Cozzi takes the Cake: THE BLACK CAT (1989) aka Demons 6: De Profundis

As in most of his work, Cozzi's love of strong, cool women characters shines through in a way unique to Italian cinema (the only similar figure in the US is probably Roger Corman). There's usually at least one female villain in his films, as well as a strong heroine, and a string of strong cool female characters in between. Yet in the Levana script Marc and Dan are writing, there's only one woman character in the entire film and she's a pustule-covered witch! (Dan's affirmation that she's "very strong" seems like a back-handed condescension) This sets up a rivalry between Nora and Anne for the part, though one wonders why on earth would either woman would want so desperately to play a part where they're covered in pustules, and why can't Marc and his writer create two female spots for their own actress wives? But, as per Cozzi, of all the women in the film, none are objectified; they're resourceful and strong, never victims. In other words, it's a strange and cryptic anti-patriarchal judgment made as far from the mire of true misogyny as any 1980s Italian horror movie or indeed the world could reach.  This is such a female-centric movie that when some guy who's arc was no doubt lost on the cutting room floor shows up, his presence seems very odd, shows up and gets in Caroline Munroe's car to go visit Lavana. He's dead before he even gets off a single line! 

Other female cast members include Luisa Manieri is the babysitter, who asks to bring her cousin along on one of her babysitting jobs. In one of the creepiest scenes, Anne comes home to find a young boy playing with her baby, only to learn the babysitter's cousin didn't come along. WHO IS THAT BOY? She runs up and he's gone! She goes into the other room where the fridge, that was supposed to have been fixed, is now overheating. The receipt from the repairman is GONE! She flashes back to a messy fridge. Is she losing her damned mind or is someone gaslighting her? It's a great stretch of weirdness but before any of those questions can be answered - BAM! A car comes smashing through a wall or the TV turns on by itself. A child is onscreen, calling her by name. Warning her about Levana:  "If she takes the body of a young woman born under the sign of the sixth moon there will be no way on earth to stop her!" 

The normal progression for these kinds of things--as the set up leads us to believe--involves dream sequences, red herrings and 'gaslit moms walking around their big houses alone, hearing noises and watching strange new gardeners through the curtains' - the sort of hackneyed styff that would eat up a whole hour of a TV movie by Dan Curtis or Curtis Harrington.  Cozzi has no patience for slow builds. He crashes a car through the wall like a ten year-old, utterly derailing the movie already in our heads, freeing us from the familiar linear shackles. So before Anne can be taken to a shrink and told it's all in her head as Marc gives her part away "for her own good," and all that nonsense, we're plunging heedlessly into lunatic dreamtime, ever father and deeper, with exploding intestines erupting from TVs, weird colored lighting, an inner child filling Anne in on plot points; Anne dressing up like Levana and trying to stab her own baby; Anne actually stabbing Marc (or did she?) and fending off curvy dagger attacks by Levin's sultry personal assistant.She has to warn Marc! If he's not dead, or in bed with Nora. The baby is gone! And as this is an Italian horror movie, there's no guarantee of the child's safety.

Here nightmare/dreams are so indistinguishable from reality it doesn't feel like a cheat as some nightmare scenes do; there's no waking up in the dead of night screaming, no being told it was just a dream. Cozzi knows that in a movie everything is already a dream, he owes us nothing as far as 'bringing it back to reality' - he laughs at that hack pedestrian need for a normal reality through line, the type with investigating cops and patriarchal shrinks. He knows we're sick of all that stuff. So as Marc lies dead in the dream she hears herself in the distance telling Marc about the dream she had where she kills him. But then car comes crashing through the living room and the bloody Dan emerges. Bang Boom! 

And for the fans, there are callbacks to all Cozzi's best: a bladder burst stomach effect evokesContamination; Munro's presence evokes Starcrash; we see leftover moon shots he stole from Hercules; an inner child appearing in the TV is dubbed by the same child actress who plays the spirit guides in Hercules 2, and so on.

As is true of Cozzi's entire oeuvre, even the domestic tranquility scenes have a strange uncanny edge, the few that there are. Things move too fast to mark down. You just know that if a bunch of maggots aren't superimposed over Lavana's pustule-covered face, then the TV must be about to explode with buckets of green slime, a bunch of intestines, and Lavana's knife. "Pick up the knife and become Lavana, or leave it and stay as you are!" Guess which choice Ann makes!

As for the music, well, even if it's not Goblin or Ennio Morricone, Vince Tempera's 'shoot for bodacious, settle for bemusing' score is certainly better than Keith Emerson's clueless melange in Argento's own Suspiria follow-up, Inferno. By 1989 Argento was himself falling into disrepair as far as music tastes, leaning towards half-baked metal and instantly-dated prog rock. Tempera keeps it all humming without trying to turn anything into a music video, and that's good enough for me.