Giallo #9: "All the Colors of the Dark" (1972)

After a beautiful, quiet opening shot over the titles, Sergio Martino's "All the Colors of the Dark" begins with a lurid, batty dream sequence, one of many tormenting Jane Harrison, a mourning, mentally fragile young wife who just recently lost her unborn child in a car accident and witnessed her mother being murdered as a child.
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Talk about the post-traumatic double-whammy, as Jane, surrounded by men (her husband, her psychiatrist), fears that a blue-eyed man from her nightmares is out to get her.
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No doubt the film is another entry into the 'woman-in-peril' sub-genre of giallo - a pretty good one at that. Jane's overwhelming psychological distress allows her neighbors to exploit her in ways that mirror Ruth Gordon, especially once she finds herself within the grasps of a satanic cult.
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Shooting in high-rises and apartment buildings, the film is certainly influenced a great deal by Roman Polanski's urban paranoia as seen in the aforementioned "Rosemary's Baby" and "Repulsion". The film doesn't really approach that level of artistry - the combination of acute psychoanalysis and genuine horror - but "All the Colors the Dark" is just garish, stylish enough to win us over. [B-]