For my 10th anniversary on IMDb,I decided that I would celebrate the event by watching a "new" title from an auteur film maker who has been a major part of my film viewing over the last 10 years:Dario Aregento.Planning to watch The Card Player,my DVD player that it was far from happy with the hand that it had been dealt,by constantly jamming the DVD up! Frantically searching round,I spotted a TV movie by Argento,which I had been slightly uneasy over viewing,due to sadly not having seen that much of Alfred Hitchcock's work.With there being no other Argento titles in my sight,I decided to find out if you could still like the film,even without knowing Hitchcock.The plot:Taking a break from his film studying,student Julio opens the window of his flat and looks across the street.Appearing across the street like a dream,Julio spots a neighbour called Sasha undressing.Enjoying the rush of voyeurism,Julio starts to keep a close eye on Sasha,which leads to him seeing Sasha having an argument with her mum.Getting set to rent out a title from his friend Andrea's video store,Julio is caught by surprise,when he runs into Sasha at the store.Getting hold of the film Strangers on a Train just before a fellow sexy video customer, (what are the chances!) called Federica.As he leaves the shop,Julio notices Sasha & Federica deep in conversation.In the mood for a voyeurism hit later that night,Julio instead witnesses Sasha's mum getting brutally murdered by a black coat wearing stranger.As he calls the cops,Julio begins to fear that he is about to enter his own Hitchcock tale.View on the film:Originally designed to be the first episode of a 7 part Italian Thriller TV series, (which after the series budget was cut in half,led to this being the only filmed episode)co-writer/(along with Franco Ferrini) directing auteur Dario Argento & cinematographer Frederic Fasano open this stylish Giallo with a scene straight from a long forgotten Brothers Grimm story,which along with showing the beginning of Julio's voyeurism streak,also subtly recalls the witches from Argento's "three mothers" trilogy.Whilst he does include a handful of Hitchcock references,Argento gives this TV movie an eye-catching,feature film canvas.Argento scans the screen with ultra-stylised whip-pans showing Sasha's skin (played by an elegant Elisabetta Rocchetti,who also appears naked in the TV movie!)setting Julio's voyeurism weakness off.Along with the flesh & impressively blunt levels of blood,Argento also sinks the Giallo into a Film Noir atmosphere,with the use of water allowing Argento to rift on his past Deep Red,and to also scatter unrelenting rain across the screen,which builds up an excellent tense mood,as Julio tries to figure out which Hitchcock he is trapped in.Whilst the screenplay by Argento & Franco Ferrini is a little too focused on seeing how many homages it can include,the writers still make the Giallo mystery its own thing,thanks to flashbacks to Julio's childhood allowing the writers to make Julio's almost- stalker like obsessions block any attempt by Julio to get help in solving the murder.Entering the title looking like Harry Potter's geekier brother (is that even possible!) Elio Germano gives a wonderful performance as Julio,with Germano avoiding the easy sleaze-ball route that the character could have take,by giving Julio a real sincerity,and a real determination which heats up as Julio tries to find out how much the mysterious killer likes Hitchcock.

Argento has obviously seen better days, but there are still traces of his genius in this slow-moving TV movie about a kid obsessed with the films of Hitchcock who thinks a neighbor living across from him may have been murdered by someone he knows. The murder itself is about the only gory moment in the movie, which will come as a disappointment to lovers of past Argento splatter classics like CRYSTAL PLUMAGE, TENEBRAE, DEEP RED, SUSPIRIA, THE PHANTOM and OPERA. The film pays homage to STRANGERS ON A TRAIN, PSYCHO, VERTIGO, DIAL M FOR MURDER and REAR WINDOW. Badly acted, and the stilted English spoken by the actors in an Italian setting makes it hard to watch at times. The killer's identity comes as no surprise in the end.

I *loved* the *idea* of the Dario Argento movie "Do You Like Hitchcock?" Being an admirer and fanatic of the Master of Suspense myself, I was all for a movie that was not only inspired by Hitchcock's masterpieces, but made homage to them and incorporated their influence into its characters. The idea of combining elements from films such as "Vertigo", "Psycho", "Strangers on a Train", "Dial M for Murder" and most notably "Rear Window" sounded like a real winner to me. So the concept of this made-for-television film rang like solid gold, however, the final product itself is not. Rather, I'm afraid to report, it's dreck.The whole premise is like a reworking of "Rear Window." A film student obsessed with Alfred Hitchcock gets to looking out his window, especially when he breaks his leg. And he becomes convinced that his neighbor across the street has committed murder. And he's convinced that his neighbor is also a fan of Alfred Hitchcock and may have been inspired by the master's films.Now the homage and the respect to Alfred Hitchcock is admirable, however the film is not. I will admit there was one moment of suspense that I actually found credible, but everything before and after it was so unbelievably dull, so preposterously dumb, so mind-numbingly slow and inferior that the movie resulted in nothing short of being a catastrophe. I had a feeling the movie was going to be a waste of time after its peculiar and unintentionally funny opening scene. I knew that when I saw yet another unnecessary sex scene afterward that the movie was going to throw a lot of idiotic and time-slowing ideas after another.I am not familiar with the director or actors' works, but I'm sure they have done much better than what I saw here. Elio Germano is rather dull as the protagonist modeled after Jimmy Stewart's character in "Rear Window", often rushing through his lines so fast that he's opaque, his girlfriend played by Cristina Brondo hasn't a sliver of the charm of Grace Kelly, and the murderers – the characters in a Hitchcock movie that were always charismatic or interesting – are as dull as they come…and badly acted. There is no menace from them.In addition, the movie also fails because it's trying too much to be like a Hitchcock movie, modeling a lot of scenes, cinematography, sequences, and so forth after scenes from the master's filmography. The movie doesn't seem to have an original thought of its own…and what it does have of its own is rather ridiculous. As hopeful and enthusiastic I was for this film, I'm sorry to report that your time is better spent elsewhere.

I think this is a pretty good movie. There is not much gore in it, and sometimes the humor gets a bit too silly, but I still enjoyed it. There's more to Argento than just gory murder scenes. It's actually slightly more suspenseful as a whole than most Argento flicks, in a lighthearted and cheerful kind of way, and it's still has some pretty nice visuals. For being a made for TV movie, it's got a lot of style, with some nice camera work, and like the old Hitchcock movies, it has a lot of humor in it, and a lot of references to a lot of Hitchcock's films. After all, the movie is a homage to the old master of suspense, Sir Alfred Hitchcock. The movie is more like an old fashioned thriller with some of Argentos own unusual style. It was shot on 35 mm film. Sometimes it has the look of a TV movie, but with a lot of cinematic flair still there, and I was surprised of how much of the old Argnto trademarks that was still left in. Surprisingly, the picture's got a lot of mild nudity. The plot resembles a lot of Hitchcock's Rear Window and is about a film student who is a Peeping Tom who cant restrain himself from spying on his sexy neighbor and he gets in a lot of trouble for it.I thought it was a nice change to this time see Argento experiment with a different kind of a movie, and the script moves forward in a much more straightforward manner than any film he's done before.If you can live without the excessive gore, and are up for an unusually lighthearted Argento movie, mixed with some of his old visual style, then it's definitely worth a watch.