Jane Harrison (Edwige Fenech) has been having nightmares since the car accident that caused her miscarriage. Her boyfriend, Richard Steele (George Hilton), thinks they are nothing and has been giving her vitamins to take. Richard works for a pharmaceutical company. Jane’s sister Barbara (Nieves Navarro) works for a psychiatrist, Dr. Burton (George Rigaud). She convinces Jane to see Dr. Burton even though Richard is against it. In Jane’s nightmares she sees a man with blue eyes holding a stiletto. He murders a woman on a bed, a pregnant woman and a woman dressed like a clownish child. Jane tells Dr. Burton that her mother died when she was young. She was stabbed. Dr. Burton thinks it may have something to do with her nightmares.
Jane realizes that the man with the blue eyes from her nightmares is actually real and is following her. At one point he tries to kill her. In her building is a woman named Mary Weil (Marina Malfatti) who just moved in. Jane tells Mary about her dreams and the man who has been following her. Mary suggests that Jane go with her to a Sabbath Mass and tells her it will help her get rid of her nightmares. Jane, being stupid, goes with her. At the mass a man with long fake finger nails slaughters a dog and drinks its blood. He then makes Jane drink some blood and everybody has group sex with Jane.
Jane ends up going back to the mansion where the Sabbath had been and joins in on another mass. This time she is told that Mary wants to be released from the group and Jane is to take her place. In order to release Mary, Jane must kill her. Jane doesn’t want to kill Mary but she is forced to hold a dagger while Mary throws herself on it. Jane passes out.
When she awakens she finds out that the man with the blue eyes is part of the group and that she is now also a member. They tell her that they will never let her go. Jane’s nightmares and her waking hallucinations are being blended together with what she perceives as reality. Now fully confused Jane doesn’t know what is real and what is a dream nor does she know who to trust and who is against her.
“All the Colors of the Dark” AKA Tutti i colori del buio” AKA “Day of the Maniac” AKA “They're Coming to Get You!” was released in 1972 and was directed by Sergio Martino. It is an Italian horror thriller and a giallo.
I’ve heard that there are at least three different versions of the film with different scenes either cut or shortened. It changes some of the film’s interpretation and the ending of the film depending on the version you see. The Italian version’s dream sequences are very Freudian. The beginning sequence dream with the three stabbed figures, the woman on the bed, the pregnant women and the clownish child are usually interpreted as a combination of the two events in Jane’s life that caused her trauma, the murder of her mother and the miscarriage after the car accident.
There are times during the film that I wasn’t sure what was real and what was fantasy. There are even hints that Jane was having psychic premonitions toward the end of the film. At the end everything is wrapped up using a more down to Earth twist but there was still a hint of ambiguity tossed in at the very end. The whole ending left me a little disappointed. The American version cut out some of these scenes and actually changes a lot of the film, not necessarily for the better.
The trippy psychedelic gothic scenes in “Colors” left me very confused but that may have been Martino’s intension all along. I will give Edwige Fenech an A plus for her performance. She looked just as confused as I actually was.