While making the big screen adaptation of “The Big Sleep,” director Howard Hawks and star Humphrey Bogart got into an argument about whether or not a certain character was murdered or committed suicide. The character in question was Owen Taylor - the Sternwood family chauffeur whose car winds up swimming right off the Santa Monica pier. At an impasse, Hawks and Bogart dashed a telegram off to Raymond Chandler, the American master of hardboiled detective fiction who had penned “The Big Sleep” in 1939. Chandler’s reply was “damned if I know,” and in a 1949 letter to Jamie Hamilton, Chandler recounts how both Hawks and Bogart “hooted” at him for his non-answer.
This could be a real story or it could be apocryphal. Chandler openly despised Hollywood, and the story of Owen Wilson’s death highlights the problems Hollywood faces when trying to convert complex novels into streamlined action films. The final product - 1946’s “The Big Sleep” - is a noir classic, but its plot is notoriously hard to follow.
In a similar fashion, the plot to “All the Colors of the Dark” (or, in its original Italian: “Tutti i colori del buio”) is convoluted to say the least. Billing itself as “Psychedelic Horror,” “All the Colors of the Dark” is at times a chaotic and tiring exploration of the crumbling mind of Jane Harrison (played by the French-born Italian actress Edwige Fenech). Story lines move, converge, and diverge throughout this picture, and even though the film hits the sweet spot at 94 minutes, it feels much longer. Plus, keen viewers will spend far too much time trying to figure out who killed who or trying to distinguish reality from nightmare.
A large part of this confusion stems from the film’s genre. “All the Colors of the Dark” is not a pure horror film and it is a not a pure crime film either, but it is certainly a mixture of both. This concoction is usually called “giallo,” and this word (which means “yellow” in Italian) denotes a postwar type of cinema that emphasized blood, brutality, mystery, and heaps and heaps of busty bosoms. The Exploited said it best: giallo is all about sex and violence.
Giallo has its origins in the mass market world of pulp paperbacks. Beginning in the 1920s, the Milanese publishing company Arnoldo Mondado Editore started producing Italian translations of American and British mystery novels with bright yellow jackets. Some of the line’s more popular authors included Americans such as Chandler, Ed McBain, and Mickey Spillane, while Brits like Agatha Christie and Edgar Wallace also went over well with sensation-hungry audiences. In 1946, the giallo paperbacks were renamed as I gialli Mondadori and after World War II these novels were regularly serialized in periodicals and often came to book stores once every fifteen days.
Italian directors influenced by Alfred Hitchcock and Michael Powell’s “Peeping Tom” started to make films in the 1960s that blended traditional suspense with the sensationalism that they found in the giallo paperbacks. Foremost among these directors was the Ligurian Mario Bava - a man who would not only initiate the giallo and slasher genres into being, but who would also make some of the last great Gothic horror films (1960’s “Black Sunday” and 1963’s “Black Sabbath”). Bava’s best giallo films - 1963’s “The Girl Who Knows Too Much” (which not only explicitly references Agatha Christie, but also borrows its plot device from Christie’s “The ABC Murders”) and 1964’s “Blood and Black Lace” - are beautiful and lush meditations on highly sexualized violence and mystery. Before Wes Craven and “Scream,” Bava was the man making sometimes self-aware fright flicks that hinged upon masked men doing really bad things to buxom women.
Bava’s influence on Italian cinema is immense, and the Roman Sergio Martino certainly took more than a few tips from the older maestro. Martino, whose best work was done in the ‘70s and stretched across the genres of giallo, police procedural, western, and SciFi, was the man behind the helm of “All the Colors of the Dark.” Besides Martino, “All the Colors of the Dark” also belongs to its screenwriters - the prolific Ernesto Gastaldi and the equally workmanlike Sauro Scavolini. These three men clearly set out to make a giallo mind trip with “All the Colors of the Dark,” and they succeeded but for all the wrong reasons.
As it turns out, Jane and her long-term boyfriend Richard (played by George Hilton) have recently survived a terrible car accident that resulted in a miscarriage. The memory haunts Jane, and while Richard - a salesman attached to a pharmaceutical company - suggests that Jane take a daily regimen of pills, Jane’s sister Barbara (played by Nieves Navarro, but billed as Susan Scott) tells her to seek the help of Dr. Burton (played by George Rigaud). Barbara calls Dr. Burton the best psychiatrist in England, and it’s not until this point that you realize that this joint Italian-Spanish production is set in England (more than likely London).
