AKA Giornata nera per l'ariete . I've rented an Asian DVD of this (Japanese?), and am in the first quarter. Vittorio Storaro's cinematography is the most handsome and intelligent I've seen in the genre outside of an Argento movie. My understanding is he learned his trade under the Bazzoni brothers (director Luigi of this one, cinematographer Camillo, both primarily experimental documentarians, the vast majority of their work not credited at IMDB) assisting as cameraman and returning the favor later on this and Brothers Blue and Le Orme, when he could have been profitably off doing more stuff like Bertolucci instead. Glad he dropped in, because the film looks every bit as good as THE CONFORMIST or LAST TANGO.

But how about the film itself? Your thoughts? I'll be ready to post mine tomorrow, and am curious to see if we're on the same page.

I think the film GIORNATA NERA PR L'ARIETE/BLACK DAY FOR THE RAM is certainly up there with the best of Argento's gialli. Franco Nero is brilliant as the drunken journalist(who dubs his own voice for this film) who is having marital problems as well as becoming a suspect in some vicious murders that can only appear in the giallo genre.The murderer is suitably twisted and his modus operandi is interesting for the giallo genre. I did have the Redemption release which was slightly cut,but the picture was admirable. I upgraded to the uncut Italian release, then I upgraded again to the Japanese dvd release which shows the film off beautifully. How Blue Undeground can beat the Jpanese release I do not know unless the extras are something worth purchasing as a standalone. All in all a fantastic giallo and well worth watching with repeat viewings. I've seen it about 12 times and still find it refreshingly sleazy.

I loved it, this is one of the best.

I'll wait till the Anchor Bay comes out to discuss it at length (there will be more to discuss it with, for one thing), but here are a couple quick comments with a thought to those who haven't seen it yet.

First, the only off putting part is that the first couple of murders (no spoiler here: serial killers go with the territory) are bafflingly pedestrian and unsuspenseful...and slow! I was starting to worry that the mise en scene was the only virtue here (creamy Italian modern design out of a coffee table magazine), but I shouldn't have. It all kicks in and stays engaged from about the half hour mark.

I'll echo the other commentator, Nero is excellent, a handy moral center and dynamic impetus for this movie as for so many others of the time (Note to Dario: use him soon! It will be a boost to both your careers). Luckily he's serving a film and a smart who-done-it plot that otherwise fend for themselves quite nicely.

No other film beyond Bazzoni's own LE ORME has quite this feel for movement through 'familiar' urban spaces made atmospheric and alien in near supernatural as well as existentially unhinged ways. That's to stress what's unique, but I should add it's adjacent and related to what other good camera eyes like Argento, Bava, Antonioni and Roeg had done or would do in future. I'd love to see Bazzoni's impressionistic experimental documentary about Rome as dramatic space in this regard.The partnership with Storaro is very rewarding, the result being an exciting color noir vocabulary that successfully, and knowledgeably, updates John Alton's old B&W 'painting with light' (and incorporates a variety of lenses and other new 'tricks') years before AMERICAN GIGOLO ventured in this direction stateside.

A comment on the English vs. Italian audio. Both are fine as dubtracks (though on the Japanese dvd, the English is presented 'loud' and with audible hiss; and the Italian has no Anglo subs, naturally enough), but the English makes one fatal mistake in translating the phoned message of the killer. On the call, the voice is unnaturally high in the transmission, and when slowed down on playback it becomes the recognizable voice of one suspect among many...less than half way through the film! In Italian, the tape isn't modulated-manipulated on replay (Nero and the cops are too dim to do that, or too passionate to keep moving to think of it)...and the message is uniformly presented at a slowed down, creepy speed.

We may guess who the killer is all the same (though there are so many slimy characters that I got distracted from my initial correct suspicion), but even so, the ultimate motivation for the crimes is paid off handsomely in purely cinematic terms, something this film is much more richly endowed with than most. Along with unusually lovely actresses, sexy and/or plain old attractive in attractively noncliched ways.

