What She Thought She Saw: Evil Eye

When Nora Drowson (Letícia Román) comes to Italy, she has a head full of romance, murder mysteries, and wonderful assumptions about the beautiful country she will be visiting. These will all be challenged during her stay. Nora has come to see her sick relative, only to learn she is in far more dire straits than assumed. The elderly woman’s doctor, Marcello Bassi (John Saxon) advises Nora to take things easy. However, soon after her arrival, the old woman dies in a spectacularly spooky way. While heading off for help, Nora is mugged, beaten and robbed. As she struggles against unconsciousness, she watches a terrible murder. A woman emerges from a nearby doorway, collapses to the ground a knife in her back. Then, a man with a shadowed face emerges to take the knife from her back. Before anything else occurs, Nora blacks out.

The next morning, she wakes to find the body gone, no one believing her, a hospital staff who are convinced she’s an alcoholic, police who think she’s hallucinated, and mysterious people spying on her every movement. Is she a target for murder, now?

Thanks to a new friend, Nora gets to change her living conditions. Laura Craven-Torrani (Valentina Cortese) offers the use of her own flat while she is out of town. It’s a place where Nora (helped by the doubtful Marcello) can stage her own investigation into crimes that are over ten years old. Soon enough, she’s up to her pretty neck in troubles. Mario Bava’s Evil Eye (1963) is one of the first films to spell out just what a giallo could be.

Evil Eye is the American title/release of a longer, supposedly more convoluted film called The Girl Who Knew Too Much. Producers/distributors American International Pictures swapped out the score, deleted some scenes, and added some others, ultimately shifting the tone quite a bit. That’s AIP for you. Bava himself would pooh-pooh the picture as being preposterous.

As a story, Evil Eye falls squarely between the psychic horror flick and a murder mystery. A woman is tormented by a strange vision and finds herself stuck in a situation that might well be dredging up a decade old horror to seek a fresh victim. It’s got wide plot holes, and so long as you’re willing to let the thing wash over you and carry you along, you’ll be in fine shape to handle the thing. Think too much about some of the plot twists, tug a little too hard on the dangling threads and the whole narrative threatens to come apart. For example, there’s a sequence when Nora finds her way to a mysterious apartment, only to hear an eerie voice calling to her from some distant room, directing her on and on through the place until she discovers … there’s no one there: she has been listening to a recording. It’s atmospheric as hell, but … what?

However, the movie is a brilliant exercise in mood, in camera work, and in atmospheric, nightmarish imagery. From a purely technical perspective, the thing is a terrific feature film indeed. The movie is overflowing with images worth watching.

Also, Letícia Román makes for a compelling heroine. Her character runs the gamut of emotions over the course of the thing, an amateur sleuth who looks into matters the police cannot seem to solve, and she is the glue to keep our attention. She’s clever and quick to act. Also, she’s gorgeous, which doesn’t hurt.

John Saxon, on the other hand, is young and studly as the male lead. His character falls for the girl in trouble, of course. Or is he perhaps the killer hoping to get close enough to strike? Saxon’s performance here is a tad on the wooden side when he’s in doctor mode and warm when he’s in paramour mode, but he’s never not enjoyable to watch.

The other real standout actor for me is Valentina Cortese, whose character seems to meet our heroine by happenstance and then sparks up conversation and, eventually a friendship. She incorporates a fine blend of friendly and suspicious behaviors into her portrayal, which is a treat to watch.

A handful of other actors deliver some equally intriguing reads on character and twists to the story.

However, the real star of this picture is Bava’s exquisite camera. It glides, it holds stock steady, it turns slowly, it captures faces in fright, builds intense moments, captivates through interior or exterior scenes. It was impossible for me to look away from the movie simply because Bava is a master at technique. This is one of the few times when I could overlook the plot-level story because of the strong visual style. Bava’s mastery of producing achingly beautiful or terrifying images is unparalleled. Although the director was far prouder of his follow-up film, Blood and Black Lace (1964), there is much to love in Evil Eye.

The suspense in the film is palpable, thanks to Bava’s technical brilliance and Mario Serandrei’s editing. The calculated movements of the camera, the staging, the use of all the photographic tricks to get our attention, hold it, and then manipulate our emotions are there on the screen, and they work beautifully.

However, the movie is not without a few laughs, including both physical gags (there’s one instance of a picture on the wall, Bava himself, whose eyes glance toward our heroine’s derriere and then deftly looks away that is either cute or demeaning, YMMV) as well as some dialogue choices that are chuckle worthy. This is not a movie intending to get us guffawing, but it made me chuckle a few times. These moments of levity are tension breakers before that camera work starts to build up to the next suspense sequence.

The film also serves up a few lovely views of Rome itself. Nora is a tourist, after all, and we get to see the city through her eyes, accompanying both her and Marcello. It’s fun to watch the two of them. There is obvious chemistry between them, and that only adds to the romantic subplot. The city of Rome is a beautiful one, where statuary and works of art can be found just about anywhere. Bava uses this to great effect, both during the touristy bits as well as the nightmarish parts. The city is old, and it has seen much. As the film progresses, bloody history’s march toward the characters’ present day is echoed by all these bits of ancient history preserved by the city and shown at every opportunity. Rome is almost its own character in the plot.

Of course, some people will not be able to see the delights this film has to offer because of the screen story’s oddities. It is unfortunate that this is the case. The one beef I have with Evil Eye is its ending, which takes a character who has had some wonderful agency and then strips that away from her with an utterly unnecessary denouement. Ah well, this is quite different than the ending of the original version, The Girl Who Knew Too Much. Ah well.

If nothing else, Evil Eye is a terrific gateway into the weird worlds of Italian giallos, a wonderfully visual feat that delivers strangeness and intrigue with gusto. While the storyline can be a little too convoluted for its own good sometime, it remains a terrific experience for the gorgeous black and white visuals alone. The casting is delightful, sexy and charming. While future installments would up the levels of violence and mayhem, Evil Eye is charming for its reluctance to indulge in these excesses. Although it is not in the top tier of Bava’s filmography for many viewers, it is nevertheless a brilliant demonstration of Bava’s style and his way of telling stories with a camera.

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Evil Eye is available in DVD, Blu-ray, and streaming editions thanks to the swell folks at Kino Lorber.

Next up, we check out Dario Argento’s striking directorial debut, the wonderfully bizarre giallo/horror flick, The Bird With The Crystal Plumage (1970). That film is available in DVD, Blu-ray, and streaming editions from Arrow Video.

Words for “What She Thought She Saw: Evil Eye” is copyright © 2021 by Daniel R. Robichaud.

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