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Someone is following musician Roberto (Michael Brandon), but when
Roberto finally turns the tables on the man, a certain Carlo Marosi
(Calisto Calisti), and comes face to face with him in an opera house, the
two get into a fight at the end of which Marosi is accidently killed by
his own knife. Now that alone is bad enough, and it's not made any better
by the fact that Roberto tries to hush up the whole thing to keep out of
trouble, but what's really worrying is that someone has not only seen but
also photographed the whole thing, and on the photos it looks as if
Roberto did actually kill Marosi. Thing is, whoever it is does not take
the photos to the police and does not blackmail Roberto as such, he just
terrorizzes him by leaving the photos and other things (like Marosi's ID)
around his house - which means whoever-it-is has to be a close friend of
Roberto.
Eventually Roberto confides into his wife Nina (Mimsy Farmer) - which
was not such a great idea since their whole conversation was overheard by
their maid Amelia (Marisa Fabbri), who thinks it is a good idea to
blackmail whoever-it-is (seems she knows who whoever-it-is is), but
ultimately she is killed by her supposed blackmail victim.
After the death of Amelia, Nina decides to leave the house, while
Roberto decides to stay behind to sit the whole thing through, and soon
enough he turns to his friend Godfrey (Bud Spencer) for help, who gets him
in touch with gay private eye Arosio (Jean-Pierre Marielle), who finds out
a thing or two about whoever-it-is before long - and is ultimately killed.
Carlo Marosi by the way was not killed at all by Roberto, or anybody
else by the way, but he's still alive and kicking, and obviuosly he is in
league with whoever-it-is - until whoever-it-is doesn't need him anymore
and kills him, for good this time.
Left behind by Nina, Roberto soon enough starts an affair with Dalia
(Francine Racette), Nina's cousin no less - but soon enough, Dalia too
ends up dead, slaughtered by whoever-it.is. This time though the police is
determined to find a definite clue, so they try out a new theory according
to which the last image a person sees when dieing is forever burned into
that person's iris - but when they finally get the image off the iris,
they see nothing but four flies on grey velvet, which doesn't make much of
a clue now, does it ?
Roberto tries to set up a trap for whoever-it-is, awaiting him with a
loaded gun, but instead he receives a visit from his wife Nina, who
somehow gets him to hand her over his gun, then turns out to be
whoever-it-is after all, with the four flies on black velvet
referring to her necklace. Turns out Nina has grown crazy because her father
wanted her, forced her to be a boy, and regularly beat her up, and she
spent some years in a loonie bin in the process, and later after her dad
was long dead, Nina found Roberto, a splitting image of her dad,a nd
decided to have her (highly complicated) revenge on him in her father's
stead, a revenge that will now come to an end when she threatens him with
his own gun - but fortunately for Roberto, Godfrey has been on the case,
and he has traced Nina to the house and can overcome her just in time.
Nina makes a hasty escape, but ultimately she crashes her car into a truck
and is beheaded.
Admittedly, Dario Argento's films were never strong on plausability and
credibility (which actually goes for the giallo genre as a whole), and in
that respect, Four Flies on Grey Velvet might be his worst scripted
movie yet, but as usually, Argento makes up the shortcomings of his plot
with an extremely stylish directorial job, with inventive, even
experimental setpieces, with amazing camerawork, and with beautifully
composed images. All that might not make you forget the very feeble
storyline, but it makes this film interesting and entertaining
nevertheless.
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