I think THE FIFTH CORD is pretty terrific, too - its geometric symmetry of composition really sets this title near the top of the giallo cycle. The repeating squares of skyscraper windows, the elegant modernist spiral staircase which bisects the frame along a vertical axis and the horizontal steps which perform the same function laterally...all used as great backgrounds against which Nero can scamper like a mathematical variable looking for a solution.

This is early days, I know, but does anyone here know if this title will be available to buy separately or will only be released as part of Blue Underground's GIALLO COLLECTION VOLUME 2? (The other titles in that set really don't do anything for me at all, especially the unutterably bland FORBIDDEN PHOTOS OF A WOMAN UNDER SUSPICION, Dagmar Lassander or not.)

great film!!!I loved this one 15 years ago when I saw it in the (very bad indeed)greek tape,which was fortunately uncut and I still love it!
But the best Luigi Bazzoni film for me is still LADY OF THE LAKE.
Please someone release this masterpiece!!!

Answering My Own Question Department: as far as THE FIFTH CORD goes, it now seems to have been dropped completely (along with DEATH LAID AN EGG) from BU's GIALLO COLLECTION VOL.2, according to a thread on the DVD Maniacs site, but may be released later in the year as a stand-alone title.

As far as I'm aware at present, the proposed line-up for BU's Giallo Collection is:

Bird With The Crystal Plumage (new transfer supervised by Vittorio Storaro)
Forbidden Photos of a Lady Under Suspicion
The Girl with the Yellow Pajamas
Seven Deaths in the Cat's Eye
Strip Nude for Your Killer


...but if anyone has any corrections to this, I'd be interested to hear them. :)

I remember seeing THE FIFTH CORD as a separate release in Mondo Digital's upcoming releases. It seems that not many people will be interested in the new
Giallo boxset as it is now, although I am sure that each film's edition will be definitive.

Count me in as someone who can't wait for THE GIALLO COLLECTION VOL. 2, regardless of whether or not it includes The Fifth Cord. I'm in the rather fortunate position of having only seen one of these titles (The Bird with the Crystal Plumage), so I'm looking forward to broadening my giallo horizons a little.

I wasn't expecting such a disapointment from BU. What a shame... BIRD and STRIP NUDE are already out in good editions while GIRL WITH YELLOW PAJAMAS, FORBIDDEN PHOTOS and SEVEN DEATHS are mediocre films, to say the least. And they can be hardly categorized as "giallo thrillers". Sad to say but there's no reason for me to buy this. Unless if it includes good extras such as interviews.

Too bad because there are so many brilliant and obscure gialli out there that are screaming for a DVD release. Need I mention these titles again? GIALLO A VENEZIA, CRIMES OF THE BLACK CAT, THE KILLER RESERVED 9 SEATS, Lenzi's Carrol Baker gialli, THE IGUANA WITH THE TONGUE OF FIRE, NEXT!- there are so many...

and let's just hope that BU has not dropped the Castellari box set- they have delayed it for too long.

Oof! I've just realised that THE GIRL IN THE YELLOW PAJAMAS is actually the terminally lame Ray Milland policier THE PYJAMA GIRL CASE/LA RAGAZZA DAL PAGIAMA GIALLO (1977), which bored me rigid when I caught it on Redemption's VHS (very good quality and ludicrously cheap, too, so if anyone really wants to satisfy their curiosity on this one they might be better off just picking up the tape instead). Okay, it has Dalila di Lazzaro naked...but that's the beginning and the end of this film's merits. I don't know why, but I expected more from Flavio Mogherini, art director on DIABOLIK.

It barely qualifies as a giallo, IMO, but then the giallo seems to be a malleable genre, so...

