They're Coming to Get You!

All the Colors of the Dark aspires to graft Rosemary’s Baby and Repulsion onto the traditional giallo. The resulting mess proves Sergio Martino is no Roman Polanski, but at least it’s nice to look at.

Edwige Fenech plays Jane, a London woman haunted by nightmares after losing her unborn child in a car crash. Her visions blend childhood trauma with occult terror, leading her away from her boyfriend, played by George Hilton, and into the arms of Satan worshippers who promise relief from her torment.

Martino excels at the giallo elements. Consider the subway sequence where, as Jane’s train pulls from each station, the lights dim and her car’s occupants subtly change until she’s alone with a blue-eyed stalker. It’s the kind of set piece that reminds you why Italian filmmakers owned the thriller game in the ’70s.

But the film isn’t content to be a giallo. The opening nightmare, featuring a cross-dressing killer in pancake makeup, elicits laughs instead of chills. The Satanic cult scenes aim for Polanski’s slow-burn dread but land somewhere between community theater and genuine bad taste.

The film’s fatal flaw? It can’t commit. Are the supernatural elements real or imagined? The movie tries to have it both ways, then changes its mind, then changes it again. By the time we reach the freeze-frame ending, you sense even Martino threw up his hands in defeat.

Fenech spends most of her screen time in various states of undress and terror, but we never understand what’s actually frightening her beyond the obvious. Unlike Repulsion, which brilliantly showed us madness from the inside, this film keeps us at arm’s length from Jane’s crumbling psyche.

Still, All the Colors of the Dark remains oddly compelling. Its production design feels authentic—lived-in apartments, cluttered kitchens, the kind of detail that grounds even the most absurd supernatural elements. And Martino’s visual flair occasionally transcends the script’s limitations.

But I couldn’t shake the sense the film would have worked better as straight giallo or committed occult horror. Frustrating, as we’re left with what feels like three different movies fighting for control of the same negative.