A young professor goes to stay with his brother who is a priest and murders start to occur following on from the previous murder of a schoolgirl many years before. Not quite a full blooded giallo but the narrative is clear and all loose ends are tied up satisfactorily. The acting is decent. The two best things are the lovely location photography in Murano, Venice (some shots could be framed as paintings) and another fine music score from the prolific Stelvio Cipriani.It is however too long and could have been cut by 20 minutes at least. Too much time is given to the romance between Sanda and Stefano. Shots of them walking the streets are pretty but just hold the film up needlessly. Not in the Argento league but not bad.

In this heavily plotted Giallo from director / co-writer Antonio Bido, two brothers have a reunion that unfortunately goes sour when graphic murders begin to take place. Stefano D'Archangelo (Lino Capolicchio), the professor, works the clues while taking the time to romance Sandra (Stefania Casini), a new acquaintance, while his priest brother Don Paolo (Craig Hill) is worried that he will be among the victims when he witnesses an assault and soon starts receiving threatening notes. Not all fans of Italys' Giallo genre may be too enamoured with this one as it simply isn't as trashy as some of them. The murders do get fairly intense (one victim has their head shoved into a roaring fire) but the amount of bloodshed is minimal (title of the film notwithstanding). There is also a sex scene and nudity from Casini, but these are done in a tasteful manner, perhaps too tasteful for some of the viewers. While Bidos' direction is good, he never lets style take over, preferring to concentrate first and foremost on telling the story. He lets his film unfold at a very deliberate pace; he devotes a fair amount of time to Stefanos' courting of the lovely Sandra, who works as a painter. As a result, one might grow impatient waiting for the next major set piece. Still, when these set pieces come, they prove worth the wait, such as a sequence of Sandra being stalked as she heads home. The twists are decent and keep the audience guessing; there are of course red herrings and the identity of the disturbed killer might come as a shock to some. One of the strongest assets here is the way Bido utilizes the Venice setting; the sights and sounds are a pleasure to take in. The music score by Stelvio Cipriani runs hot and cold - sometimes it's quite atmospheric, at others it's just too offbeat to really work, especially when it's used for suspense sequences. The cast is solid, with Capolicchio and Hill making for a likable sibling duo; Capolicchio is also a refreshingly different sort of hero as he has a real average Joe quality. This isn't among the absolute best of its kind but it's still pretty good; aficionados should be reasonably satisfied. The ending is awfully abrupt, though. Seven out of 10.

A Professor visits his Priest Brother on an isolated Island near Venice to recover from stress brought on by flashbacks related to a Childhood trauma. On his first night his Brother witnesses a murder and later begins to receive notes from the murderer threatening (what appears to be) violence. The brothers begin investigating the crime and the expected red herrings, pov shots etceteras entail...What separates this film from the Giallo of Argento and co. is not it's lack of that genera's expected tricks (black gloved killer, inventive murders, pov shots) as these are all referenced in knowing ways (the Director even discuses his debt to Argento in an interview included on the Blue Underground DVD) but it's obsession with guilt, loneliness and existential pain. The film's washed out colours and waterlogged settings alienate us not just from the surroundings but even from the visual aspects of the film, the aspect of film itself, the idea of entertainment. Instead we focus on the character's interior life's: their traumas, their loneliness, their religious doubts.The film features great performances, beautiful editing techniques and an ironic echo of the Catholic Rite of Confession wherein it is not the killer's confession that provides the relief from suffering but the discovery of the killer, the release from childhood trauma.Watch with Fulci's Non si sevizia un paperino rather than Susperia and have a catholic encyclopedia open.

Directed by Antonio Bido, this is by far his best film of his career (Though, admittedly, his only other film of any note is the 1977 Giallo "Watch Me When I Kill").The film's narrative is relatively typical of a giallo: Someone is killing people in a small village and a priest tries to unravel the mystery of the killer's identity. What's atypical is the film's tone. The film is noteworthy for being one of the more serious and mature of the giallo genre. Bido avoids the giallo's often sleazy nature and embraces the Gothic and religious aspects instead.Another interesting point is how the film focuses on two main protagonists, the priest and his brother, and how they collaborate with one another to discover the killer. Interesting narrative method having two focal points rather than one, not original but unconventional.The performances are generally good with Craig Hill as giving an impressive performance as the priest. He exhibits a broad range of emotions from anger to sorrow, from determination to helplessness, and makes it totally convincing.The cinematography is main feature of the film because it is its strongest trait. The visuals portray a wet and muggy Italy, with fog and mist enveloping the landscapes and rain falling, creating pools of water. This all builds a gloomy and foreboding atmosphere that conveys feelings of isolation, loneliness, dread, anguish, and death.The characters are generally good as well, each with a strong history and believable relationships between one another. The greatest of which is the relationship between the priest and his brother, which is totally believable because not only of both of their performances, but also the development of their characters.And lastly, the film features some wonderful aesthetic qualities through it's use of editing. Bido inter splices Catholic and Religious imagery to make comments about the characters and the religious institution as a whole.The film has a few problematic issues. First of all, the narrative isn't clearly focused. The film appears to be more concerned with the visuals and the individual, isolated events in the film rather than the mystery as a whole. Thus, this damages the film's impact as it approaches the end, because here the mystery plays center stage but is underdeveloped.The narrative also suffers from several of the genre's conventions and clichés, thus leading to a sort of predictability of the story. The film features the typical gloved killer, the extended stalking sequences leading to a gruesome death, the multiple red herrings, childhood traumas, and a host of other archetypes of the giallo.Also, the final revelation stretches plausibility and thus may become unacceptable to some viewers, especially when one recalls the events that have transpired throughout the film.Never the less, this is one of the better giallos out there.Recommended to those who enjoy the mystery/thriller genre, though it is not essential unless you are a fan of the giallo genre. For the casual film viewer, there are better examples of the giallo genre and thus would recommend that you skip this and view one of the apexes of the genre such as Suspiria.