Now, here we have a fully fledged Italian nasty in 1966! Didn't see that coming, and with Franco Nero in a starring role too! Nice.
This one starts like it's heading off into Psycho territory, what with the twitchy young man (Nero) due to be married to his fiancé (Blanc) who is hated by his domineering mother (who has a spyhole to her son's room - that's a bit sick for starters!), also, there's the maid Marta, who loves Nero and will stop at nothing to have him for herself.
There's no masked killer here as Marta basically kills Nero's mother and causes Blanc to die in a car crash, which causes Nero to become insane and bring lovely Italian babes home to murder while a stuffed version of Blanc lies in the bed next to them. It all becomes a game of 'Who's the Craziest Murderer' before Blanc's twin sister turns up and throws everything into chaos as Nero thinks she's his fiancé.
This film is full of bizarre and brutal images, from Nero bringing a sexy dancer home only for her to wander his creepy mansion (no film from this era could exist without one!), to the very brutal stabbing of a main character (who survives to drag themselves around the house!), to the terror of Blanc's twin sister suffering at the hands of a psycho and a bizarre rape on a beach, The Third Eye was full of crazy imagery and basically paves the way for the 'no holds barred' films we would be subject to in the seventies.
Franco Nero is pretty young here, and he's almost got his 'staring emotionally' thing almost down to a tee, but not quite. He's still pretty good though. I'm surprised that Gioia Pascal didn't make more films, because she's really good as Marta, the crazy maid who brings all this madness down on everyone's head.
It looks like the version I watched might have been one of those 'rebuild' films as the soundtrack switches from Italian to German at the more violent points, but this is a nice hidden gem worth looking out for Nero fans and fans of crazy Italian films.
This one starts like it's heading off into Psycho territory, what with the twitchy young man (Nero) due to be married to his fiancé (Blanc) who is hated by his domineering mother (who has a spyhole to her son's room - that's a bit sick for starters!), also, there's the maid Marta, who loves Nero and will stop at nothing to have him for herself.
There's no masked killer here as Marta basically kills Nero's mother and causes Blanc to die in a car crash, which causes Nero to become insane and bring lovely Italian babes home to murder while a stuffed version of Blanc lies in the bed next to them. It all becomes a game of 'Who's the Craziest Murderer' before Blanc's twin sister turns up and throws everything into chaos as Nero thinks she's his fiancé.
This film is full of bizarre and brutal images, from Nero bringing a sexy dancer home only for her to wander his creepy mansion (no film from this era could exist without one!), to the very brutal stabbing of a main character (who survives to drag themselves around the house!), to the terror of Blanc's twin sister suffering at the hands of a psycho and a bizarre rape on a beach, The Third Eye was full of crazy imagery and basically paves the way for the 'no holds barred' films we would be subject to in the seventies.
Franco Nero is pretty young here, and he's almost got his 'staring emotionally' thing almost down to a tee, but not quite. He's still pretty good though. I'm surprised that Gioia Pascal didn't make more films, because she's really good as Marta, the crazy maid who brings all this madness down on everyone's head.
It looks like the version I watched might have been one of those 'rebuild' films as the soundtrack switches from Italian to German at the more violent points, but this is a nice hidden gem worth looking out for Nero fans and fans of crazy Italian films.