| The Bird With the Crystal Plumage | |
|---|---|
 L'uccello dalle piume di cristallo | |
| Credits | |
| Title | The Bird With the Crystal Plumage |
| Directed by | Dario Argento |
| Written by | Dario Argento; Fredric Brown |
| Produced by | Salvatore Argento |
| Music by | Ennio Morriconne |
| Cinematography | Vittorio Storaro |
| Edited by | Franco Fraticelli |
| Distributed by | Seda Spettacoli |
| General Information | |
| Release date(s) | February 19th, 1970 (Italy) June 12th, 1970 (US) |
| Film Rating | Unrated |
| Running time | 98 min. |
| Country | Italy |
| Language | Italian |
| Budget | $500,000 [1] |
| Gross revenue | ITL 1,650,000,000 [2] |
| Preceded by | — |
| Followed by | — |
The Bird With the Crystal Plumage is an Italian mystery/murder movie of the giallo genre. It was directed by Dario Argento and produced by Seda Spettacoli. It premiered in Italy on February 19th, 1970 and was released in the United States on June 12th. The story is loosely based on the 1949 pulp novel The Screaming Mimi by Fredric Brown. The film stars Tony Musante as Sam Dalmas, an American traveling in Rome who witnesses the murder of a young woman. He soon finds himself targeted by the mysterious black-gloved killer.
Plot[]
Cast[]
| Actor | Role |
|---|---|
| Tony Musante | Sam Dalmas |
| Suzy Kendall | Julia |
| Enrico Maria Salerno | Inspector Morosini |
| Eva Renzi | Monica Ranieri |
| Umberto Raho | Alberto Ranieri |
| Raf Valenti | Professor Carlo Dover |
| Giuseppe Castellano | Monti |
| Mario Adorf | Berto Consalvi |
| Pino Patti | Faiena |
| Gildo Di Marco | Garullo |
| Rosa Toros | 4th victim |
| Omar Bonaro | Police detective |
| Fulvio Mingozzi | Police detective |
| Werner Peters | Antique dealer |
| Karen Valenti | Tina, 5th victim |
| Carla Mancini | Girl watching TV |
| Bruno Erba | Police detective |
| Giovanni Di Benedetto | Professor Rinaldi |
| Reggie Nalder | Needles |
| Annamaria Spogli | Sandra Roversi, 3rd victim |
| Maria Tedeschi | Old woman |
Notes & Trivia[]
- Italian title: L'uccello dalle piume di cristallo.
- The Bird with the Crystal Plumage marks the directorial debut of Italian giallo director Dario Argento.
- Principal filming on The Bird With the Crystal Plumage began on August 25th, 1969 and concluded on October 14th.
- The Bird With the Crystal Plumage was first released to DVD in multi-regional formats on November 16th, 1999 by Magic Lantern/VCI Entertainment. The two-disc Special Edition DVD was released by Blue Underground on October 25th, 2005. The film is also included in the Italian Giallo Collection along with Mario Bava's Blood and Black Lace and Antonio Bido's Watch Me When I Kill. It was released on Blu-ray by Blue Underground on February 24th, 2009.
- The trope of a black-gloved killer was a popular trend in Italian mystery films. One of the more notable examples of this was in Mario Bava's 1960 occult thriller Black Sunday. The attire worn by the murderer is similar to that worn by the killer in Bava's 1964 film, Blood and Black Lace.
- Daria Argento makes a cameo appearance as the hands of the murderer during close-up shots.
- Another adaptation of Fredric Brown's The Screaming Mimi was the 1958 mystery movie Screaming Mimi directed by Gerd Oswald.
- This was one of three films directed by Argento that included an animal in the title. The others are Cat o' Nine Tails and Four Flies on Grey Velvet, both released in 1971.
External Links[]
- The Bird With the Crystal Plumage at AMG
- The Bird With the Crystal Plumage at IMDB
- The Bird with the Crystal Plumage at Wikipedia
- The Bird With the Crystal Plumage at The Terror Trap
- The Bird With the Crystal Plumage at Rotten Tomatoes
- The Bird With the Crystal Plumage at Monsters at Play
- The Bird With the Crystal Plumage at Horror-Movies.ca
- The Bird With the Crystal Plumage at The Video Graveyard
References[]
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