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Seven Deaths in the Cat's Eye
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray B - United Kingdom - 88 Films Review written by and copyright: Eric Cotenas (12th June 2025). |
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The Film
 Expelled from Catholic school before the end of the term, young Corringa MacGrieff (La Belle Noiseuse's Jane Birkin,) boards a train for Scotland and Dragonstone, the ancestral home of her aunt Mary (Borsalino's Françoise Christophe,) where her mother Alicia (The Night Child's Dana Ghia,) is spending the holidays. Corringa interrupts a chilly conversation between the two sisters over the money Mary needs to hold onto the castle, and her mother is murdered soon after. Although Mary's lover Dr. Franz (The Beast Must Die's Anton Diffring,) - psychiatrist to her mad son James (Fellini Satyricon's Hiram Keller,) - rules heart failure as her cause of death, the locals fear that subsequent throat-slashing murders among the castle's inhabitants are the result of the family legend: when a MacGrieff kills another MacGrieff, the victim turns into a vampire. The local police inspector (Birkin's partner Serge Gainsbourg), however, suspects a human culprit with more mundane motives. Suspects and potential victims include Franz's bisexual lover Suzanne (Funny Games' Doris Kunstmann,) who turns her attempts at seduction for profit from James to heiress Corringa, new priest Father Robertson (City of the Living Dead's Venantino Venantini,), groundskeeper Angus (Blood and Black Lace's Luciano Pigozzi,), faithful servants Campbell (Konrad Georg) and his wife (Bianca Doria) as well as James' pet orangutan which has the run of the castle corridors. Shot in the same castle exteriors as Mario Bava's Black Sunday and Ottavio Scotti interior sets recycled from The Whip and the Body and director Antonio Margheriti's earlier The Virgin of Nuremberg, Seven Deaths in the Cat's Eye is essentially a sexed-up, Gothic-tinged version of Margheriti's giallo Naked You Die – complete with a razor-slashing twist on the opening of that film involving the murder of an unidentified first victim whose identity is crucial to the climax – with the 1920s setting of Margheriti's The Unnaturals, ludicrous Scottish accents, monotonous throat slashings – along with a scene of a razor being used to pry up a door latch that anticipates a similar suspenseful bit in Dario Argento's Suspiria – and Riz Ortolani (Cannibal Holocaust) cues recycled from The Virgin Of Nuremberg and Castle of Blood. While the central mystery is not that intriguing, the film is nevertheless entertaining and sports some gorgeous sets and Techniscope cinematography by Carlo Carlini (Autopsy) in contrast to other Margheriti films shot by Riccardo Pallotini who often employed a TV-style three camera setup. The camera glides over Victorian furnishing lit by Tiffany oil lamps and into shadows for some sensuous transitions mimicking the sleek movements of the titular cat who is adorable yet still manages to be more sinister than the man-in-a-suit orangutan which is presumably a borrowing from Poe that is as much a red herring as some of the supporting cast. Argento-esque title aside, the film is as far as genre-hopping jobbing director Margheriti ventured into the giallo genre, helming sci-fi, action, and war films through the rest of the seventies and eighties – with a few asides into horror like Cannibal Apocalypse and Alien from the Deep – including his biggest hit Yor: The Hunter from the Future, the theatrical recut of a four hour Italian/Turkish miniseries that Columbia Pictures distributed widely in its territories including the United States. 
