Mino Guerrini’s The Third Eye (Il terzo occhio) is included in Arrow’s Gothic Fantastico Blu-Ray boxed set so you’re going to be expecting a gothic horror movie. That’s not what you’re going to get. There are some gothic touches but it’s a movie that defies easy categorisation. It’s not a giallo or an erotic thriller. It’s not a murder mystery. It’s perhaps best described as a Hitchcockian thriller in the mould of Psycho.
The young Count Mino Alberti (Franco Nero) is engaged to marry Laura (Erika Blanc). Things are very tense between them, which is our first indication that there’s a disturbing atmosphere at the Alberti ancestral villa. Mino’s mother, the Countess, hates Laura. She is a possessive mother and her relationship with her son is both strained and unhealthily intense. Another source of attention is the family’s one and only servant, Marta (Gioia Pascal). Marta may be in love with Mino, she may be ambitious and she is certainly resentful of the Countess.
So we have four people who are a bit strange, a bit too tightly wrapped and all involved in an emotional web of desires and resentments.
We’re not entirely surprised when a murder results but we are a little surprised about the consequences and each of the subsequent murders is slightly puzzling. The motivations are sometimes obvious, sometimes not so obvious, but it’s the reactions of the various characters to the murders that is really unsettling.
We’re dealing with multiple characters who are dangerously unstable, verging on unhinged. We’re dealing with complex motivations. There are jealousies. There are power struggles within this household. The members of the household who have power are determined to retain the whip hand, those without power want to assert their claims to power.
We’re dealing with a number of characters whose grip on reality may be tenuous. They might be deluded, or their understanding of the power balance may be faulty. It’s not easy to predict what they’ll do next. They don’t know themselves. And they can’t predict what other members of this human menagerie might do next.
There are obvious echoes of Psycho. Lots of echoes of Psycho.
There’s very little blood and no gore but there’s a lot of creepiness. Taxidermy certainly qualifies as creepy in my book, and in this movie it’s very creepy.
Things get weirder when Daniella turns up. I won’t spoil the movie by saying any more abut her.
Franco Nero’s performance is very odd but it gradually won me over. He is after all playing a young man who is prone to disassociation. His performance slowly becomes more disturbing.
The other players are very good. Erika Blanc is always a welcome sight in a movie like this.
It’s a very tame movie. Censorship in Italy was still very strict in 1966 and even the moments of partial nudity attracted the ire of those moral busybodies. They were also upset by the movie’s perversity and it is definitely a very perverse movie.
Mino Guerrini directed and co-wrote the script. He’s not a big name in Italian genre cinema but he does a fine job here. The black-and-white cinematography is effective.
The Villa Alberti would have made a fine setting for a gothic horror movie. This movie does not belong to that genre but, like Hitchcock’s Psycho, it has some of the feel of gothic horror.
I’m told that Joe D’Amato’s Beyond the Darkness (which I haven’t seen) is a remake, of sorts, of The Third Eye.
The Third Eye is a bit of an oddity but it’s an intriguing oddity and it is one of the more interesting Psycho rip-offs. It’s creepy and it has some effective scares and suspense. Recommended.
Arrow’s Blu-Ray release looks very nice and there are lots of extras. The Gothic Fantastico boxed set is very much worth buying.