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The Bird With the Crystal Plumage (2-Disc Special Edition) | 
| Director: Dario Argento
Actors: Dario Argento, Mario Adorf, Suzy Kendall, Carla Mancini, Fulvio Mingozzi
Studio: Blue Underground
Category: DVD
List Price: CDN$ 39.99
Buy New: CDN$ 14.93
You Save: CDN$ 25.06 (63%)
New (17) Used (3) from CDN$ 14.93
Rating:  21 reviews
Sales Rank: 15091
Format: Dolby, Dts Surround Sound, Ntsc, Original Recording Remastered, Special Edition, Subtitled, Widescreen
Languages: English (Original Language), Italian (Original Language), English (Subtitled)
Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.3
Dimensions (in): 7.4 x 5.4 x 0.7
MPN: 2008
UPC: 827058200899
EAN: 0827058200899
ASIN: B000B64U04
Theatrical Release Date: June 12, 1970
Release Date: November 1, 2005
Availability: Usually ships within 1 - 2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand new Item, factory Sealed. Buy direct from the U.S. and save! We only ship airmail to Canada (7-15 days).Caiman, les prix qu'on aime! Tous nos produits sont neufs. Envoi par avion des Etats-Unis
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From Amazon.com
Sam Dalmas (Tony Musante) is an American reporter living in Rome who witnesses what appears to be a murder. Trapped by a glass wall, he can't intervene, but does manage to scare off the killer. Wounded, the victim survives, and Dalmas's curiosity drives him to look further into the story, but he soon finds himself and his girlfriend in jeopardy and stalked by the would-be murderer. Director Dario Argento's debut film is a remarkable work, more restrained than many of his later films. Based on an obscure l950s pulp novel, IBird/I draws heavily on Hitchcock, as well as on American novelists such as Dashiell Hammett and Cornell Woolrich. At the same time, its execution makes it a highly original, inventive, and fast-paced film that plays with the conventions of the thriller genre. As was often the case with Hitchcock's work, Dalmas is a spectator to the original crime, reflecting the voyeuristic role of the film audience. He's an ordinary guy who unravels the circumstances of the crime until he comes across the most unlikely scenario, a device also reminiscent of Hitchcock. The score, editing, and camera work, however, give the film a distinctly Italian stamp, and established Argento as a stylish, innovative director to watch. The scene in which Dalmas is chased through the streets by a gun-toting assassin, in particular, is a little gem of suspense. Modern-day thrillers should hope to live up to this film's intelligence, energy, and intricate plot twists. I--Jerry Renshaw/I
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| Customer Reviews: Read 16 more reviews...
A brillant debut!!! December 25, 2003
Yannick Villeneuve-Monast (canada)
I saw this movie after seeing many other films from the master of horror Dario Argento and I was a little scared about this one but surprisingly I found it very interesting for a first picture from a new director. The cold colors, the calculating plot and suspense keep you into a nail bitting tension from the start to the end. The only bad thing from the movie is probably the english traduction but this is very often from foreign motion pictures. It`s a must for the fans of Dario but also a great thriller for the others.
 His first and arguably one of his best December 12, 2003
Jeffrey Leach (Omaha, NE USA)
I really couldn't tell you why I have yet to watch every film in Dario Argento's filmography. A few years ago it was easy to claim ignorance of many of this Italian director's important works because it was often so difficult to find any of them in an uncut form. Fortunately, DVD arrived on the scene and salivating film fans with dollars to spend prodded numerous companies to start churning out any movie they could get their hands on to satiate the masses. It wasn't too long before practically every Argento film arrived on store shelves, with many of these releases being the uncut, unrated editions. Even Troma, the flagship of flaccid filmmaking, released a so-so version of Argento's The Stendhal Syndrome. People outside of the world of Italian horror cinema have most likely never heard of Dario Argento, unfortunately. These days, more people are familiar with the director's beautiful daughter Asia than with the horror maestro himself. What a shame. Argento's films, at least the ones I have seen, are masterpieces of style injected with truly cringe inducing gore. And to think it all started in earnest with this engaging Hitchcockian thriller, The Bird With the Crystal Plumage. Argento and his fans never looked back, but this is an apt starting point for those unfamiliar with this director's work.pAn American reporter staying in Rome witnesses a truly shattering event one evening when he sees a gruesome assault takes place inside of an art gallery. Barred from interfering with the proceedings due to huge sliding glass doors, Sam Dalmas can only look on with horror as two figures, one clad entirely in black and the other a woman, struggle with each other over a very shiny knife. The person in black flees the scene of the crime, leaving behind the hapless woman with a knife wound to the abdomen. When Dalmas does his duty by calling in the police, his story leads the officers to cast a doubtful eye on the concerned American. The police insist that Sam stay in Rome until the investigation turns up some clues, much to the consternation of Dalmas and his pretty girlfriend Julia. It seems that Sam was planning to leave Rome, but all bets are off as more murders occur that the police suspect are linked to the crime seen by Dalmas. Moreover, Julia and Sam start receiving grim phone calls from an unknown person who almost certainly is the figure behind these crimes. Our hero is in a real fix, with his only supporters being his woman and a friend who works at a museum. At least the cops start to come over to his side as the bodies pile up, especially once they listen to those eerie phone calls. A unique sound in the background of one of these calls provides the break Dalmas needs to identify the killer he saw on that fateful night. The conclusion has more twists and turns than a cyclone. pThe Bird With the Crystal Plumage helped inaugurate the era of the Italian giallo (Italian for yellow), so named