Seven Deaths in the Cat's Eye (1973)Starring: Jane Birkin, Hiram Keller, Anton Diffring, Doris Kuntsmann, Françoise Christophe, Dana Ghia, and Venantino Venantini
Director: Anthony M. Dawkins (aka Antonio Margheriti)
Rating: Five of Ten Stars
Corringa (Birkin) returns to her ancestral home after being expelled from an elite Catholic boarding school. As if reuniting with her quirky family and the strange servants and hirelings that are hanging about wasn't bad enough, people start turning up murdered.
"Seven Deaths in the Cat's Eye" hits all gothic horror notes--it's set in an isolated castle that's full of secret passageways, and which is inhabited by a noble family with a fading reputation that's either cursed, corrupt, crazy or some mixture of all three. And there's the wide-eyed maiden who goes running through the shadowy halls in a diaphanous gown while carrying a lantern or candelabra, while spending equal amounts of time conducting half-assed investigations, being targeted by the killer, and being the vessel of love and kindness through which the handsome and bitter--but ultimately goodhearted--male protagonist is brought to redemption. There's also the doctor with questionable ethics and motives, the priest/spritual advisor who may or may not be too good to be true... and so on, and so forth.
Unfortunately, while all the elements are present to make this an excellent and spookily fun film, they aren't deployed as effectively as they could be, due to flat and uninteresting characters and a script that is so sloppy that what should have been central characters barely appear in the story. For example, the sensitive and wise priest played by Venantino Venantini, known for playing romantic and/or heroic leads and thus his casting here was a bit of brilliance given the character's important place in the film's central mystery and for what is motivating the murders... but the Big Reveal doesn't have the full impact it could have had if the character had been more present as events unfolded.
But instead of a scene or two that could have bolstered Venantini's presence in the film, we're treated to truly pointless bits about a pet gorilla (which inexplicably gets referred to as an orangutan on a couple of occasions) because they serve no purpose in the plot. There are also lame attempts to make it feel like there might be a supernatural component to what's happening in the castle; we know as viewers that there is no curse or ghosts in the mix here, and the characters in general aren't buying into that nonsense either, so why are the filmmakers wasting our time and theirs with it, when there are real issues that needed to be addressed? In the end, the story is so poorly put together that the characters just seem to be drifting from plot point to plot point, and the viewers never become all that invested in them to care if they live or die. Sometimes, problems like these are created when a film gets re-cut for markets outside Italy (this film's country of origin), but the version I watched was "restored", and the scenes added back in didn't solve any of the problems mentioned.)
Maybe if a little more effort had been put into shaping the script in general and the characters in particular, I wouldn't have been quite so annoyed at the forced romance between Birkin's Corringa and Keller's Lord James. Likewise, I think what is an okay climax of the film would have been an excellent one--if there had just been more of a drive to establishing characters and possible motivations.
The effectiveness of the film is also undermined by the dialog being iffy (sometimes overblow, sometimes just nonsensical) and the voice actors doing the English aren't the greatest; it seems more like they thought they were voicing a comedy, given the goofy accents they're doing. As such it's hard for me to judge whether the actors on screen were good or bad. All I can really tell is that Jane Birkin did a good job as the imperiled maiden, Hiram Keller did a good job as a crazy noble, and Anton Diffring did... well, Anton Diffring was Anton Diffring, so I once again loved to hate him. I think the character I cared most about in the film was the poor cat who wanders around and sees all these people get murdered.
If you enjoy gothic tales, you'll find a lot to like in "Seven Deaths in the Cat's Eyes", and I think you'll be glad you did. It's not great in that respect, but it's also not terrible. If you're hoping for a gory Italian horror flick, then this is not it.
--
This post was made on Jane Birkin's 75th birthday. A celebratory post of pictures was made at our sister blog, the Shades of Gray.
Click here to check it out.
