Spooptober Day 13: Seven Notes in Black

Starring: Jennifer O'Neill, Gabriele Ferzetti, and Marc Porel
Written by: Lucio Fulci, Roberto Gianviti, and Dardano Sacchetti
Directed by: Lucio Fulci

My international readers are thinking "ah yes, this is when the list gets fun." I'm gonna be honest, I wanted to ease you guys into the waters of Spooptober. I wanted to cover movies that are more accessible to normal people. If you've stayed with me this long, allow me to take you even further.

I'm sure you have all seen that clip on YouTube of a zombie fighting a shark. If you haven't, here is it.

Yes, Zombi 2 is a great movie, but I'm not here to talk about that. The director of Zombi 2 (or Zombie, if you're Amerifat) was Lucio Fulci. He made a lot of gialli (Italian murder mystery films that eventually became nonsensical films dripping with style) and one of those fantastic films is called Seven Notes in Black.

Also known as The Psychic (again, if you're an Amerifat), Seven Notes in Black tells the story of a woman with psychic abilities. One day, while driving through a tunnel, she hears a song. You might have heard this song in Kill Bill and that's because Tarantino lifted it from Seven Notes in Black.

She then gets visions of a hole in a wall, a magazine on a table, and a girl being sealed in the wall. Eventually, she even sees the killer's face. She sets out to find out who this woman is but slowly realizes the killer is still out there and she may be their next victim.

Seven Notes in Black feels like a sweater that you pull a thread and it begins to unravel. The kills are nowhere near as memorable as something like Bay of Blood (Twitch of the Death Nerve) but the film definitely rests in a comfy spot before gialli became about style over substance and has a beautiful balance of both. This is a film I highly recommend to any lover of horror.