Un Sussurro nel Buio (1976) Frank tosses three pairs of blue Dickies and several paisley handkerchiefs into his duffle; his next assignment was Vieques. Neither the concept of machete-ing his way through endless acres of jungle, nor the vision of rum punch and beaches and pretty Latin girls, stirred him very much. To him it was simply his next assignment. He was as if a cork bobbing on the vast ocean, headed wherever the currents took him. Tom Horn and Junior Bonner know they are going to be shipped off to Iris’ again for a time; they miaow nervously and make figure eights between Frank’s legs as he crosses from the bed to the bookshelf deciding what reading material to bring on the flight. He chooses a dog-eared copy of Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949), which is feathered with pink post-it notes. It is 4 AM. The blankness of his thoughts had kept him sleepless the last few days, for unlike many who cleared their minds and slept soundly, the determined Frank fared much better to concentrate (or, meditate, but Frank didn’t care much for the connotations of that word), on the goal at hand. whether it was to finish writing his next chapter, to rehang the Impala’s muffler, or to strike up a conversation with the mousy little cashier at the Winn-Dixie. But with nothing of consequence on his mind save packing for his trip, Frank had been staying up watching horror films; the idea was that shock and fright, for lack of anything else, were at least things to feel. Unfortunately, the last, Un Sussurro nel Buio or A Whisper in the Dark (Aliprandi 1976) was neither shocking nor frightening. For one of “classic Italian gothic” pieces from the early 1970s, the film is really pretty poor and rife with cliché, bad dialogue and untenable plot points. It’s out on DVD in time for Halloween (27 September on NoShame Films), but don’t rush out. The film centers on a creepy little blonde (Italian?) kid, Martino, and his imaginary friend, Luca. The imaginary friend demands the attention of his whole family. When ignored Luca the Ghost Kid makes it rain or puts frogs in the bathtub or encourages little Martino to push people off window ledges. And, oh yeah. Luca might be the spirit of Martino’s stillborn brother. And Mom feels pretty guilty ‘bout that. That’s your basic movie; just throw in some kinda creepy but repetitive dollies around the family’s estate grounds and behind bookcases and staircase banisters, some gratuitous nudity and Joseph Cotton (Citizen Kane; Welles, 1941) in an extensive cameo as the Professor looking in on Martino. What the hell Cotton was thinking is a moot point. It is more than balanced out by John Phillip Law as Martino’s father—you probably know him best as the angel from Barbarella (Vadim 1968). To boot, not only is the dubbing on Whisper very poor, the subtitles are almost comically disparate from the actual dialogue. If you do watch the film, play a game and try to guess which set of dialogue is sillier. Whisper is liberally influenced by Henry James, The Turn of the Screw (1898) and Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now (1973). And Cotton’s arrival at the mansion is shot decidedly as a rip-off of Father Merrin’s arrival in The Exorcist (Friedkin 1973). The difference is that Roeg’s Venice-set pic is a classic piece of gothic horror, though admittedly not for everyone; it takes the concept of a scare where literally nothing happens to the nth degree. The most horrifying thing on the screen is that Donald Sutherland (MASH; Altman, 1970) and Julie Christie (Doctor Zhivago; Lean 1965) have actual intercourse in the love scene. (For those who remember life before the Internet, this kind of thing in mainstream film was pretty daring until about a year ago.) In any case, without spoiling it, Don’t Look Now is like having the camera filming on the wrong studio lot. We almost see the periphery of the story only. But again, if you need lots of action and hate anticlimax, don’t bother. A Whisper in the Dark takes non-horror horror to a tongue in cheek, cliché level. Better to check out Polanski’s “apartment trilogy”—Repulsion (1965), Rosemary’s Baby (1968) and The Tenant (1976), set in London, NYC and Paris, respectively. Or, for a few cool effects try Guillermo del Toro’s The Devil's Backbone (2001). Of course A Whisper in the Dark, Frank finds is just loud and annoying enough to keep him awake, packing his bags for a flight two days away. An extra pair of bootlaces, the lucky pen that homeless Jerry had given him, and a bottle of Old Spice (a bottle so old it still had the three-masted ship on the label and not the crappy yuppie sailboat) complete his packing. And Frank pauses in the medicine cabinet, eyes on the 10 oz cherry NyQuil.