Being Film #20 for Hooptober 2025

After seeing Luigi Bazzoni’s debut film The Possessed earlier for this marathon, I was even more eager to check out The Fifth Cord, his second foray into giallo, particularly as that film straddled the line between dreamlike noir and paranoid Lynchian nightmare more than what we would come to define the genre as. But in the wake of Argento’s Bird With the Crystal Plumage Bazzoni adopts some of the same visual cues and geometric framing that would become trademarks of the movement. He also – just as Argento did in his follow-up The Cat o’ Nine Tails – emphasize the mystery and thriller aspects more than the visceral blood and horror, in the process creating a great star vehicle for his lead and capturing an often overlooked essence of the form: the spiraling madness of a situation intent on sucking you into its design.

Continue reading “Hooptober 12.0 – The Fifth Cord (1971)”