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Sette Note in Nero aka The Psychic / Murder to the Tune of Seven Black Notes |
| Lucio Fulci's Sette Note in Nero (aka The Psychic) was released in 1977 and stars Jennifer O'Neill as a woman investigating a murder that her psychic abilities have given her visions of. With the addition of Fulci's interest in the psychic woman (is it because of their ability to see so much that they have to be silenced?) it's his foray into the realms of Argento-style gialli, and quite an interesting film.
What I should say first of all though is that the version I saw isn't exactly ideal, and the reason for this is the dubbing. You might well be thinking "oh, he's complaining about poor dubbing: everyone's used to bad dubbing!", and I really thought I was, having sat through a good many foreign horrors and any number of kung fu films. But it's hard to describe just how appalling the dubbing is in Sette Note in Nero; it could only have been done by someone deaf, blind, very stupid, or a combination of all three. Slightly off lip-synching gets the occasional laugh at horror festivals, but here it's so far wide of the mark that it's more bewildering than humorous. The best example of this is in one scene where O'Neill's character and her husband and sister-in-law are holding a conversation. As each character speaks, their lips move for a few seconds without any sound, then their voice starts; at about the same time as the camera moves to the next character, who is now also speaking. Of course, there is a certain amusement to seeing Jennifer O'Neill apparently speaking with a man's voice! 
The storyline seems to be influenced by Edgar Allen Poe, particularly his story The Black Cat, also about a woman being bricked up behind a wall and the murderer giving themself away through a terrible mistake. O'Neill has a vision of a murdered woman being behind the wall of, quite worryingly, her husband's house. The plot is started off by her going there and taking the wall apart to find the skeletal remains of a woman killed years ago. Understandably, the police then arrest her husband, leaving O'Neill with the tasks of clearing him of the crime and finding the real killer. There's many a giallo twist along the tale, along with many visions of death which slowly encroach into reality.Overall, it's an interesting spin on a side of the genre that Fulci rarely dealt with, leaving out the large doses of gore in favour of suspense and a more traditional detective-based plot. Of course, it would have been nice if, at the beginning, the wall was broken down to reveal a gateway to hell, but then you can't have everything, can you? Even so, decent dubbing would have been nice. Phil |
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