Average to poor acting, brought down by dubbed voice-overs. The main theme (of each murder giving Forsyth a clearer view of what happened to his mother on her last night) is clever, as is much of the camera work (seeing his wife's corpse reflection in the coffee table as he speaks to the detective; the blurred view of her ghost coming slowly into focus as she climbs the stairs to his bed). But otherwise there isn't a lot to recommend this. For a horror film, this has virtually NO suspense and the murder scenes themselves are pretty anticlimactic. I admit that the beauty of Dagmar Lassander and Femi Benussi were one of the reasons I stuck with the film to the end.
Bava shines with his usual moments of excellence with the camera but they can't save an otherwise flawed film. I have this on a cheap compilation DVD, so my print was less than spectacular. Perhaps Bava fans will blame my review on that, and perhaps with a better, widescreen print, I would get more out of the visual look of the film and be more forgiving of the film's other faults.
Bava shines with his usual moments of excellence with the camera but they can't save an otherwise flawed film. I have this on a cheap compilation DVD, so my print was less than spectacular. Perhaps Bava fans will blame my review on that, and perhaps with a better, widescreen print, I would get more out of the visual look of the film and be more forgiving of the film's other faults.