Video
Unreleased theatrically in the U.S. and the U.K., Seven Deaths in the Cat's Eye turned up on VHS tape stateside from Prism Entertainment with a nicely letterboxed title sequence followed by a dark and horrendously-cropped transfer (a French VHS release featured a SECAM letterboxed transfer). Blue Underground's 2005 DVD rectified things with a bright and colorful anamorphic widescreen transfer revealing some fine scope compositions as well as one horrendously-grainy shot which was optically-enlarged to vary the coverage of scene but otherwise making sense of the film's blocking which was impossible in the cropped version. Italian soundtrack label Dagored put out some beautiful CD remasters of Italian genre soundtracks but their short-lived DVD line was horrific including a 2007 DVD featuring a smeary, tape-sourced non-anamorphic transfer framed at 2.05:1 but missing substantial information from the sides of the frame with so-so English subtitles for the Italian track and more than ten minutes of footage missing. 88 Films' first Blu-ray from 2016 came from a "2K restoration of the original camera negative" which more information on the right side of the frame and a sliver more on the left but had a less-satisfactory grading job with some shots featuring a heavy blue tint that might have been intended to be moody but was often just murky. This master was also used on Twilight Time's 2021 Blu-ray from the label's brief resurgence on the mass market that had a shockingly low bitrate with the feature and menus taking up only 13GB of a 25GB single-layer Blu-ray disc. 88 Films' second 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 2.34:1 widescreen Blu-ray comes from the same problematic 2K restoration but they have done some re-grading to the image which looks like a middle-ground between the Blue Underground and first 88 Films disc brightness levels with a bit more shadow detail visible while colors are also a bit in-between with some of the red velvet looking burgundy and the blood looking more like paint while there are also some sequences where characters are lit in a greenish-blue gel. The brighter presentation does reveal some neat production design details like a half-woman/half-cat drawing in James' studio, some more of the additions to the existing sets, as well as making more obvious that the exterior of the family tomb is on a sound stage. This is all of a bit of a compromise what with the grading being baked in to the 2K restoration but is otherwise the superior high definition viewing option unless a label actually forks out for a new scan. The onscreen English title has always been "Seven Deaths in the Cats Eyes" plural without the possessive apostrophe but has for the most part been referred to in English as Seven Deaths in the Cat's Eye singular, including the U.S. tape release, and the U.S. DVD and U.K. Blu-rays (only Twilight Time's Blu-ray cover uses the title as it appears onscreen). 
Audio
The disc includes both English and Italian LPCM 2.0 mono mixes. While the film was acted in English, everyone is post-dubbed by other actors on both tracks. The Scottish accents of some of the supporting characters are laughable on the English track but it is the language spoken on the set and is still entertaining. Do note that neither Birkin nor Keller dub themselves. Dialogue, music, and sound effects are always clear and there is little in the way of distracting hiss in the silent moments. Optional English subtitles are included for the Italian track. 
Extras
The film is accompanied by two commentary tracks. The first is the audio commentary by film historian Troy Howarth from 2016 in which he initiates a running theme throughout this commentary in describing the film as Margheriti's last Gothic film following his Castle of Blood remake Web of the Spider, adding some "trendy gore" but still being "at odds" with the giallo genre of the seventies. He also discusses the "eccentric" casting choices including Birkin, Gainsbourg, and Keller as well as the contributions of Ortolani and Carlini and the dubbing artists heard on the English track. We do not have the earlier 88 Films disc so we do not know if the revisions inserted into this commentary track were part of that track or done for this new edition. New to this release is an audio commentary by film historians Nathaniel Thompson and Eugenio Ercolani who discuss the film in the context of Margheriti's "bizarre" seventies output compared to his more consistent genre-hopping of the sixties and his more "concise" eighties bigger budget productions. They also note how little Margheriti followed the big trends of the seventies including the giallo and the poliziotteschi – pointing out that Death Rage and The Squeeze are mafia and heist films – with the exception of his later war films and Indiana Jones-esque adventure films. They also note that Margheriti's films in general were rather light and free of malice compared despite the dark tone of seventies Italy reflected in the films of his contemporaries. They also discuss the casting – noting that although Venantini was primarily a genre character actor in Italian films, he was very popular in France and his credits there were more diverse – choices and Thompson is a bit harder on the visual style of this film, although perhaps switching back from three-camera to a single camera did lead to a more stilted film language. Ercolani reveals that the film's shooting title was "Corringa" and the non-existent "Peter Bryan" credited with the novel turns up in the film's paperwork as a French co-production quota credit originally for the screenplay (one wonders if Bryan is indeed credited with scripting or scenario in the French credits).  