Le froid baiser de la mort

I recently watched the Italian gem 🇮🇹 The Third Eye (1966) on Tubi. The storyline follows a wealthy count who lives under the influence of an over-possessive mother and a maid who secretly desires him. His mother believes no one is good enough for her son, but when he falls in love and plans to marry, tragedy strikes-his bride is mysteriously killed. Grief turns to madness as the count begins inviting exotic women to visit... women who are never seen again.

This film is directed by Mino Guerrini (The Mines of Kilimanjaro) and stars Franco Nero (Django), Erika Blanc (Kill, Baby...Kill!), Gioia Pascal (Italian Way of Life), and Olga Solbelli (Mill of the Stone Women).

The writing is fantastic and channels a Hitchcockian style, with clear Psycho vibes. It's more of a psychological thriller than a traditional horror film. A young Franco Nero gives a standout performance. The film includes some clever twists and turns-from a laugh-out-loud parrot corpse scene to a chilling meat clever moment and a fantastic beach finale. There's a lot to appreciate here.

In conclusion, The Third Eye is a smartly written and skillfully executed psychological thriller that's well worth your time. I would score it a 7/10 and strongly recommend it.

Although I only saw this movie once and over 25 years ago, the imagery and disturbing feel have stayed with me. Sure, the production values weren't up to current standards and the acting is not top drawer, but somehow what makes it to the screen gets under your skin and makes it crawl. True horror buffs should be fighting to get a copy of this for their collections - and I don't understand why it hasn't received more play in the USA. (OK, so it's foreign and involves cannibalism and other nasty things; is that any reason to pass it over?!) The young Franco Nero in this feature shows the acting promise of the later movies he appeared in, a number of them made for US audiences.

THE THIRD EYE (Mino Guerrini - Italy 1965).

This interesting little chiller by Mino Guerrini, starring Franco Nero and Erika Blanc, certainly was much better than I expected. Often categorized as an early Giallo, it's actually more of a mix of Gothic horror and some Giallo elements. Definitely not the six-penny quickie, I expected. It's quite an elaborate production, well-shot, with fine acting and cinematography.

Franco Nero is Mino, a young count who lives with his dominant mother and jealous servant Martha in an isolated mansion in the Italian countryside. Like Anthony Perkins in PSYCHO - with which this film shares quite a few parallels - Mino has a fascination with birds, particularly stuffed birds. A few days before his marriage with the young and beautiful Laura (Erika Blanc), she mysteriously dies in a car crash and soon-after, his mother is killed. Mino begins to lose his sanity and starts luring young women into his mansion in order to kill them, together with his willing accomplice Martha, who secretly loves him, but one day, a young woman visits him who looks just like his late fiancée Laura.

Although the "Count gone mad scenario" was already a bit over-used by the time the film was made, the (then) contemporary setting, the murder mystery angle, elegant production design, professional cinematography and more than adequate direction, make this one well worth a look and definitely a cut above the average attempt within European genre-film-making, to say the least. The film is also surprisingly candid in its sexual nature (although complete nudity is absent) and, regarding that aspect, is a typical exponent of the transitional period in the mid-sixties. Fans of Franco Nero might wanna take a look at him in a role as a neat, well-dressed and impeccably coiffured young man, quite the contrast to the sweaty, unshaven Django-look, or generally sleazy look, he would cultivate later in his career.

The film was remade as BURIED ALIVE (1978), the gore classic by Joe D'Amato.

Currently only available in German, but with the DVD-age already coming to a close, it's unlikely that this film will ever see an English-language release, so the German-only version is perhaps something even English speaking fans of obscure Italian cinema should consider.

Camera Obscura --- 7/10

Franco Nero plays a young taxidermist named Mino,who lives with his domineering mother and a loyal family servant Marta in a Gothic residence.The elderly widowed Countness doesn't want his son to marry his beloved Laura.To achieve her goals Marta cuts the brake cable on Laura's car causing the vehicle to roll off an embankment and into a lake and murders the Countess pushing her down the stairs.This is the beginning of Mino's madness.He takes Laura's body and preserves it and starts picking up women and choking them to death in the presence of his preserved love."The Third Eye" is strikingly similar to "Buio Omega",but nowhere nearly as gruesome and disgusting.The cinematography is elegant and stylish and the use of romantic score is a nice touch.A must-see for fans of "Buio Omega".8 out of 10.

A troubled young Count (Franco Nero), living in a crumbling villa with his domineering mother, takes comfort in taxidermy (sound familiar?) until he falls in love with a girl (Erica Blanc) his mother naturally doesn't approve of. The old battle ax tells a servant she treats "like a daughter" that she'd be forever grateful if the girl would make her son's fiancée disappear and not only does the servant kill the son's intended, she offs his mother, too. The Count takes his mom's death hard but not as hard as his fiancee's, whose body he stuffs before he starts strangling strippers. The servant tells him she'll help cover up his crimes if he'll marry her and he agrees but when his dead fiancee's look-alike sister (also Erica Blanc) shows up looking for answers, complications ensue...

To say THE THIRD EYE was inspired by Alfred Hitchcock's PSYCHO would be an understatement but it does go off on a crazy tangent of its own and was obviously capitalizing on a spate of Hammer "mini-Hitchcock" thrillers popular at the time (MANIAC, PARANOIA, HYSTERIA). In black & white with cool-looking red subtitles, the damn thing was never dull, that's for sure. Cult director Joe D'Amato "unofficially" remade this as BEYOND THE DARKNESS in 1979.