The best of Argento's non-supernatural mysteries, this frequently spins off from its Blow-Up-style murder investigation with intimations of magical strangeness.
Composer Hemmings wanders into a Rome flat where a murder has just taken place and glimpses a clue which bothers him for the rest of the film as further, extremely grotesque murders take place. The plot is complicated and takes Hemmings and winning heroine Nicolodi back to a dilapidated infants' school which seems to specialise in junior psychopaths, while the bravura murder scenes encourage the musical accompaniment to go into overdrive. High style horror with occasional black wit.
