The Bird with the Crystal Plumage

Infobox Film | name =L'uccello dalle piume di cristallo


image_size = 175
caption =Poster art for Dario Argento's "The Bird with the Crystal Plumage" (1970)
director = Dario Argento
producer = Salvatore Argento
writer =Fredric Brown novel "The Screaming Mimi" (uncredited)
Dario Argento
Bryan Edgar Wallace
starring =Tony Musante
Suzy Kendall
music = Ennio Morricone
cinematography = Vittorio Storaro
editing =
distributor = Titanus
released = February 19, 1970 (Italy)
runtime = 98 min
country = Italy / W. Germany
language = Italian
budget = $500,000 (estimated)
amg_id = 1:5722
imdb_id = 0065143

"L'uccello dalle piume di cristallo", also called "The Bird with the Crystal Plumage", is a "giallo" suspense thriller directed by Dario Argento (his directorial debut) and released in 1970. Written by director Argento, the film is an uncredited adaptation of Fredric Brown's novel "The Screaming Mimi", which had previously been made into a Hollywood film, "Screaming Mimi" (1958), directed by Gerd Oswald. The film was nominated for an Edgar Allan Poe award for best motion picture in 1971. The film was originally cut by 20 seconds for its US release and received a GP rating, though it was later re-classified as a PG. It has since been released in the US uncut.

Plot

Sam Dalmas (Tony Musante) is an American writer currently living in Rome with his model girlfriend Julia (Suzy Kendall). On the night before they are about to return to the US, Sam witnesses the attack of a woman (Eva Renzi) by a mysterious black-gloved assailant dressed in a raincoat. Attempting to reach her, Sam is trapped between two mechanically-operated glass doors and can only watch as the villain makes his escape. The woman, Monica Ranieri, the wife of the gallery’s owner, survives the attack, but the local police confiscate Sam’s passport to stop him leaving the country, because they believe him to be an important witness. Sam is haunted by what he saw that night, feeling sure that some vital clue is evading him, and soon finds that both he and his girlfriend are the killer’s new targets. In an exciting conclusion, Sam chases the mysterious assailant through a darkened building. He is trapped once more, this time pinned to the floor by release of a wall-sized sculpture of wire and metal. Unable to free himself, he becomes the prey of the person he was pursuing -- the attractive, deranged wife of the gallery owner. This climax to the mystery, with strong sado-masochistic elements, has the knife-wielding lady teasing Sam in preparation to stabbing him. She fails, of course, and Sam provides the obligatory wrap-up scene with his girlfriend.

DVD

In the US, the film was later released on DVD by VCI with the restored violence but had problems with a sequence of shots referred to as "the panty removal scene." Later pressings fixed it. It was later when Blue Underground obtained the rights and re-released the film showing it completely fully uncut plus an extra shot of violence previously unseen. It was completely restored in picture and the sound was remixed into both 5.1 audio for both Italian and English, but contained another soundtrack remixed into DTS-ES 6.1 Discrete in English.

External links

*imdb title|id=0065143|title=L'Uccello dalle piume di cristallo
* [http://www.saturn-in-retrograde.com/site/scripts/documents_info.php?categoryID=3&documentID=349 Terrore Italiani: Detective Fiction and the Giallo]