because in Italy cheap paperback crime novels came with yellow covers. These are the films with the anonymous, black-gloved killers toting gruesome looking knives while stalking their mostly female prey. The crimes are often seen from the point of view of the killer, giving the audience the impression that they are part of the heinous murders. Argento plays the giallo for all its worth here, matching this disturbing technique with a great score by the inestimable Ennio Morricone and camera work rarely seen in the horror genre. The cinematography here is simply divine, with the director including a shot from the point of view of a man falling from a tall building and an ultra cool scene where the camera points at a lighted doorway from inside a darkened room. All these elements combine to make this film a taut thriller of enormously entertaining dimensions. Moreover, of the few Argento films I have seen to date, The Bird With the Crystal Plumage contains one of his most coherent plotlines.pGorehounds might find themselves a bit disappointed with the lack of the trademark Argento gore (no sharp corners to bash a head against here!) in this movie, but the stellar camera work, truly creepy scenes of murder and mayhem, and the strong performances from Tony Musante as Sam Dalmas and Suzy Kendall in the Julia role more than make up for the 'PG' rating. Still, that rating made me wonder a bit about what the people at the MPAA were thinking when they viewed this picture. There is upsetting violence here, along with some truly disturbing scenes that hint at where Argento would go in the future. The way the killer caresses those weird looking blades (one of which, I am almost certain, appeared in a later Argento film called Deep Red) and the participatory effect the audience feels during the killings makes you wonder how this movie got off with such a mundane rating. pThe DVD version of The Bird With the Crystal Plumage is strictly bare bones: you get the film and a trailer, which is good considering its relative obscurity but could have been better. As others have said, the audio is quite muzzy at times and the picture quality isn't anything to write home to mother about. After viewing this picture and a couple of other Argento films, I must say I really enjoy how these movies mess with your mind. Just when you think you know what's going on, good old Dario throws another curveball. He does this in many of his films, but he does it here for the first time. What a joy it is to watch it today!
 Where it all began... October 19, 2002
Bateman (Rome, Italy)
Work number one by Dario Argento, this movie is also referred to as the original matrix to the Italian Giallo Movies. Check out the reason why. Excellent plot, good acting, sensational atmosphere, black gloves, hats and raincoats, knives, razors, screaming good-looking girls, sex traumas, violence, gore, and that flash, burnt in the protagonist's memory, which is the key to the solution (and what a solution!) to the entire plot. This is enough to recommend you the purchase of a DVD which, unfortunately, is quite disappointing. The video format is partly disturbed, the audio is unbelievably in mono and no extras are available rather than the theatrical trailer and (good choice) the original soundtrack by Ennio Morricone. But we're talking about a masterpiece, and I suggest this purchase anyway.
Buon giorno, Mr. Hitchcock. October 16, 2002
*The Bird with the Crystal Plumage* is cult-fave Dario Argento's first movie. Horror fans have complained that *Bird* is too tame for their bloody taste; that it's for "completists" only. (Meaning, Argento fans should have it only to complete their collection, and others need not bother.) They're right, in a sense: we certainly don't swim through rivers of blood and gobbets of gore as we will later in Argento's *Deep Red* and *Suspiria*. This 1969 film explicitly tips its hat to *Psycho* -- and the Hitchcock oeuvre, generally -- without straying too far beyond the parameters of graphic violence that had been set by the earlier film. Hitchcock devotees will be familiar with the type of protagonist presented here: an American in Rome who becomes a witness to a murder, finds himself under a cloud of suspicion, is hunted by the real killer, starts an investigation of his own . . . you know the drill. (Tony Musante's inept performance is good for some chuckles. Though to be fair, he's Olivier compared to the amateurs Argento tends to cast in his films.) In any case, there's more to any movie than just blood guts, all you horror fans out there. This movie has about 6 or 7 set-pieces -- Musante witnessing the crime while trapped within glass partitions like a bug in a jar; a chase through a graveyard for Rome's public buses; our hero getting literally pressed down by a collapsed sculpture that has spikes; the surprising revelations at the end; and especially the cloaked killer's attempt to carve a hole through a door using his murderous knife, in order to get at the hero's girlfriend -- ALL of which are worthy of the deepest admiration.
Pretty good for a 33 year old movie September 8, 2002
David F. Nolan (Tucson, AZ United States)
I gave this 3 stars; I would have given it 3.5 if that were possible. I watched the VCI Home Video "uncut widescreen presentation" on DVD; I don't know if that's the same version Amazon is selling. The box describes it as 16x9 format and there are black strips at the top and bottom of the screen, but the edges have been trimmed from the image nonetheless. Still, it works pretty well visually. And visuals are a lot of what Argento's movies are about!pI've heard a lot about this movie over the years and my expectations were fairly high. I was not disappointed; there are some genuinely creepy moments as well as some bizarre humor -- the "mad artist" sequence in particular is quite funny. Plot-wise, things get stretched a bit, but the movie is at least as credible -- and as scary -- as, say, "Fatal Attraction." Morricone's score is mostly effective, in a 1970s kind of way. In places, it reminded me of Ron Grainer's score for "The Omega Man," made in the same era.pThis is not a great movie, in the same class as Hitchcock's best, but it's up there with Brian DePalma's work. If you like atmospheric, slightly surreal "slasher" movies, you'll enjoy this "Bird."
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