EYEBALL

A group of American tourists on a trip to Barcelona find themselves involved in a series of brutal murders. The killer brutally stabs young women and then removes their right eye. The victims are predominantly the same tourists from the group, and the police suspect that the murderer is one of the tourists because an eyewitness saw that the killer was wearing the same red raincoat provided for the tour. Mark Barton, who arrived in Spain to meet his lover, suspects his wife Anna, initially headed to a psychiatric clinic in Chicago but now mysteriously also in Barcelona. We are in 1975, the gialli of Argento's animal trilogy ("The Bird with the Crystal Plumage," "Four Flies on Grey Velvet," "The Cat o' Nine Tails") have set a precedent, and many Italian genre directors have dedicated themselves to creating nightmares with intricate plots and surprising twists, imitating the titles and narrative construction of Argento's three great successes. By the mid-1970s, however, this type of Italian giallo was beginning to run out of steam, with the consequence that these films would gradually modify some elements for a genre rewrite that still had the power to captivate the viewer. The element of sadistic and bloody violence is introduced, and Dario Argento is once again the initiator with the legendary "Deep Red." In this scenario, "Red Cats in a Glass Labyrinth" is born, the last giallo that Lenzi directed before devoting himself full-time to the police procedural. Umberto Lenzi in the early 1970s managed to ride the wave of Argento's thriller with more than satisfactory results, giving the public a series of engaging and well-orchestrated films; "Red Cats in a Glass Labyrinth" is often indicated as the lowest point reached by the Tuscan director, and indeed it lacks the intricate and intelligent mechanism of "Seven Blood-Stained Orchids" and the elegance of "Spasmo," but we still have a product of good quality, perhaps one of the most deserving of the late Italian thriller. From the title itself, one can sense the influence that Dario Argento's cinema has had on this work, thanks to the recurrent use of animals, colors, and numbers in the elaboration of an effective title. The structure is also that of the classic gialli of that period, with an incredibly intricate plot that gradually increases suspicion on every character in the film; but in "Red Cats in a Glass Labyrinth" we can still enjoy a screenplay (written by Lenzi himself) built with intelligence and a sense of spectator participation, capable of functionally involving the viewer in the investigation. The only weak point can be found in the final twist and, above all, in the motive of the killer, which seems highly improbable and very artificial. The final scene, however, is imbued with that macabre spectacularity that makes the entire film memorable, thanks to a visual ferocity that manages to overlook the aforementioned "mad motive." The sunny Spanish setting is an unusual element for a thriller, as is the massive dose of violence present in this film, which could be seen as a sort of intermediary between the soft-violent language of the first Italian thrillers and the more explicit and shock-oriented language of the post-"Deep Red" thrillers. In essence, "Red Cats in a Glass Labyrinth" does not present scenes of great violent impact; on the contrary, the murders are often suggested or off-screen, but the ferocity of the killings and the manner in which the killer acts (the removal of the right eye) make this film more brutal than many of its epigones. In the cast, we can find some familiar faces of the genre, from John Richardson ("The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh," "Murder Obsession") as the protagonist Mark Burton, to Martine Brochard ("Women in Prison," "Murder Obsession") who here plays Paulette, through the veteran George Rigaud ("What Are Those Strange Drops of Blood on the Body of Jennifer?," "All the Colors of the Dark"), aka Reverend Bronson, to Verònica Miriel (Marisol from "Un sacco bello") as the young Jenny. Lenzi has always defined "Red Cats in a Glass Labyrinth" as a work not entirely successful, because, in his opinion, he had few resources at his disposal, but watching the film still gives the sensation of witnessing a sober and skillfully made work, a genuine genre product that does not disappoint the enthusiast.