Never let your young daughter play outside, around water, and if she plays with dolls, why a windup military man with a gas mask?

That aside, caution is the pulse to Nicolas Roeg's strange thriller DON'T LOOK NOW taking place in Venice where marrieds Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie deal with their daughter's prologue-drowning a few years prior...

And while Christie is always scene-stealing, the mainline is Sutherland's John Baxter, restoring the antique ruins of a Catholic church and, while most likely an Atheist, he cares more about the significance of Catholic art than priest Massimo Serato...

The best scenes involve Sutherland's dark, brooding journey into the ancient city of channels surrounding by gorgeous, dilapidated buildings, and inside, the famous overlong sex scene between the couple gets in the way, seeming like Roeg finishing an unrealized student film than what he (and she) is really going after...

Julie Christie's haunted Laura is more in touch with her deceased child because of a creepy yet gentle, blue-eyed Hilary Mason, a blind seer led around by a talky sister, but Sutherland's as aloof to that concept as the priest is to the restoration...

Meanwhile, the second half gets into a Neo Noir investigation with baby-faced detective Renato Scarpa...

But the memorable scene is buried till the end, and you'll know where THE BROOD children came from after witnessing the most nightmarish of nightmarish female demon dwarfs in an eclectic, arthouse horror that, while all over the place textually, does have a destination... just as long as you know who to follow. And what's following them.

I think it is bad luck that "Don't Look Now" was released in the same year as "The Exorcist", or else this might be a better known and more appreciated one of a kind masterpiece.

"Don't Look Now" is an horror movie but not one like you would expect it to be. It isn't a movie that scares you with some scene's, it is a movie that gets into you and just won't let go and builds up a nightmare like tension. The atmosphere is fantastic and gives the movie a haunting feeling. Venice really works as the perfect backdrop for this movie. The best movie set in Venice ever? Even though there aren't any scary sequences in the movie, the ending is really horrifying, it really freaked me out the first time I saw it, I think 5 years ago. On my second viewing, not too long ago I was prepared for the ending but it still was a very scary thing to watch!

The storytelling might seem slow but it works perfect for the movie and its tension. There are some brilliant moments in the movie that all come together once the ending approaches. The editing and cinematography are perfect, as are the performances by the cast.

And what is a decent comment without mentioning the famous love scene? Ah yes, the love scene, it really is one of the best love scene's ever. It is brilliantly filmed and even more brilliantly edited. Quite Stylish, as is the entire movie.

This classic masterpiece certainly deserves more recognition!

10/10

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Heed the warning of this movie's title and don't look at it now...or ever.

This atrocious psychological thriller is neither psychologically complex nor especially thrilling. Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland play parents mourning the accidental death of their daughter, wandering around Venice while Sutherland is engaged in the renovation of an old cathedral. They run into a blind psychic and her sister, and their encounters with them bring Christie some solace about her daughter, but send Sutherland into a paranoid spiral which culminates in him following who he thinks is his dead daughter into the bell tower of a church and then.....well, much hype has been built around the "shocking" ending to this movie, but let's just see if you give a damn about what happens by the time you get to it.

My description of the plot makes it sound like it makes much more sense than it does when you're actually watching the film, because I've left out all of the utterly gratuitous and boring scenes that bring nothing to the party. Director Nicholas Roeg never met a trendy 1970s film trick that he didn't like, and so this movie is full of zooms, both in and out, jarring camera work and harsh, ear-splitting sound effects. I guess he's trying for a nerve-jangling effect, but it all seems like a lot of fuss and bother over nothing. This is an assemblage of disconnected scenes badly in need of a story.

The most frightening thing about "Don't Look Now" is the extended love-making scene that assaults us with a fully nude Donald Sutherland. Now that's what will make you turn your eyes away in horror.

Grade: F