Seven Notes in Black

Monday, April 14, 2008

This movie was packaged under the title The Psychic, but Seven Notes in Black is the onscreen title, and it's frankly a much cooler one. The Psychic sounds like it could be any generic, crappy horror movie. Seven Notes in Black sounds like exactly what it is: a 70's giallo.

This is Fulci, but it's not one of his surreal, soft focus, gore heavy, illogical, batshit insane, gates to hell horror films. It's more along the lines of a (relatively subdued) giallo, a little more like his Don't Torture a Duckling or A Lizard in Woman's Skin (see what I mean about these titles) only maybe even more straightforward than those. And not nearly as violent.

Well, I'm gonna say it, this is probably Fulci's best movie. I don't mean it's my favorite; it lacks that weird, fascinating nightmarish quality of The Beyond, City of the Living Dead, etc. But it's probably his best made... it's an entertaining thriller with a number of memorable scenes. It has some bad acting here and there, and goes a little slow for a while, but that's true of a lot of giallo, even some of Dario Argento's best.

No orgies in this one, though. Shame. Any time a hippie shows up in a giallo (which is often), there's usually an orgy to follow. No hippies here, sadly.

The "seven notes" refers to the little tune that the lead character's watch plays when wound, and the tune kept nagging at me. I knew I had heard it somewhere before. For a while I was convinced that it was the music that the guy's watch played in For a Few Dollars More... until it hit me that Tarantino used the music in the first Kill Bill. Nice.