31 days of Horror: Day Twenty Eight: La casa con la scala nel buio

La casa con la scala nel buio (A Blade In The Dark) (1983)

Directed by Lamberto Bava

By the early 80's the Giallo was a dying breed. It was quickly being supplanted by American style Slashers that were cheaper to make, easier to write, and made more money. I won't spend too much time lamenting the fall of the Giallo. They had a good run starting in the early 60's with Mario Bava's genre making efforts, and continueing through the 70's when Dario Argento made string of solid Thrillers films leading up to his first Masterpiece, Profondo Rosso (1975). In the wake of Argento's success there was a virtual avalanche of titles, with Lucio Fulci, Umberto  Lenzi, and Sergio Martino, among others producing a body of work thats still being rediscovered today.

Lamberto Bava will never be spoken of as being in the top tier Italian Horror directors though Demons (1985) is a certifiable classic. At best he's described as hit or miss. It doesn’t help that he's never far from his father Mario's shadow. For his first couple of movies, Lamberto decided to have a go at the genre his dad created, even if it was falling by the wayside. In 1980 he put out Macabre, and 1983 he put out the film I watched tonight, A Blade In The Dark. This is a movie that manages to be mind numbingly dumb. and yet still thoroughly entertaining.

Bruno is a young composer hired to score a new Horror Film, and put up in an isolated Villa to get his work done. We're told the villa is isolated anyway, but you'd never guess from how often people drop in. Mostly they just walk right in. Sometimes they hide in closets. And with alarming frequency they are brutally murdered. Who could the killer be? And what does any of this have to do with Linda, the former tenant of the villa. Bava sets up the basic mystery, and then throws a good half dozen red herrings at the audience. When the movie finally answers the questions that it has asked, you may want to punch yourself in the face. Or you could just laugh, and have another beer. Which ever works best for you.

What the film doesn’t deliver in tightly plotted mystery, it more than makes up for in awkward brutality. the murders are vicious, and if you don't want to see someone have a bag pulled over their head, and then have their face repeatedly bashed off a counter top, you should definitely steer well clear of this nasty little movie. If however, dumb violence is one of the things you like in your Horror flicks. well, here it is.