Mimsy Ballistico! PERFUME OF A LADY IN BLACK (1974) + The Giallo Checklist

With one of those typically ornate giallo titles that involves 'ladies,' animal names, sharp objects, or strange jewels comes Francisco Barilli's awesome and fragrant PERFUME OF A LADY IN BLACK (a better and more apt title in my mind would be CRACKED MIRROR OF THE BLUE HIPPO). Mimsy Farmer stars as a cross between MARNIE--hallucinating her dead mom having sex with a no-good taxidermist, and taking affirmative action, in ghostly flashbacks, and a typically 'androgynous' slasher final girl--and Roman Polanski in THE TENANT--living in a weird old apartment building with enough psychics, elderly sculptors, and animal totems to give anyone the willies. For audiences familiar with other conspiracy-driven ROSEMARY'S BABY-inspired psychosexual horror headtrips, like 1977's American (but Italian-influenced) THE SENTINEL (my review here), it's dread by association.

One thing I notice in all these 1970s creep shows with colorful class is an admirable (or is lazy?) focus on the crux of the mise-en-scene: long takes of a spooked woman standing in spooky, dark, monochromatic hallways, listening to faint scraping noises. These scenes are the giallo's raison d'etre, and also great way to pad running time. If the girl is lovely and in a fetching gown, so much the better to work the weird dissonant art/fear/desire feedback loop, my dear. With her short blonde hair and Americo-Nordic resemblance to my own mother, Farmer sticks out like a sore thumb in her ancient Italian surroundings (while on the continent she was also in Dario Argento's FOUR FLIES IN GREY VELVET [my review here] and something called AUTOPSY). Her button-nose androgyny never melts all the way into either Doris Day baby boi cleanliness or Jodie Foster baby butch grubbiness, leaving us all kind of messed up in our identification, especially as her short hair accentuates the boyishness of her face ala Jean Seberg and ROSEMARY Mia. In perpetual pre-gender assignment limbo, we want to protect her, seduce her, fear her, and fear for her. In the end, can only watch her... dissolve.. as she waits in the hallway, listening to more of that infernal... scraping...

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There's a lot of extraneous detail here that seems to be checking off some long lost giallo / Satan movie checklist, so I thought for fun I'd include it here, along with the symbolic meaning of each. Note that I mean this list in only the best ways and it's not meant as disrespect to LADY IN BLACK or anything else. Gialli need these items, like old dark house movies need guys in ape suits, scheming heirs, and wheelchair-bound Egyptologists:

THE GIALLO CHECKLIST:

1. Old photos (descent into the past)

2. Taxidermy (association of necrophilia)

3. Winding Staircase (descent into the unconscious!

4. Music box (suppressed childhood trauma / lost innocence)

5. Eccentric neighbor (red herring - associative symbol generator)

6. Chain lock (repressive psychic mechanism)

7. Elderly doorman and Cat lady relating tragic news in foyer (plot advancement)

8. Abandoned building where someone grew up. (cheap readymade set)

9. Blind psychic (fatalism)

10. Mimsy Farmer, or facsimile (cute androgynous question mark)

Many giallo features usually on the checklist are unfortunately lacking in PERFUME OF A LADY IN BLACK, however, such as grisly murders. The one main murder here occurs offscreen! We hear about it second hand (see item 7) and that doesn't make a lick of sense! Also missing: a mustachioed, weary cop in a white trench coat, with piercing blue eyes and/or a mustache. There are some other perks however, the giallo extra credit items: tennis, Marlboro lights, graveyard, trippy architecture, VERTIGO flower shop, shadowy sects, graphic primal scene flashbacks, mysterious pasts, and a shock/twist ending.


And the DVD from Raro Video is gorgeous! Clearly a lot of time and effort was spent getting the colors deep and hallucinatory ala Argento's DEEP RED and SUSPIRIA. It's not quite as great as those films, but in its own private Roma (and Roman) way, it's awesome. So when you're out of Argento and early Polanski, but still on that crazy dark color mod Euroinsane hottie kick, adjust your glasses and learn to enjoy one of the more opaque of giallo-jewels, PERFUME OF A LADY IN BLACK, a nutty future classic, bound to appreciate on repeat Halloween viewings.