Of course, given the film’s emphasis on Jane’s rapidly evaporating sanity, the setting of “All the Colors of the Dark” doesn’t matter a whole lot. After all, psychological thrillers can happen anywhere. Still, the gloomy and grey atmosphere of England helps to enhance the paranoia of the film, and when Jane crosses paths with her new neighbor Mary (played by Marina Malfatti) and her coven of friends, the castle setting of the black magic ceremonies is just too perfect.
Seeking to both end her nightly nightmares and avoid confronting the man with the ice blue eyes (who continually stalks Jane throughout the film), Jane turns to Mary and her suggestion that a Sabbath would cure her of all her ills. Mary takes Jane to the remote and mostly empty castle, and while there they fall into one bizarre ritual after another.
The coven’s leader - a feathered-hair warlock with fake claws (played by Julián Ugarte) - proves to be big on two things: killing puppies for their blood and drinking that blood as a way to moisten the lips. With bloody lips and teeth, he frequently kisses Jane on the mouth and urges the other members to do the same. This makes for hard viewing, and even though Jane eventually gives in and has intercourse with the post-Hippy Merlin, she (and us) never get comfortable.
There’s a reason for this, for after the group makes Jane kill Mary (who actually forces herself upon the same dagger that has been haunting Jane’s mind since the beginning), they keep telling her that she cannot leave them. More than that, the blue-eyed man reminds her that her mother once tried to escape them and failed.
So, at this point in the film, “All the Colors of the Dark” is a witchcraft movie with heavily borrowed elements from psychoanalysis. In short, it represents the early 1970s in all their polyester glory. From interests in the occult and “alternative” religions to the fact that Jane and Richard are an unmarried, live-in couple, “All the Colors of the Dark” is horror for the first yuppie generation.
But, since “All the Colors of the Dark” is a giallo and therefore must rely on this-wordly explanations, this occult horror turns out to be nothing more than an elaborate scam to take Jane’s part of a fortune. Before she died, Jane and Barbara’s mother named them both as the joint heirs to her sizable wealth. Knowing this, Barbara, the heroin addict Mary, the muscle Mark Cogan (the man with the icy blue eyes), and the ringleader J.P. McBrian (the warlock-priest) set out to drive the impressionable Jane crazy. Their end goal was the end of Jane, but Richard catches on when a solicitor named Francis Clay (played by Luciano Pigozzi) sends Jane a letter outlining the terms of her mother’s will. He confronts Barbara not only because of the letter but also because he earlier saw an occult tattoo on her arm. The letter tells him Barbara’s motivation, while the tattoo, which is shared by all the criminals and was inked on Jane, damns Barbara for her attempted fratricide. Barbara tries to appeal to her and Richard’s former history as lovers, but nothing doing: Richard shoots her with a Beretta pistol.
The killing of Barbara leaves McBrian on his own (the whereabouts of the others is haphazardly discussed in about two minutes), and after Jane and Richard are given the entire case’s conclusion at the police station, McBrian confronts them in their apartment complex. This leads to a very giallo-esque chase on the roof, and after a solid punch from Richard, McBrian dramatically falls to his death. Before the final credits roll, Jane bemoans the fact that outside forces might be controlling her and allowing her to see actions before they happen.
This seems to be the case, for “All the Colors of the Dark” is full of premonitions and alternative endings to scenes already seen. This is a noble idea, but tricky to pull-off, and as this synopsis has probably already shown, “All the Colors of the Dark” is jumbled up and not expertly executed. It’s a pretty film and Bruno Nicolai’s score is feels better suited for a better film. Still, despite these flaws, several metal musicians have found inspiration in Sergio Martino’s film, with the two biggest standouts being Electric Wizard and Ilsa.
On their 2004 album “We Live,” Electric Wizard included two songs that are only available on re-issued copies. One of these songs is “Tutti I Colori Del Buio” and it only appears on vinyl. This is not Electric Wizard’s first taste of giallo, and one could easily assume it won’t be their last. And while Electric Wizard are known for basing their material around the horror and exploitation films of yesteryear, D.C.-area doom/crust band Ilsa are newcomers to the world of ‘70s sleaze. There sophomore full-length, “Tutti il Colori del Buio,” is a hymn to the giallo genre, with song titles such as “Roving Blade” and “The Butcher’s Castle,” while the album’s artwork displays giallo’s requisite black leather gloves and shining knife. It seems that giallo is a well worth returning to, even if such examples as “All the Colors of the Dark” leave some things to be desired.Words: Benjamin Welton