I have to disagree with the above comments and say it was a thoroughly medicore gialli. Storaro's cinematography is nice but I think it's a case that Storaro shot the film so it 'must' be good. Also, I found the plot very confusing and doesn't make sense. If anyone could answer these questions:

(SPOILERS SPOILERS)

1. Why and who attacked the killer in the tunnel early in the film?

2. Why was the newspaper editor (I think 'Tersi) attacked? (he died of a heart attack)

3. Why was the doctor's wife (in a wheelchair) killed?

4. Why was that other lady found dead in a bath? (she was found in a hotel- the ship magnate's daughter?)?

That's just for starters. Maybe it's not such a good idea to analyse a gialli too deeply but if anyone has some answers....... :)

I returned the dvd to the rental place so I'm relying on memory alone for plot hole resolution.

SPOILERS


The murderer was attacked by Giulia's father. So Nero explains in the wrap up (I wrote that down because I was confused on the point)...but I can't remember who Giulia's father was. In any case, he was attacked on a Monday, which set this apart from the rest of the crimes on Tuesdays...as fitting with the genuine yet bogus astrological profile of the murderer ---who was an Aries...look, I don't believe in horoscopes, so I suspend disbelief on this front automatically. If it makes the compulsive killer happy, so be it.

The only fishy bit is that the the murders themselves aren't a Zodiac Killing thing out of inner compulsion but due to clever obfuscation. He should have picked an astrological sign that wasn't his own if he really wanted it to be watertight (But maybe Tuesday was just his "lucky day". It works for people doing the lottery, and they aren't necessarily hip to the arcane mysteries of Jeanne Dixon cosmosophistry, either). Just as he should have chosen another doctor than the one whose wife he murdered (ie with no relation to the case, and in some other far off section of town, who could be threatened and blackmailed preferably) to treat his neck injury...since Doc Bini could -and does- reveal he was wearing his cast long after it could have been removed, just to look the part of a first victim.

Maybe those were the breaks, I dunno. When you get whacked, your choices for medical treatment are limited, and if you know a good doctor, you call him up. Besides, he hadn't hatched his scheme yet. The one point that's really left dangling is whether he already had the murders in mind (and partly plotted), or if it was the surprise attack that sent him over the edge. Maybe the Giulia and dad part of the plot would explain this, maybe not.

This sort of less than hundred percent satisfying plot summation often happens in giallos when the 'supernatural' and/or 'occult' is revealed as calculated uncanniness in the last scene. The spooky stuff required to make the unfolding of the plot creepy comes to seem illogical, and contradicting good, homicidal common sense.

All that admitted, the murders are thoroughly logical and pretty ingenious as a bunch. There's only one that's motivated from personal cry of the heart, jealousy the culprit - the motivation pictured fragmentarily and out of context in the opening scene, bound to be misunderstood until the very end when replayed. The rest are a purposeful confusion and distraction surrounding the 'real' crime, occuring within a batch of people with reasons to kill one another, and encompassing the reporter discovering their guilty secrets (hence the murder of his boss, throwing the Cops onto his scent)

As to the quality of the film: As stated previously, the first couple killings seemed subpar as action. But, for me, at that point Nero's fevered, tangled quest, and the mystery of it all, eclipsed the dissatisfaction...and the action accomodated and got a whole lot better.

As to Storraro, it's not his label that impresses. It's his work. And if he were carrying it alone, it would have been an empty triumph of design. For me, the elements mesh, and he's got something genuinely worthy to contribute to after about the one third point in the running time. This -with LE ORME-is the best of the four Bazzoni films I've seen (I've never found Lady of the Lake). His semi-Westerns strike me as prettier than they are achieved, but this one delivered the goods.

That's my take.

Hmmm. Well, having just watched THE FIFTH CORD again myself last night, I can quite see why this title might seem underwhelming from a narrative standpoint. It's incoherent! But the real impact comes from the visuals, which are as good as I remembered them to be (gotta see 'em in widescreen!), and of course Nero's typically full-steam-ahead performance...

By the way, a slight amendment is in order to the specs for BU's upcoming GIALLO COLLECTION VOL. 2 (yet again!): apparently, BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE will no longer be a part of this set, and is planned for a separate release, like FIFTH CORD, later this year. Giving credit where it's due, I think this nugget stemmed from Bruce Holecheck over at the DVD Maniacs site, but don't quote me.