He middle of the night is dangerous business. You can awaken from a dream where your psychiatrist boyfriend is murdered only to find that he has disappeared. Then your life will seem like a waking nightmare, but only if you're Julie, the heroine of Eye of the Labyrinth.

Known for her appearance in a two-part episode of The Saint that was turned into the theatrical release Vendetta for the Saint, Marquis de Sade: Justine and The Shoes of the Fisherman, Rosemary Dexter plays Julie, whose search for Luca (Horst Frank, who also appeared with her in Marquis de Sade: Justine) takes her to a small seaside town. From the moment she knows he's been missing, people have been harassing her as to his whereabouts. Everything simply feels off.

When she gets there, she meets Frank (Adolfo Celi, Danger: Diabolik, Thunderball),who tells her that her boyfriend had been in town. Then there's Gerda (Alida Valli, Miss Tanner from Suspiria),whose house is full of artists with some level of ill repute, including a young Sybil Danning as Toni.

However, Julia keeps meeting people over and over who refuse to believe that they know her, which lends the film even more of a dreamlike quality. Is there a crime syndicate involved in every moment of her life? Is she in constant danger? Or has she simply gone insane? I'm not going to answer this all for you. You should drink it all in yourself.

This is a rare film financed by the city of Monaco (along with some German investments and stars). Mario Caiano (Nightmare Castle) was the director and he keeps things both mysterious and driving. There's also a great soundtrack by Roberto Nicolosi, who scored Black Sabbath and Black Sunday. It's a loungy, jazzy affair that adds verve to the proceedings.

Code Red released this film on blu-ray, the first time it was released in the U.S. It's worth tracking down, as it fits in well with plenty of the great giallo released in 1972 (The Case of the Bloody Iris, Don't Torture a Duckling, All the Colors of the Dark, The Red Queen Kills Seven Times),which was a banner year for black gloved killers and psychosexual drama.

An unpredictable giallo yarn from director Mario Caiano, who injects plenty of Italian style into his movie with unusual camera positions and music effective for the action. The opening stalk-and-slash sequence is truly artistic and easily rivals the more acclaimed work of director Dario Argento. However it's unwise to judge the rest of the film on this gory prologue because up until the ending there is no more gore to be had on offer. Instead, Caiano concentrates on plenty of shifty, mysterious characters, and lines his cast with some fine supporting actors. The plot is unpredictable throughout and takes in diverse elements such as a secret drug-dealing organisation, a mentally handicapped boy who unknowingly witnesses murder, rape, transvestites, psychology, and the expected macabre images with bodies popping out of the water etc.

The movie has an unusual backdrop in that a sun-bleached villa, full of people laying around bathing and relaxing, is the setting for the tortuous plot to play out rather than the usual grubby back streets of some nameless Italian seedy town. Every single character in the film is unusual and suspicious in some way or another and Caiano has assembled a more than adequate cast to flesh out the roles.

First up is the fragile Rosemary Dexter who is effective in her part as Julie, who begins the film as the lead protagonist and finds herself a victim of circumstances she cannot begin to explain; Dexter is an unknown to me but on the strength of her turn here it's a surprise she hasn't appeared in more Italian leading roles. Then we have the inimitable Adolfo Celi, who has a large role for a change and does very well in the part, as is to be expected with an actor of his skill and experience. The rest of the cast - or should I say 'suspects' features such familiar faces as Franco Ressel (TARZANA) as the sleazy character of 'Eugene'; Alida Valli (THE TEMPTER) as the harsh-faced owner of the villa, Greta; Euro-regular Horst Frank as the bullying psychiatrist boyfriend, Luca, and even an early appearance from later cult babe Sybil Danning.

One thing that does make this film above average for the genre is the twist ending, which is truly unusual and very cleverly done. I don't want to spoil it, only to say it's worth waiting for and difficult to predict. Although the film sometimes seems slow-paced and unfocused, it's worth sitting through to see the ending which goes on to make sense of everything. Oh, and it's worth watching for the eventual explanation of the title, which is both bizarre, blackly comic, and pretty horrific!

Having seen well over 60 gialli thus far, including the majority of the more celebrated films in the genre, I now find myself sifting through the less well-known titles in the hope of finding an obscure gem. Eye in the Labyrinth doesn't quite fit the bill, the film far too light on elaborately staged killings to be wholly satisfying, but it does deliver an intriguing mystery with a reasonable twist, and plenty of skin from some very attractive women (including a young Sybil Danning),making it a giallo worth seeking out once you've exhausted the usual suspects.

Brunette beauty Rosemary Dexter plays Julie, whose search for her missing lover Luca leads her to a luxurious villa, home to a group of eccentric individuals who know more about Luca than they are letting on. As Julie investigates, she finds herself in mortal danger; will she survive long enough to discover the truth? To writer/director Mario Caiano's credit, I didn't figure out the twist until moments before the reveal, meaning that I was hooked throughout despite the relaxed approach and lack of gore (having said that, the flashback at the end is nice and gruesome, with a really squishy decapitation).

6.5/10, rounded up to 7 for IMDb.