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Film: Door Into Darkness: Eyewitness (La porta sul buio: Testimone oculare)
Year: 1973
Director: Roberto Pariante and Dario Argento
Writers: Dario Argento and Luigi Cozzi
Starring: Marilù Tolo, Riccardo Salvino and Glauco Onorato
Review:
This is a show that I learned about when looking up Dario Argento. It appears that this aired in Italy and only had 4 episodes. Each are feature-length and appeared as a work I hadn’t seen from this co-writer/co-director. Since it qualified as a Traverse through the Threes from 1973 and for Italian horror month, I decided to do an Argento double feature with his two episodes of this show.
Synopsis: Roberta (Marilù Tolo) discovers the corpse of a young woman while driving down a remote country road late at night. She reports the incident to the police, but the corpse disappears from the crime scene. Is she insane? Or is someone trying to drive her crazy?
Now this kicks off with Glauco Onorato, who is a police inspector. He chats with Argento. It gets brought up that this is the only episode of Door into Darkness that was based on a true case. That is the draw here of how bizarre this is.
Then to get into the story, Roberta is driving on the road from the synopsis. She comes around a corner and almost hits a body in the road. This person is Altea De Nicola. She sees blood coming out of her mouth. Roberta is checking for signs of life and discovers there is blood on her side. She looks to the woods and sees a figure. They chase her to a nearby pub. It is there that the police are called.
The inspector interviews Roberta and tries to get all the facts. He is having trouble though and we see why. They go to the crime scene and there isn’t a body where she said there was. There isn’t any blood on the pavement either. This makes Roberta question her sanity. She goes back to the station to see if she can identify the woman from missing people. That is until her husband shows up, Guido Leoni (Riccardo Salvino). He takes her home.
This isn’t something that she can give up though. She tries to figure out what happened to this woman she saw and Roberta believes that the killer is following her. She can’t prove it though. She then gets odd phone calls, making her question her sanity even more. There also is an attempt on her life that makes her know that there is someone after her.
That will be where I leave my recap and introduction to the characters. Where I want to start is that this is an interesting giallo. The mystery here is who was the woman that Roberta saw in the road. It is then followed by the question, was there a woman in the road or is she going crazy. I know I’m seen a premise like this before. The difference here is that this is the focus of the story and there aren’t any additional kills.
Now I do want to say that the reveal here was a bit generic. I won’t give it away, but my problem here is that we don’t get many players. I made a guess as to who was behind this and was correct. The one that I’ll say is the explanation as to why it was being done was interesting. Again, not something that we haven’t seen before. I wasn’t expecting it and when I heard the voice, it shocked me. I will give credit there. I also wonder, is this based on a true case and is that holding it back? I could also just see them using that this is based on a true story to pull in viewers as well.
I’m going to shift to acting now. That is what carries this. Credit then to Tolo as she is the focus here. We follow her through this and that makes sense. I thought that her husband was fine. Salvino when he is on screen seems like a loving husband. He does disappear to work regularly so that is part of it and he seems to always be out of town. De Nicola is fine in her limited role. I’d say that the rest of the cast is also fine in support of Tolo to push her to where she ends up.
All that is left then is filmmaking. What I found interesting is that Argento is listed as co-director here with Roberto Pariante. It seems like this is his only directing credit. He mostly did assistant directing and 2nd unit stuff. He did this on big projects in Italy like Colossus of the Arena, The Sweet Body of Deborah, Live Like a Cop, Die Like a Man as well as Argento’s animal trilogy. I thought the cinematography here was fine. There was one scene that annoyed me where it zoomed into something to make sure that we saw it. Just feels like there was a better way to focus on that. There isn’t much in the way of effects here. There is a bit of blood in the beginning, but that is it. The soundtrack was also fine. There was one scene that stood out in a negative way. Not enough to ruin this though. I just expect more from Argento, that is all.
In conclusion, I thought that we have an interesting story here. I’m not fully sure if this is based on a true event or not. That could explain why it feels a bit limited. Regardless, this is carried by Tolo. Her performance is great. Everyone else pushes her to where she ends up. This is also made well enough. It isn’t working with a big budget. There are odd choices with cinematography and a musical selection. Still a decent enough giallo. I’d recommend if you’re a fan of this subgenre or out to see all the movies in Argento’s filmography.
My Rating: 6 out of 10