New to this release is "A Man for All Seasons" (31:29), an interview with actor/filmmaker Alessandro Perrella (The Girl in Room 2A). The piece is preceded by introductory text noting that the Mussolini-founded Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografica (C.S.C.) targeted elite students, barring access to students who did not have a college degree and that until later in the 1970s, the government offered financial incentives to hiring at least C.S.C. actors and/or crew – note the number of credits in Italian genre films for Carla Mancini – and that productions found a loophole of paying graduates a nominal fee to use their name even if there was no actual role or position for them, and that Perrella was one such person. Perrella reveals that he lied about having a degree to get into the school and a faculty member tried to expose him but was interrupted by the 1968 occupation of the school that Perrella lead. During this period, commissioner and filmmaker Antonio Pietrangeli went off to direct Come, quando, perché and was killed in an accident on location whereupon Roberto Rosselini was appointed in the interim and was so amused by Perrella's scheming that he hired him as an assistant. He was payed 100,000 lire for other films to use his name and C.S.C. credit, and on some of those he worked a day or so as a runner but learned various aspects of the business to the point where he had advisory positions and secured funding for films. He actually did work on Seven Deaths in the Cat's Eye as an extra but only recalls Margheriti's genial attitude; however, he has since been making documentaries and has been researching him one on Italian special effects artist. "The More You Hear, The More You Love" (26:30), an interview with Ortolani's stepson Enrico Ortolani Sternini who recalls that his mother singer Katina Ranieri met Ortolani while working in the United States but that they found that they needed space from one another after a few years with Ranieri handling her husband's copyright and business issues once she retired and only did special engagements (along with some uncredited song lyric writing). Sternini also discusses the popularity of certain Ortolani soundtracks and their more contemporary CD reissues. "Serge & Jane on the Parnassus" (7:28) is a 2025 program about the resting place of Jane Birkin and Serge Gainsbourg, written and presented by Aurelia Ca Zorzi, commissioned by Ercolani for this release. "Seven Deaths in a Son's Eye" (11:21) is an interview with Margheriti's filmmaker son Edoardo Margheriti (Black Cobra 2) who recalls being introduced to Mario Bava by his father and that they were good friends despite industry press that presented them as professional rivals as well as how his father ended up being recommended to direct films by their original directors including Sergio Corbucci for Castle of Blood and Bava on Naked You Die. "Mr. Margheriti Against Normality" (20:20), a is a visual essay by film historian Mike Foster that also focuses on Margheriti's bizarre seventies and early eighties filmography that included the Disney clone Mr. Superinvisible, the Shaw Brothers martial arts western co-production The Stranger and the Gunfighter, the blaxploitation western Take a Hard Ride, Mr. Hercules Against Karate in which Hercules does not appear but there is some karate fighting, the infamous Yor, and the Joey Travolta vehicle Car Crash. "Dawson's Eyes" (11:13) is a visual essay by film historian Pier Maria Bocchi who also focuses on Margheriti's seventies period as a "break" between his "funeral" for Gothic horror Seven Deaths in the Cat's Eye and the his concessions to the place of the genre in the early eighties with Cannibal Apocalypse. The disc also includes the English export trailer (3:23), the Italian theatrical trailer (3:28), and the Italian opening/end credits (4:15). 
Packaging
Not provided for review are the limited edition rigid slipcase designed by Graham Humphreys, the 40-page perfect-bound book with new writing on the film by Francesco Massaccesi and Tim Murray, or the art card.
Overall
Antonio Margheriti's Seven Deaths in the Cat's Eye falls somewhere between a Golden Age Italian horror throwback and a seventies giallo by a director who deliberately went against trends and sometimes managed to find wider distribution than his genre contemporaries with films of varying quality.
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