All the Colours of the Dark

After being involved in a car accident in which she lost her unborn child Jane (Edwige Fenech) has been plagued by exceptionally vivid nightmares in which she is stalked by a man with piercing blue eyes (Ivan Rassimov).

Her partner Richard (George Hilton) – who was driving the car when the accident occurred – and sister Barbara (Susan Scott) offer alternative therapies. Barbara favours a psychological cure and arranges for Jane to see Dr Burton while Richard dismisses "shrinks" and offers Jane pills instead. Barbara, in turn, reminds Richard that he is only a sales rep for a pharmaceutical company and not a qualified professional.

Jane visits Dr Burton (George Rigaud) anyway and, on her way home, encounters the BEM in the street. Panicked by this, Jane bumps into her new neighbour, Mary (Marina Malfatti) who invites her in for a cup of tea and a chat. Jane, however, wants to cook a nice dinner for Richard and so is reluctant to stay too long, though does agree to meet up with Mary the next morning.

Back in her apartment Jane receives a phone call from a lawyer, Clay (Luciano Pigozzi) who wants her to come for a meeting tomorrow afternoon. Then, glancing outside, she thinks she sees the BEM. Cautiously venturing into the stairway, Jane then finds herself locked out, with someone approaching… Richard emerges from the elevator just in time though it then turns out that the stranger is not the blue eyed man but merely another with the same style of raincoat, here visiting his girlfriend.

The next day Jane confides her worries to Mary, who proposes an alternative, somewhat unorthodox cure: that Jane should visit a sabbat. In spite of hitherto not knowing what a sabbat is – "it's a certain kind of black magic ritual" explains Mary, helpfully – Jane is eager to try any cure by now and agrees to meet up with Mary once more, after her visit to the lawyers.

At the lawyers, Jane doesn't get very far. The BEM is there, waiting, and attacks with an axe, although Jane escapes without injury.

At the sabbat, Jane is disturbed by the coven leader's sacrificing a goat though nevertheless participates in drinking its blood – "drink this and you will be free" – and in the orgy that follows.

Seamlessly, the orgy shifts to Jane at home, in bed with Richard:

Darling, no more bad dreams.
Everything's back to normal, isn't it Jane?
Yes, but I feel strange. I don't feel real

It seems that Mary's cure has worked, after a fashion…

The next day they go out for lunch. Remembering he has to talk to a client, Richard goes to make a phone call. Then Jane notices the blue eyed man. She goes to find Richard, but he has disappeared.

Jane hails a taxi and arrives home without further incident, only to notice a book about black magic on the table.

Richard shows up, offering a semi-convincing explanation for his disappearance. The phone had an out of order sign – as Jane herself saw – and so he had to go find another one.

Unsure of whether she can now trust Richard, Jane goes to Mary and the cult for advice. Then it transpires that Mary had her own motives for bringing Jane into the cult: With Jane as a replacement she is free to leave. Leaving the cult, however, seems to entail dying, as Jane is forced to hold the sacrificial knife as Mary walks onto it.

Jane awakens in the fields outside the cultists manor. The blue eyed man appears, informs her that she is theirs now and takes her inside to the cult leader, who shows her Mary's body. Jane flees the scene, but is soon caught and chloroformed.

Waking up in a hospital bed, Jane wonders whether it was real or just a dream. Then she discovers that the cult mark has been tattooed on her arm. Worse is to follow when she tries to see Mary. The apartment has a new owner, who has never heard of Mary…

This 1972 entry from the team responsible for Next! blends typical gialli themes with more overtly horrific material – particularly Rosemary's Baby – to impressive overall effect.

The screenplay, co-authored by Ernesto Gastaldi and Sauro Scavolini from a story by Santiago Moncada, provides a solid starting point, keeping one guessing as to the nature of the conspiracy throughout and giving director Sergio Martino and his all-star cast plenty to work with.

Martino handles the suspense and action scenes as well as one would expect, whilst the assorted nightmarish scenes afford him and his team the chance to experiment with bizarre angles, kaleidoscopic lenses and fractured edits.

Hilton plays Richard with just the right level of creepiness – not enough to make him an obvious villain, but enough to induce more uncertainty than in, say, The Case of the Bloody Iris, especially when he and the bitchy Scott are discussing Jane's condition and apportioning blame to each other.

Rassimov, all but unrecognisable behind the blue contacts, has an inherently less interesting role, though never fails to impart the necessary aura of menace whenever he appears.

Above all, however, the film belongs to Fenech. Though cast first and foremost because she was the girlfriend of co-producer Luciano Martino (brother of Sergio) and could always be relied upon to get her kit off (though I'm sure many fans will find the wet T-shirt earlier on just as enjoyable as the assorted black mass orgies) her dramatic abilities really shine through on this occasion as the increasingly paranoid and unstable Jane.

Bruno Nicolai's score is again a plus. Referencing Rosemary's Baby early on with a lullaby theme, he elsewhere offers easy listening, suspenseful giallo and cod-psychedelic orgy themes more reminiscent of his work for Jesus Franco (Eugenie: The Story of Her Journey into Perversion). In other words, whatever the scene and mood to be set, Nicolai nails it.

Not that All the Colors of the Dark is perfect.

The plot twists involving the coven don't completely convince. It's just too convenient, for instance, that Jane can attend a sabbat that very afternoon, rather than needing to wait for a night when the stars are right.

Martino also doesn't play fair with the viewer on at least on occasion: Whereas the attentive or second time viewer can notice the vital detail Daly doesn't in Argento's Deep Red, here one of the characters mentions a key signifier that we are never afforded the opportunity to see.

Some of the supporting charaters sound as though they have come straight from the Eliza Doolittle school of Mockney elocution. It's a minor point, but also one that breaks the convincing illusion of Londonicity fostered elsewhere.

Still, these are minor quibbles with what otherwise ranks as an enjoyable and effective blend of giallo and horror film that sees everyone concerned – and Fenech above all – at their very best.

There isn't a great deal to be said about this Region 2 DVD of All the Colours of the Dark from German company Marketing Film. The 2.35:1 widescreen picture is pretty good and the Dolby mono English language track fine, if inevitably less impressive than the stereo and 5.1 German language tracks, whilst the utility of extras – an extensive trailer gallery including the film along with Martino's spaghetti western Mannaja and a host of other, less interesting releases, talent profiles and stills gallery – to non-German speaking audiences is obviously limited.

This said, it really doesn't matter. Unless, of course, the likes of Shriek Show or Blue Underground decides to do an English language release with all the extras. But for now the film is enough…