L'Uccello dalle Piume di Cristallo

Now king of the spaghetti slasher, Argento made his directorial debut with this tightly constructed thriller in which an American writer is witness to an attempted knife attack, and then finds himself obsessed with tracking down a serial killer whose next victims could be himself and his lover.. There are some extravagant false leads, but tension is well sustained with the aid of Vittorio Storaro's stylish 'Scope photography and a Morricone score. Particularly effective are the opening attack, viewed through a maze of locked windows, and a scene with the victim caught on a stairway suddenly plunged into darkness. Certain elements seem to have been an influence on Dressed to Kill and The Shining, but Argento himself zoomed into more and more abstract shock effects, neglecting the Hitchcockian principles observed here.