'A Blade in The Dark' (1983) - Lamberto Bava.

Directed with the expected visual flair by Giallo maestro Lamberto Bava, since his stealthy, luridly leering camera stalks this eerily isolated villa like a predatory cat. Co-written by the equally skilful scrivener Dardano Sachetti, 'A Blade In The Dark' is a far more efficient exercise in stylishly sinew-slashing, grievously girl goring, nerve-frying fright than many 'experts' would have you believe. 

The young inexperienced composer Bruno (Andrea Occhipinti) tasked by horror director Julia (Lara Lamberti) has his musical labours disturbingly interrupted by a macabre series of ominously off-key interludes, fatefully leading our boy band cute amateur sleuth to the grim conclusion that his missing female house guests have been savagely slain by some frustratingly elusive, Villa lurking, female-flaying lunatic! Strikingly endowed with a fantastic score by the iconic duo Guido & Maurizio De Angelis, an amiable lead, its libido-galvanizing generosity of sensuous scream queens, and exhilarating plenitude of graphic kills, Lamberto Bava's spook-tacularly sanguineous 80s Giallo 'A Blade in The Dark' retains its bravura, blood-soaked majesty, inventively infused with all the malign machinations of an exquisitely mad mind!