THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE Movie Review

L'Ucello dalle Plume di Cristallo
The Phantom of Terror
The Bird with the Glass Feathers
The Gallery Murders

After collaborating on the original story of Sergio Leone's great Once Upon a Time in the West with Leone and Bernardo Bertolucci, Dario Argento plunged head first into the horror genre with his first directorial effort, the now tamely gory The Bird with the Crystal Plumage. It's the story of an American writer (Tony Musante) who witnesses an attempted murder (the scene toys playfully with Rear Window and was itself later saluted by Brian de Palma in his Dressed to Kill) and quickly becomes obsessed with capturing the likely serial killer. The real subject of the film is Argento's simple and unrepentant love of going to the movies to be scared, and the creation of widescreen images that are both horrifying and beautiful at the same time. In the latter Argento has been blessed with the talent of the gifted Vittorio Storaro, whose first feature film (photographed when he was 29) this is. Soon Storaro would achieve fame working for Argento's former co-author Bertolucci, photographing his visual feasts The Spider's Stratagem, The Conformist, and 1900, ultimately receiving Oscars for Bertolucci's The Last Emperor, Francis Coppola's Apocalypse Now, and Warren Beatty's Reds.

NEXT STOP … Suspiria, Four Flies on Gray Velvet, The Beyond

1970 (PG) 98m/C IT Tony Musante, Suzy Kendall, Eva Renzi, Enrico Maria Salerno, Mario Adorf; D: Dario Argento; W: Dario Argento; C: Vittorio Storaro; M: Ennio Morricone.VHS, LV VCI, MRV