more like they stubbed a toe. This isn’t dubbing—it’s sabotage.
Lamberto Bava: In Daddy’s Shadow
The film also underscores the problem of being Lamberto Bava. His father, Mario, practically invented the giallo, giving us classics like Blood and Black Lace. Lamberto, meanwhile, was stuck making movies that feel like knock-offs of knock-offs. While he would later redeem himself with cult gems like Demons, here he’s a filmmaker flailing under pressure.
You sense Bava wanted to emulate Argento’s Tenebrae—sharp blades, sharp lighting, sharp ideas—but instead delivered a soggy echo. It’s horror without confidence, style without substance, atmosphere without, well, atmosphere.
When the Highlight is William Shatner’s Absence
The cast tries, but there’s nothing to work with. Michele Soavi, who would later direct far better films (StageFright, The Church), plays Tony with the commitment of a man auditioning for a school play. Valeria Cavalli and Fabiola Toledo exist mostly to swim, scream, and die. Anny Papa as Sandra might be the closest thing to engaging, but her scenes collapse under the weight of bad editing.
By the time Bruno smashes a brick into Tony’s head, you’re not cheering for justice—you’re cheering that the movie is finally ending.
A Lesson in Missed Opportunities
The frustrating part is that A Blade in the Dark could have been good. The setup—a composer haunted by murders in the villa he’s scoring for—is ripe for meta-horror. The idea of sound and music driving tension is brilliant on paper. But the execution is limp. Instead of Hitchcockian suspense, we get endless shots of Bruno rewinding tapes, squinting, and muttering vague suspicions.
The horror never crescendos. It just flatlines.
Final Thoughts
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A Blade in the Dark* is the cinematic equivalent of a blunt knife: long, dull, and painful for all the wrong reasons. It tries to slice deep into psychological horror, but instead just nicks the surface and leaves you annoyed. The murders are uninspired, the protagonist is a bore, the dubbing is atrocious, and the pacing makes Lawrence of Arabia look like a sprint.
For giallo enthusiasts, it’s a curiosity at best—a relic from a time when Italian horror was running out of steam and ideas. For everyone else, it’s proof that not every slasher from the ’80s deserves rediscovery.
If Argento is champagne, A Blade in the Dark is flat tap water served in a dirty glass.
Grade: D
For die-hard completists only. For everyone else, you’re better off watching actual tennis balls fall in slow motion—it’ll be more suspenseful.
