Seven Deaths in the Cat's Eye (La Morte negli occhi del gatto) (1973)

On the surface Seven Deaths in the Cat's Eye is a giallo film, and the distributer of the DVD release, Blue Underground, has marketed it as such. It's a fair distinction: there's an unseen, gloved killer lurking around; the staging is best described as grand guignol; and there's at least two characters who start off emotionally unbalanced and one who becomes so under the strain of events. But I think the film, with its setting in late Victorian Britain and a plot that unfolds in a classic Gothic castle, has been more inspired by the movies of Hammer Studios. Unfortunately, the script does not help the film become remarkable by the standards of either genre.

It's a shame, especially because the set-up is custom-made for a good Gothic murder mystery. Our heroine is Corringa (Jane Birkin), who appears to the viewer to be a naive teenage waif but we soon learn that she's just been thrown out of a Catholic convent school for organizing an expedition to a nearby boys' boarding school. Claiming that the school term ended early because of planned renovations, Corringa goes to meet her mother Alicia (Dana Ghia), who happens to be staying at the ancestral home of Corringa's family, the MacGrieffs, who are Scottish aristocracy (I know, it seems like you can't have Italian horror without Catholicism being shoehorned in one way or another, but at least there's a couple of bits of dialogue devoted to detailing how odd and difficult it is to be Catholic Scottish nobles). Nobility or not, the MacGrieffs have fallen on hard times, and Alicia is urging her sister, the current head of the family, Mary (Francoise Christophe), to sell the castle and live with her in London. Mary counters by begging her sister to instead help her pay for the castle's upkeep, but Alicia claims - perhaps falsely - that most of her fortune is tied up in a trust for Corringa.

Corringa soon meets the other inhabitants of the castle: the local priest, Father Robertson (Venantino Venantini); Dr. Franz (Anton Diffring), Mary's personal physician and barely-secret lover; Mary's son James (Hiram Keller), who Mary claims is mentally ill but just comes across as anti-social; James' pet ape (yes, really), who is supposedly dangerous but never does anything more sinister than peer out of windows and from behind doors left ajar; and Suzanne (Doris Kunstmann), who is supposed to be there as James' tutor in French but was really brought to the castle by Mary in the hopes that she'll give James some bona fide sexual healing. Even with such a simple assignment, Suzanne has turned out to be a disappointment, and is not only eyeing Corringa as a potential conquest but is having her own affair with Dr. Franz. No sooner is Corringa introduced to this pack of dysfunctional aristocrats than the bodies start falling like snow - beginning with her own mother, who Dr. Franz, assuming that Mary had killed her for her money, claims was a victim of a heart attack when she was actually smothered by an unseen assailant. An increasingly paranoid Corringa is convinced that an old family legend, that any MacGrieff murdered by a blood relative will rise from the dead as a vampire and avenge their own death, is being proven true with her mother as the undead killer, while others suspect James, who never recovered from his alleged involvement in his sister's death. The only one who knows what's really going on, besides the killer, is the castle's cat, who happens to be around to witness all the murders.

On paper it seems like an interesting if a little overcooked mystery. What gives it some weight is the motif of the cat. Not only does the cat's slight involvement lend itself to one of those fantastic titles so common to gialli, but knowing that the cat will see all the killings and catching it manifest in a scene adds a unique element of suspense. Sadly, the creativity goes no further than there and the premise. From almost the start, Mary and James have "RED HERRING" practically painted on their foreheads. Several sub-plots, like James' bizarre pet ape, fizzle out without adding anything to the overall mystery arc. When the killer finally is exposed, it doesn't really solicit a stronger response than "Oh." It's a classic case of "Character Inserted Into The Story Just To Be The Killer"; otherwise his role in the plot and in the characters' interactions is minimal at best. Worse, the "auxiliary mystery", what really happened to James' sister, is not ever really delved into, but, despite hanging over several of the characters and several heavy references, it ends up having nothing to do with the killings. If anything, the killer's motive, not their identity, is what comes flying straight out of left field.

While the film fails as a claustrophobic mystery, it succeeds as an exercise in atmosphere. The filmmakers learned their lessons well from Hammer, taking advantage of filming in an authentic castle and having every scene permeated with an artistic bleakness. Also in true Hammer tradition, the actors take their roles dead (pun not really intended) seriously. Hiram Keller strikes a good note as the eccentric James, keeping up a low key of menace even after it becomes clear to anyone who has seen a movie before that he's not the murderer. Then, in the tradition of gialli, there are fantastic visual flourishes and artistic shots, like a depiction of the killer washed in bright, colored lights, a small Bible's cover melting slowly in a fireplace, and a dream sequence starring a vampiric Alicia standing solemnly in front of an upside-down cross smeared with blood.

All this does come close to redeeming the serious cracks in the script, but unfortunately there's only so much damage control even the most poetically-minded director can do. The mystery stumbles badly and the sub-plots and character arcs appear to be intricate but only end up crumbling toward the end. Diehard fans of giallo and/or Hammer Studios may still find something to appreciate, but viewers just looking for a good unknown-killer-in-an-isolated-location film will likely be underwhelmed.

Cast Connections

Hiram Keller was born in Georgia, but, thanks to his modeling career, ended up having a brief career as an actor in Italian films. He might be recognized as Ascilto in Fellini's (in)famous Satyricon.

As far as b-movies go, Peter Bryan, who wrote the novel this film is based on, also wrote for Trog, The Brides of Dracula, and The Plague of the Zombies.