Did you people see the same film I saw?

I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

Watching it is like watching the spectacle of a class clown at their best: you laugh at their jokes, instigate their defiance, and "ooooh" when they get in trouble.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Not the most shocking, nor the most bloody, nor the most stylish of giallo, but it's likable enough and is just that little bit different. Much helped by a very decent performance from Corrado Pani as the cigar chomping guy who seeks to unravel one of the most complicated of tales. Far too many characters and just a few too many red herrings and yet it does keep going and if Paola Tedesco as the female lead does not match the performance of Pani, this may be the fault of the dubbers. Not awash with killings, what there are, are very good. The first one is a bit pedestrian but the fantastic bath scene killing and the one backstage with all the costume are worth the admission price and if the ending is a bit abrupt, it is conclusive and brought a smile to my face. Effective score.

Purely by coincidence, I found an old & dusty videotape in the horror closet of an acquaintance of mine and the cover displayed the bizarre title (in Dutch) "Revenge of the Cat". I had to perform a search on the actors' names in order to find out that it actually was "Watch me when I Kill" (a.k.a. "The Cat's Victims", a.k.a "The Cat with the Jade Eyes") and initially that was a pleasant surprise, since this Italian late 70's giallo has been on my purchase list for quite some time now! After seeing it, I'm even more glad that I didn't spend money on a fancy DVD-version, as it is quite a disappointing and overly confusing horror effort. Surely not the worst film of its kind, but pretty bleak compared to the works of Sergio Martino or, of course, Dario Argento. The main problem with Antonio Bido's film is that it makes absolutely no attempts to involve the viewer in the search for the maniacal killer. Someone, who stays off screen all the time and deforms his voice whenever he leaves messages to his next victims, is seemly randomly killing people and it nearly takes half of the movie before we get informed that all the victims sat in the same jury committee during a lawsuit against a criminal who recently escaped from prison. That still doesn't reveal the killer's identity, but at least you can guess along from this point. Due to the lack of background during the beginning, "Watch me when I Kill" often feels a bit slow and dull. There's not much atmosphere and ever fewer tension, and the private detective character isn't the least bit amiable. The murders, on the other hand, are lusciously gore, with a close-up slit throat, a woman suffocated in a dish of food and the must brutal strangulation I ever saw. The cinematography sadly is too dark, although that might have been due to poor videotape quality, but the score is terrific (probably the best thing about the entire film) and the climax is fairly surprising.

I rented this movie and was sadly disappointed. First the print of the DVD was very bad. Okay, so that's not the filmmaker's fault. Fine. Next, the characters were boring and not interesting at all! Usually in a giallo, there are sleazy and/or interesting people. Not here. Secondly, the murders were boring and lacked style. The one thing I will say is that perhaps if I saw a better print of the movie I would have had a better experience. Also, the "raspy voice" of the killer in the beginning was effective. And the whole revelation was pretty plausible for a giallo. Just wait for Blue Underground or someone to put out a better copy.

(aka: WATCH ME WHEN I KILL) Much better than Antonio Bido's other giallo, SOLAMENTE NERO (THE BLOOD STAINED SHADOW) Pharmacist in Rome is murdered. A woman who saw the killer leave is then stalked by the killer. Her boyfriend tries to find out why, and stop him. Three more murders follow. They are murdered because they are all tied to the betrayal of a Jewish family to the nazis during WWII.The killings are gruesome but not particularly bloody. In fact Bido goes out of his way to tone down the blood and not look too Argento-ish, imo. This is an excellent non-Argento giallo, one of the best of the 1970s. The plot flows pretty smoothly and it has an element of mystery and surprise at who the killer is. That's a nice touch considering that many Italian giallos reveal too many clues ahead of time, making the killer's identity a foregone conclusion. The music's ok, too. The only big negative is at the very end where the film wraps itself up way too fast, not leaving much for the viewer after the climax takes place. The VCI DVD print is kinda grainy and scratchy, not up to the usual standards Anchor Bay and Synapse have with their releases. Not many extras other than a bio of Bido along with some trailers to some other VCI DVD releases. I'll give it a 6 out of 10 for being better than a lot of the other films of the giallo genre...