Eyeball aka The Secret Killer aka Gatti rossi in un labirinto di vetro

I just love 70s Euro horror films. Seriously, no matter how crap they are, I'll watch 'em.

From Italy, filmed in Spain, comes the 1975 quasi-giallo Eyeball. Someone is stabbing women on a tour group to death, one by one. Even a young servant girl who comes in contact with the group is killed. Worst of all, the killer gouges out each woman's left eyeball before she is killed.

They did things a little differently in the 70s. If you couldn't sleep, anyone with whom you were acquainted could lend you a tranquilizer. Hotel desk clerks would let you go up to a guest's room, even if you didn't know quite what name they'd registered under, if you claimed to be married to the guest. And a tour by bus wouldn't be cancelled and a suspect detained until the second person in the group was murdered; the first murder just meant everyone had to have a drink and try to put it out of their minds.

Did Umberto Lenzi see Don't Look Now a couple of times? Who is the killer? The cop about to retire, or his successor? The priest who always seems to be near the crime scene? The abusive lesbian? The guy with the old head injury from the war? His wife, a mean lady who I keep hoping will be the next victim? The man who stands over his sleeping granddaughter with a razor? Or is it the obvious suspect, the crazy woman whose husband remembers seeing her passed out with a bloody knife near the scene of a similar murder last year? Or maybe his jealous secretary with whom he's having an affair? Most importantly, do I care? And how did I manage to choose, out of two hours worth of trailers, the one Italian movie I hadn't seen even as it was masquerading as an American movie?



P.S. I watched Autopsy again after Eyeball. The piece I wrote on it for one of my other blogs never gets many hits, but it got one while I was watching Grindhouse Trailer Classics and writing the accompanying post over here; the reason I know it got a hit was because someone found that blog by searching for "fat woman dead on morgue table." I figured it was a sign I should watch it again, and it's always good to have a giallo double feature. It's just as gross yet enjoyable in that special giallo way as I remembered it being.