La casa con la scala nel buio (1983, Italy)

An Italian horror thriller. A musical composer rents a villa to get some inspiration; he is writing the score for a film, although he hasn't been allowed to see the last reel yet. This is preceded by a scene of three young boys playing a kind of dare game. One of them -- played by Giovanni Frezza -- is being dared by his friends to go down into a scary cellar. He does, and then when he is out of sight there is a scream, and suddenly a tennis ball is projected up the stairs and it leaves a bloodstain where it bounces.

In an increasingly chaotic script, young women start to get killed with knives, and there is quite a lot of blood. We begin to see a woman dragging the corpses away; she is wearing very sensible shoes. The three boys appear again, and the scene is repeated, except that this time the two are taunting the other one with the jeer, "You're a female!"

In the tradition of Italian thrillers, various clues are fed to us to guess who the killer in, and many of the clues are false. At the end there is a denouement, and the killer turns out to be a man in very unconvincing drag. It's Tony Rendina played by Michele Soavi.

Just before the ending, we see the three boys again; the bullied one is now coming back up the stairs of the cellar, wearing girl's clothes - seen very briefly. We presume it is a young version of Tony Rendina, and there is a psychobabble explanation at the end that tells us why he felt compelled to kill women.

The film is also known as
A Blade in the Dark and
House of the Dark Stairway.

HF October 2007

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