Classic Horrors Club

As the camera floats around the bedroom, we hear moaning and see a generous splatter of blood against the wall; then a bloody straight razor and clothing on the floor. We then cut to a trunk tumbling down the dark stairs to the cellar. When it hits the bottom, a body falls out. A plump blonde cat wanders down after it, but it’s not its mewing we hear, it’s the squeaking of rats as they nibble on the body until there’s not much left except for a skeleton dotted with patches of torn skin.

 The cat will witness other murders as Seven Deaths in the Cat’s Eyes (1973) unfolds. There’s nothing that surpasses, or even matches, the opening, but the rest of the movie doesn’t fall too far from the high. When it’s constantly underfoot, Lady Mary MacGrieff (Francoise Christophe) has the cat locked in the mausoleum where her sister, Lady Alicia (Dana Ghia) has just been buried. Angus (Luciano Pigozzi) lets it out and it visits Corringa (Jane Birkin) as she sleeps, taking a little love bite out of her neck.

Corringa, Lady Alicia’s beautiful daughter, has come for a visit before her aunt, Lady Mary, sells the estate that has become too expensive for the family to maintain. That’s when bodies start dropping like flies. After Lady Alicia is smothered in bed, three men and a woman have their throats slashed, giallo-style. The prime suspect is James (Hiram Keller), Lady Mary’s beautiful son, who’s presumed to be insane and keeps mostly to himself in his bedroom.

I say “mostly” because he keeps in a cage a gorilla that he purchased from the circus. (No, you weren’t hallucinating when you thought you saw a gorilla staring out the window when Corringa arrives.) James claims that it obeys him, but it keeps getting out and might be responsible for the murders… except I don’t think it could wield a straight razor. Then, when he gets all romantic with his cousin, he’s not alone in his room, if you know what I mean. 

Seven Deaths in the Cat’s Eyes is a stew with many trapping of the gothic horror genre as its ingredients, and it’s delicious! If you think one thing is missing, the supernatural, I’ll tell you there’s also the family legend that if a cat jumps on a coffin, the deceased will rise as a vampire. Hence, Corringa’s nightmares about the creatures of the night and the subsequent discovery that her mother’s coffin is empty. Maybe the killer is a toothless vampire that resorts to razors instead of fangs.

Although he leaned more heavily into sci-fi and action, director Antonio Margheriti (aka Anthony M. Dawson) knewhis way around a creepy setting; he made Horror Castle (1963), Castle of Blood (1964), and The Long Hair of Death (1964), all coincidentally starring Barbara Steele. Here, he juggles the disparate elements without dropping the ball. Calling it one of the most coherent Euro-horror films I’ve seen might not be much praise, but it’s true… and even better than that.