'Seven Deaths in the Cat's Eye' (1973) – Antonio Margheritti.

One of Italy's most exciting, versatile, and talented genre directors was the estimable Antonio Margheritti, a true master of his craft, also frequently utilizing the anglicized moniker of Anthony M. Dawson was an especially resourceful, dynamic film-maker who directed a magnificent multitude of macabre movie masterpieces, not the least being his cult Gothic classic 'Long Hair of Death' with the iconic Barbara Steele, and in the heady era of the 1970s, an especially prolific decade for the mercurial moviemaker, one of Margheritti's more eerily eccentric delights being the stylishly shot, deliriously decadent, Jane Birkin-starring, wickedly warped, fabulously feral, Agatha Christie'd, grisly-Gothic whodunnit 'Seven Deaths in the Cat's Eye', wherein the ceaselessly bickering incumbents of dour Dragonwyck castle grimly discover that while their omnipresent long-haired cat may have nine lives, the diabolically death-stalked inhabitants patently do not! Is the good doctor (Anton Diffring) our malign stealthily slashing, castle-creeping killer? Or does the asinine, foppishly-attired young Lord MacGrieff (Hiram Keller) harbour more nefarious proclivities furtively perpetrated within his shadow-slaked, secretively hidden Atelier? With such a kaleidoscopic array of maniacal mystery it will take all the refined cerebration of the rumpled-looking, perspicacious inspector (Serge Gainsbourg) to separate fact from Edgar Orangutang Poe fiction! The slinky, evocative photography by Carlo Carlini is lushly menacing, and masterful director Antonio Margheritti clearly seems to be enjoying himself, and that enthusiasm proves infectious, as this ominously off-beat murder mystery, with its gorgeously baroque Gothic glamour, morbidly mischievous characters is an absolute must-see for avid Euro-cult fans, as maestro Margheritti's magnificently macabre monkey business makes this deliciously quirky Giallo one of the more irresistibly fascinating examples of how insanely inventive Italian genre cinema can be!