Ten Days of Terror!: The Girl Who Knew Too Much

Film: The Girl Who Knew Too Much (The Evil Eye)
Format: Streaming video from Amazon Prime on Fire!

I get frustrated with variant versions of films. I understand why they exist, but that doesn’t mean that I have to like the confusion that they cause. The Girl Who Knew Too Much (literally translated from the Italian La ragazza che sapeva troppo) is typically thought of as the original giallo. But, because American International Pictures wasn’t convinced of the film’s marketability, a different version was released in the U.S. under the name The Evil Eye. The basic plot is the same in both versions, of course, but the American version is a touch longer, emphasizes more comedy, and comes with a separate soundtrack.

What it means for me in this case, is that while looking for The Girl Who Knew Too Much, I could only find the American version, about six minutes longer, but more comedic, and thus a bit less of a traditional giallo despite essentially starting the style. I guess this is what happens when there’s an American version and I’m sitting in the middle (sorta) of America. You get what you can get. I suppose I shouldn’t complain since I was able to watch it at all.

The basic plot is a fun one. American tourist Nora Drowson (Davis in the Italian version, played in both cases by Letícia Román), a fan of murder mysteries, arrives in Rome to visit her elderly aunt, who is under the care of her doctor, Marcello Bassi (John Saxon). Her aunt dies on Nora’s first night in Rome, and she leaves the house to go to the hospital to let him know. En route, she is mugged for her purse and is knocked unconscious. When she awakens, she sees a young woman murdered in front of her by a bearded man, and naturally, she faints. She awakens the next morning in the hospital. Authorities are convinced that she hallucinated the entire thing since there is no evidence of a murder.

At her aunt’s funeral, Nora meets Laura Craven-Torrani (Valentina Cortese), who is traveling to Switzerland and invites Nora to stay at her house. It is here that Nora realizes that the murder she witnessed was actually a sort of ghost—it was a murder from 10 years previous, the work of someone called the Alphabet Killer. That name came from the fact that the victim’s names were alphabetical—the first’s started with A, the second with B, etc. The third victim was Laura’s sister, 10 years earlier. Now, with Nora’s last name starting with “D,” she thinks she may be the first victim in a renewed series of killings.

The Girl Who Knew Too Much/The Evil Eye has all of the necessary ingredients to create the giallo style, a large part of the reason that it’s seen as the template. It helps that Bava, for all of the issues that I have with his style regarding things like continuity had a tremendous eye for the visual, and his films—including this one—always look great. It’s easy to see the film’s influence on later cinema. The plot feels like something that Argento studied for months before making The Bird with the Crystal Plumage.

The main issue I have with it (aside from the changes made to the American version) is that it feels obvious where it’s going to go. That’s more or less a function of watching a lot of movies, though. When you’ve seen enough of them, you can predict the pattern that things are going to fall into, and this is no different. I give the average movie watcher a 50/50 chance of guessing the ending after the first half hour or so.

Tropes exist for a reason, though, and it’s fair to remember that a lot of the tropes I may be complaining about here actually started here. You can’t fault this film for it showing up on my watch list after several dozens of films that it inspired.

I would like to see the original version of this. The American version has what feels like a wildly inappropriate soundtrack for large parts of it. It emphasizes comedy in places, and tonally, it really doesn’t fit with the overall theme and plot of the movie. This would be a better movie in my opinion, sight unseen, if it played things a little straighter and didn’t pretend that Nora is on some kind of wacky murder mystery adventure rather than the actual reality, which is her being potentially pursued by a serial killer.

If you like the style, you’ll find a lot here to appreciate. As someone who doesn’t generally love gialli, I still found it at least interesting, if only from a historical perspective.

Why to watch The Girl Who Knew Too Much: It’s the template for giallo films.
Why not to watch: The American version hits comedy too hard and has a ‘60s sitcom soundtrack.