If Four Flies on Grey Velvet had a heartbeat, it would be irregular, off-tempo, and probably scored by a very confused Ennio Morricone wondering how he ended up composing for a film that feels like a student art project on ketamine. Dario Argento’s third giallo entry is like watching a magician fumble the final act, only to declare that confusion was the trick all along.
At once a murder mystery, a psychological thriller, and an extended Italian leather glove fetish reel, this 1971 film takes the viewer on a whirlwind ride through plot twists, identity crises, and dialogue so stilted it feels like it was written by a committee of pigeons pecking typewriters in an espresso coma.
The Plot: A Drum Solo of Death
Our hero (a term used here in the same way you’d describe a lost houseplant as “brave”) is Roberto Tobias, played by Michael Brandon, who spends most of the film with the slack-jawed concern of a man unsure if he left the oven on. Roberto is a drummer in a rock band, which we know because the movie tells us so, not because the instrument is ever used for anything other than metaphorical percussion during his emotional collapse.
Roberto’s problems begin when he accidentally kills a man who was stalking him—and as you’d expect from a normalperson in that situation, he doesn’t go to the police. Instead, he opts for the much more thrilling option of having a nervous breakdown while being tormented by threatening letters, a masked voyeur, and a string of dead house staff.
Also, he keeps having dreams about being publicly executed in Saudi Arabia. Freud would have taken one look and noped into the nearest lake.
The Killer: Gender Trauma and Monologues
Argento tries to serve up psychological horror here, and instead delivers a reheated plate of dime-store psychiatry covered in weak sauce. Spoiler alert: The killer is Roberto’s wife Nina, because of course it’s the woman. And why is she a killer? Childhood trauma, gender confusion, and the usual “they made me wear pants and now I stab people” logic that’s just chef’s kiss misogyny.
Her plan is as convoluted as it is impractical: stalk her husband, fake a murder, gaslight him until he emotionally implodes, and finally shoot him while ranting about her father’s toxic masculinity. It’s like The Parent Trap by way of Mommie Dearest, if it were written by a drunk Hitchcock impersonator and filmed through a fog machine set to “funeral.”
The Side Characters: Quirks Without Purpose
Let’s talk about Roberto’s support network. There’s Godfrey, a hippie artist played by Bud Spencer who seems to exist solely to smoke joints and drop philosophical nonsense like a failed yoga instructor with a vendetta. There’s Gianni Arrosio, a flamboyantly gay private eye who brings some charm to the proceedings—until he’s unceremoniously murdered in a toilet stall with a poisoned syringe, because 1970s cinema couldn’t let queer characters live any more than it could handle plot coherence.
Then there’s the maid, Amelia, who dies trying to blackmail the killer, which is a common hobby in giallo films right after painting abstract nudes and walking slowly up staircases while the camera leers at your ankles.
The Visuals: Style Over Substance, Substance Over Sanity
Argento’s style is undeniably present here—moody lighting, surreal dream sequences, and tracking shots that seem allergic to editing. But it feels like he took the style from Deep Red, sprinkled in some LSD, and asked the cinematographer, “What if we filmed this entire movie through a fish tank full of bourbon?”
And then there’s the titular “four flies on grey velvet,” an image generated using optography—the pseudoscientific belief that the last image seen before death is imprinted on the retina. This is supposed to be a critical clue, but what it actually resembles is a screen grab from a malfunctioning Etch A Sketch. Oh look! Four smudges! Mystery solved?
The Music: Morricone’s Existential Crisis
Let’s spare a moment for Ennio Morricone, who scored the film like he was being held hostage in a recording booth with only a jazz flute and a rattlesnake. It’s atonal, jarring, and oddly funky, like your uncle’s garage band was asked to soundtrack a murder scene during an acid flashback. Whatever mood it’s supposed to set, it misses it by a country mile and lands in a village called “What the Hell Was That?”
The Ending: Decapitation as Therapy
Nina’s plan ultimately fails because she has the subtlety of a sledgehammer in a china shop and can’t resist monologuing like a Bond villain at closing time. She ends up decapitated by a truck bumper, which explodes—because everythingexplodes in a Dario Argento finale, even if it’s a Volvo.
And just like that, Roberto survives, shrugs off his gunshot wound, and presumably goes back to drumming in his tragically unseen band. We never hear the music, but it probably sounds like a blender full of spoons if this movie’s tone is any indication.
Final Verdict: ★½☆☆☆
Four Flies on Grey Velvet is the cinematic equivalent of being lost in an Italian funhouse after four espressos and one existential crisis. It thinks it’s saying something profound about guilt, repression, and identity. But what it’s actuallysaying is: “We spent the entire budget on lighting gels and leather gloves, and now we have to end this movie with a flaming neck stump.”
Watch it if you love your mysteries with the pacing of a deflating balloon, your horror with all the tension of a wine tasting, and your reveals delivered like someone reading their therapy notes on live television.
Fly away. Fly far.
