Watch Me When I Kill
Watch Me When I Kill
| 06 August 1977 (USA)
Watch Me When I Kill Trailers

A pharmacist is murdered, and a woman happens to see the culprit leave the scene. She soon finds herself being stalked by the killer.

Reviews
Stevecorp Don't listen to the negative reviews
ActuallyGlimmer The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.
Bea Swanson This film is so real. It treats its characters with so much care and sensitivity.
Bessie Smyth Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.
gridoon2018 "Watch Me When I Sleep" would be a more fitting English title for this second-rate giallo, made during the declining years of the genre (the "cat" in the original Italian title has absolutely nothing to do with the story either, it just seems that it was a fashionable word to use in the title of many gialli). The story sort-of makes sense, if you're OK with the fact that the killer appears in about 2 scenes in total. The killings are few, and sometimes more comical than shocking (a woman has her face pressed on....hot meat and potatoes!). The male lead does not have enough charisma to be a lead. The strongest asset of the film is the weird, discordant score. It's still somewhat of an ordeal to watch - it took me two separate sittings to make it. *1/2 out of 4.
Coventry Purely by coincidence, I found an old & dusty videotape in the horror closet of an acquaintance of mine and the cover displayed the bizarre title (in Dutch) "Revenge of the Cat". I had to perform a search on the actors' names in order to find out that it actually was "Watch me when I Kill" (a.k.a. "The Cat's Victims", a.k.a "The Cat with the Jade Eyes") and initially that was a pleasant surprise, since this Italian late 70's giallo has been on my purchase list for quite some time now! After seeing it, I'm even more glad that I didn't spend money on a fancy DVD-version, as it is quite a disappointing and overly confusing horror effort. Surely not the worst film of its kind, but pretty bleak compared to the works of Sergio Martino or, of course, Dario Argento. The main problem with Antonio Bido's film is that it makes absolutely no attempts to involve the viewer in the search for the maniacal killer. Someone, who stays off screen all the time and deforms his voice whenever he leaves messages to his next victims, is seemly randomly killing people and it nearly takes half of the movie before we get informed that all the victims sat in the same jury committee during a lawsuit against a criminal who recently escaped from prison. That still doesn't reveal the killer's identity, but at least you can guess along from this point. Due to the lack of background during the beginning, "Watch me when I Kill" often feels a bit slow and dull. There's not much atmosphere and ever fewer tension, and the private detective character isn't the least bit amiable. The murders, on the other hand, are lusciously gore, with a close-up slit throat, a woman suffocated in a dish of food and the must brutal strangulation I ever saw. The cinematography sadly is too dark, although that might have been due to poor videotape quality, but the score is terrific (probably the best thing about the entire film) and the climax is fairly surprising.
The_Void The Cat's Victims is reputed to have 'borrowed' all of the elements that have made other Giallos successful. Things such as black gloves, stylish murders, a pumping soundtrack and a gritty look about the film are all present, but unfortunately; so are bad dubbing, terrible acting and a very incoherent plot. Basically, The Cat's Victims is successful for the same reasons that many other Giallos down the years have been successful; but it falls down on things that it could have avoided, given that writer-director Antonio Bido has obviously seen a lot of Giallos prior to writing this one. There's two types of Giallo; namely, urban and rural; and this one belongs to the urban side of the equation. The rural often gives way to more beautiful settings, but the cityscape makes for a better set-up for a mystery. The plot here is muddled, and it follows a young woman who, after witnessing the murderer leave the scene of the crime, finds herself as his next target. Her boyfriend is taking none of this lying down, however, and makes it his business to get to the bottom of the mystery.One of the most important things about Giallo for me has to be the murder scenes. The ones featured here are very brutal and serve the film well. We get treated to scenes including someone having their face scolded on a hot oven plate, a man being strangled in the bath and a great car park scene. The death scenes are said to take influence from Argento's films, and while none of them are actually the same; the brutality is definitely there. The music for this film is a little over the top and doesn't always fit the scene, but all the same; I quite enjoyed it. It's much heavier than the usual music found in this sort of film, and it actually serves it quite well as the pumping sounds get the heart going, which is generally what you want from a thriller. As for the acting...nobody goes into a film like this expecting greatness on that front, and it's a good job because the acting here is quite rubbish. Of course, the bad dubbing doesn't help matters and it can sometimes be hard to tell which is to blame. Still, if you're a fan of Giallo; this is definitely worth seeing. I'd recommend catching the more highly rated ones first, though.
macabro357 (aka: WATCH ME WHEN I KILL) Much better than Antonio Bido's other giallo, SOLAMENTE NERO (THE BLOOD STAINED SHADOW) Pharmacist in Rome is murdered. A woman who saw the killer leave is then stalked by the killer. Her boyfriend tries to find out why, and stop him. Three more murders follow. They are murdered because they are all tied to the betrayal of a Jewish family to the nazis during WWII.The killings are gruesome but not particularly bloody. In fact Bido goes out of his way to tone down the blood and not look too Argento-ish, imo. This is an excellent non-Argento giallo, one of the best of the 1970s. The plot flows pretty smoothly and it has an element of mystery and surprise at who the killer is. That's a nice touch considering that many Italian giallos reveal too many clues ahead of time, making the killer's identity a foregone conclusion. The music's ok, too. The only big negative is at the very end where the film wraps itself up way too fast, not leaving much for the viewer after the climax takes place. The VCI DVD print is kinda grainy and scratchy, not up to the usual standards Anchor Bay and Synapse have with their releases. Not many extras other than a bio of Bido along with some trailers to some other VCI DVD releases. I'll give it a 6 out of 10 for being better than a lot of the other films of the giallo genre...
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