Dario Argento is cinemas equivalent to Motorhead. With every one of his films you know what you are going to get; a stylish technicolor thriller and little else. Whether he is dealing with the supernatural or serial killers, he has distilled the genre down to its necessary components, and operates with very little deviation from the formula.
The Bird with the Crystal Plumage was his first film and the Hitchcock influence show greatly here. It is a story of a man accused of a crime he didn’t commit, though with Argento the plot is usually an afterthought. What matters here is its slick presentation of silhouetted stalkers. With this film it is a little rough around the edges but a good indicator of what would come later.
