Eyeball

Eyeball

"I was like you... before this friend of mine ripped out my eye playing doctor with me... 

leaving an empty socket!"

A group of American tourists from Burlington, Vermont is visiting Barcelona, but a mysterious killer dressed in red is murdering them one by one before gouging out the victims' eyes.  The tour group includes Paulette Stone (Martine Brocharad), whose married lover, Mark (John Richardson) has joined her. The murders bring back uneasy memories for Mark, who recalls similar killings back in Vermont and he suspects that his wife, Alma (Marta May) is responsible. Did she follow them to Spain? Or could the killer possibly be some other member of the tour? Maybe it's Reverend Bronson (George Rigaud), the minister with the creepy smile or the interracial lesbian couple. Inspector Tuleda (Andrés Mejuto) is on the case – and he's a hard-nosed old-school cop, a week away from retirement, who doesn't take any guff from his young partner or any American tourists. Can he solve the case before the killer strikes again?

Eyeball (not to be confused with Blue Eyes of the Broken Doll) is one of those gialli that goes by many different names. It's just as well-known under its Italian title, Gatti Rossi In un Labarinto di Vetro (literally, "Red Cats In a Maze of Glass") or as Wide-Eyed In the Dark or just The Eye. The film is really an old-fashioned drawing room murder mystery, but with a more glamorous setting. Director Umberto Lenzi usually has a gonzo, sensationalist sensibility, but this movie is unusually artful and relatively subdued.

• Composer Bruno Nicolai is a superstar of giallo film scores, perhaps second only to Ennio Morricone.
• Lenzi's use of color is brilliant in this film. The killer's signature color is red (using red gloves and a red rain poncho instead of the traditional all-black look) and sharp red accents are found everywhere in the film – clothes, lamps, the handrails at the pool, a tablecloth, a suitcase. It's never dominant, but always stands out in  the background as an omen.
• The whole movie takes place in Barcelona and there isn't a single shot of Gaudí's Basilica de la Sagrada Familia, the most famous building in town.

What the Hell Am I Watching?

 Man, that Reverend Bronson just pops up out of nowhere.

When one of the tourists, Robby Alvarado (Daniele Vargas), is doing a crossword puzzle, notice that he crams the 6-letter word "muerte" into a four-square space.

Inspector Tuleda asks one of the tourists to try on a rain poncho left behind by the killer. Why? To see if it fits? It's a rain poncho – of course it's going to fit. In the meantime, it's a great way to smear fingerprints and blood samples and destroy valuable evidence.

The same framed abstract drawing appears in Reverend Bronson's hotel room and in Naiba's hospital room.

Fashion Moment

COVER GIRL!

You work those Daisy Dukes.