The Bird With The Crystal Plumage/Fun Facts
From The Grindhouse Cinema Database
< The Bird With The Crystal Plumage
- This was the first solo directing credit for Dario Argento.
- Director trademark: [Dario Argento] Character recalls clues from memory.
- The first installment of Argento's Animal Trilogy (a trilogy of giallo films with animals in their titles). The trilogy includes The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970), The Cat O' Nine Tails (1971), and Four Flies on Grey Velvet (1971).
- Shot in just six weeks.
- At one point an executive producer wanted Dario Argento removed from the production when he was disappointed by a screening of some dailies. When Argento's father Salvatore Argento went to the exec's office to talk to him he found the exec's secretary visibly shaken. When he asked the secretary what was troubling her she said she saw the screening and the footage terrified her. Salvatore Argento then asked her to go tell her boss about her reaction to the screening. She convinced the executive to keep Dario Argento on as director.
- Ranked #7 on Entertainment Weekly's "Guilty Pleasures: Testosterone Edition" list (#927, March 30, 2007, as part of the article "Bloodbath and Beyond," about Grindhouse.) The magazine wrote, "The 'Italian Hitchcock', Dario Argento serves up a knife-wielding lunatic, Italian models in peril, and a super-funky Ennio Morricone score. Bravissimo."
