"If you try to close your eyes, you'll tear them apart."

The films of Dario Argento are not whodunnits. There is never never any question: the director is the murderer. If the predilection for point of view shots were not enough, the fact that Argento himself always played the black gloved hands of the killer in his early films should confirm our suspicion. From L'uccello dalle piume di cristallo's opening assault in an art gallery (and this film shares with the later Profondo Rosso the plot device of a painting that offers a clue to the killer's identity), murder becomes an increasingly expressive and aestheticised act, culminating in the baroque sadism of Argento's Opera.