Seven Notes in Black (1977)

For a Fulci flick, Seven Notes in Black is strangely subdued, and almost totally without his usual penchant for blood, gore, tits, and ass. But this works to its advantage; Seven Notes in Black is easily the maestro's most character-driven film, and the one that bucks his trend of really bad endings. Jennifer O'Neil plays Virginia Ducci, an elegant interior decorator newlywed to the wealthy Francesco Ducci. When Virginia was a child she witnessed her mother's suicide through a psychic episode, and since, has been plagued by haunting visions of horrible things that may or may not have happened. When she has a vision of a woman being walled up inside her husband's mansion, she decides to knock down the wall, and sure enough, there is a skeleton. Shortly after, her husband is arrested for the murder, and Virginia must piece together the puzzle to save him from being sent away to prison for life. The central mystery here takes a backseat to the character study of Virginia and her relationships to other people. Fulci's heroine is a woman whose life has been defined by an inability to connect with other people, and like the everyman heroes of Argento's early giallos, she plunges herself into danger in an attempt to break with the banality of her everyday life. Yet, I found myself drifting from this one, it was certainly very interesting, but the suspense was very much lacking, at least until the last ten minutes. A good, but not great giallo. Worth watching to kill a couple of hours.