Four Flies on Grey Velvet

1971 film by Dario Argento
Universal Productions France

Four Flies on Grey Velvet premiered in Italy on 17 December 1971. From 23 December 1971 to 30 January 1972, the film grossed $1.2 million from 46 theatres in Italy.

From contemporary reviews, Howard Thompson, in his review for The New York Times, praised the film for its "striking, imaginative color photography and deep freeze pacing and atmosphere" and highlighted the sequence where Amelia is trapped in the park as "spine tingling", "superb" and "Argento at his chilling best". However, he criticized the plot as "not only old but farfetched" and the dialogue as "banal", and went on to say that "[a]ll that circuitous teasing and those red herrings don't produce a shred of real evidence to nibble on. You're on your own, in pure hit or miss speculation." Roger Ebert gave the film a mixed review of two and a half stars out of four, deeming it a "badly dubbed and incoherent murder thriller" with "a conclusion that's so arbitrary we feel tricked." He did, however, give praise to Mimsy Farmer and said of her that she "deserves to get some of those Mia Farrow roles." Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune gave the film one star out of four and wrote, "Argento's script contains more red herrings than the Cape Cod Room. Each time evidence overwhelmingly points to a possible threat to our bushy haired hero that person is bumped off and the guessing game begins anew. I didn't find that rhythm the least bit entertaining." Variety faulted "a script bogged down with farce comedy, unneeded sex, coarse language and trite dialogue." Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times wrote that the film generally "works when nobody's talking and the camera's moving." He thought that several "badly dubbed, broadly burlesqued characters are totally ludicrous and destroy utterly the film's credibility." David Pirie of the Monthly Film Bulletin noted it being "full of slick visual conceits and glossy set pieces, this is clearly Argento's most expensive and ambitious thriller yet." while stating its still as "flat and predictable as that of the most meager Italian 'B' feature." Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide gave the film two stars out of four and opined it was an "[u]nabsorbing psychological murder mystery with performers who walk through their roles in a very disinterested fashion." Writer Fran Lebowitz, who had a column reviewing bad movies, told Glenn O'Brien in a 1978 issue of High Times, that, "the worst movie I ever saw was called Four Flies on Gray Velvet, with Mimsy Farmer, one of your great loves. But to this day I have never seen a worse movie." AllMovie gave the film a positive review, calling it "an unfortunately overlooked and hard to find choice nugget in his [Argento's] oeuvre".

It was not until early 2009 that the film was made available to home video audiences in a legitimate version, both domestically or internationally, with the exception of the long out of print obscure French VHS. The rights to this film (at least in America) are owned by Paramount Pictures, which had chosen not to release it. MYA Communication released a region 1 DVD of Four Flies on Grey Velvet on 24 February 2009. The disc contains an uncut, completely remastered print of this "lost" film, featuring theatrical trailers, the English language opening and ending credits and an extensive photo gallery. However, this release omits 30–40 seconds of footage due to print damage. To celebrate the film's 40th anniversary and to mark 20 years since it was thought to be lost, Shameless Screen Entertainment released it on Blu ray and DVD in the UK on 30 January 2012.