Seven Deaths in the Cats Eyes

Antonio Margheriti returned to the Gothic genre, albeit this time with quite a different attitude. The evocatively titled La morte negli occhi del gatto was not a ghost story but a period murder mystery with a supernatural red herring, that made it closer to the director’s own La vergine di Norimberga, as well as other Gothic mysteries of the past decade, such as Horror and La lama nel corpo. Still, inevitably, the result accommodated elements of the Argento-esque giallo, resulting in an animal’s name in the title and in gory razorblades murders, with throats cut open and blood sprayed all over. In addition to that, as he had done in Contronatura, the director gave reasonably ample room to eroticism, which caused it a V.M. 18 rating in Italy.

Seven Deaths in the Cat’s Eyes is something of a throwback. In many respects, it is closer in tone and spirit to the lurid and colorful Italian Gothic horrors of the 1960’s, of which director Antonio Margheriti was something of a specialist. With its period setting, candle-lit corridors, shifty red herrings and extra running around in a moth-bitten gorilla outfit, it plays like a much older film than it really is.

A strange film, Seven Deaths never knows exactly what it wants to be. Is it a Gothic? Is it a giallo? Is it an ape-gone-wild-thriller? The strangeness is compounded by the sight of our favorite early-’70s couple, Birkin and Gainsbourg, appearing in this “Agatha Christie meets Mario Bava”-type thriller. … The film is well put-together with the requisite dark cobwebbed halls and Gothic motif, and the killings are somewhat inventive and bloody. The ending is predictable, but some fun is to be had.

This gothic giallo begins frenetically with a pre-credits murder after which rats devour the corpse—all the while viewed by the overweight titular moggy. This unsubtle opening sets the tone for what becomes almost a black comedy in which every character is either a blathering eccentric or stark raving mad. … References to chimeras, vampires and even “a new theory by someone called Freud” are thrown into the pot but go nowhere. … The final irony is that if this relatively obscure mishmash of themes were a Hammer production it would probably have a legion of rabid fans.