Young Nino is unable to bond with a woman because of an overprotective mother and a housekeeper who has always been in love with him. The situation will precipitate the moment his future wife passes away due to a car accident.
Mino Guerrini (aka James Warren) directs a film somewhere between psycho-thriller and Italian gothic, a film centered on Nino (played by a very young Franco Nero), a boy oppressed by an obsessive mother and a loving, calculating housekeeper.
We will witness the sudden collapse of his feeble mind the moment he sees his fiancée die: he will use his embalming skills to stuff her in order to have her back in his bed.
A sick and twisted story that tends to obfuscate, almost hide (because of the year in which the film was made), what is actually the predominant theme, the culmination of the protagonist's madness: necrophilia.
To the necrophiliac theme and horror scenes, the director in fact preferred to foreground Nino's drama, his suffering and desolation.
The Third Eye enjoys elegant, well-rendered sets and excellent idealization of the characters. The pace is a bit slow at times but the resulting viewing is still enjoyable.
Guerrini's film boasts a fabulous remake, Buio Omega by Joe D'amato, a film in which the director puts a decidedly more macabre and explicit spin on the story.
Review of Lady of sorrow
