‘Seven Notes in Black’, also known as ‘Sette note in nero’ or ‘The Psychic’, is an Italian Giallo mystery thriller directed by Lucio Fulci. Giallo, or Italian Giallo, is a film genre of Italian movies popular in the mid-60s through the ’70s, which included elements of slasher, psychological horror, murder, gore, sexploitation, and sometimes, supernatural elements. While many of the above-mentioned aspects are negotiable, most critics are unanimous that Giallo movies should be Who-dun-its. If a movie does not have a who-dun-it in its plot, it cannot be considered a Giallo.

Giallo movies were the precursors of modern-day slasher movies. Lucio Fulci was an iconic director of Giallo movies and was considered ‘The poet of the Macabre’, as his movies were known for their cinematography and screenplay.

‘Seven Notes in Black’ begins with a newly married woman, Virginia (Jennifer O’Neill), driving her car through a sequence of dark tunnels after dropping off her husband Francesco (Gianni Garko) at the airport. A flashback reveals that a young Virginia had a premonition of her mother committing suicide by jumping off a cliff. The explicit nature of this gruesome scene, which shows the woman’s face colliding with rocks as she descends, can be jolting and hard to watch for some viewers. Eerily, Virginia’s mother would die just the way Virginia imagined it.

Now, in the present, as an adult, Virginia drives through the tunnels, she sees a new set of visions. She sees a middle-aged woman murdered in a lavishly furnished, ornate red room. A statue is seen lying on its side. A shattered mirror and a magazine with a young adult woman on its cover are some other items that appear in her vision. She also sees the legs of a man who seems to be limping but cannot see the man’s face. There is also another mustached, middle-aged man climbing down a stairwell who appears in her vision. Finally, Virginia also hears a tune of seven notes in her vision.

Virginia drives to an old empty mansion that her husband owns and decides to renovate it to surprise her husband. As she surveys the house, she realizes that one room in the house is identical to the one she saw in her vision.

On impulse, grabbing a pickaxe, Virginia swings at a wall in the room and rips out its plaster. To her horror, she finds a skeleton concealed in the wall. The police arrive and do not find Virginia’s story credible. When Francesco returns from his trip, he too angrily dismisses Virginia’s story.

On one occasion, Virginia looks out of her window and is shocked to see the old woman from her vision alive and walking outside. Virginia runs out to meet the woman, but is too late. The woman has disappeared.

Postmortem results reveal that the skeleton belonged to a girl in her twenties, not a person in her fifties, that Virginia saw in her vision. This girl is identified to be a former girlfriend of Francesco who went missing several years before. The police indict Francesco for her murder. Virginia is determined to prove him innocent.

Francesco’s sister, Gloria, and her friend tell Virginia that it was Gloria who decorated the room with all its furnishings and ornaments five years earlier when Francesco was out on a business trip. This gives credence to Gloria’s belief that Francesco is innocent of the crime.

An old photograph of the dead young woman reveals that it is the same woman who was on the cover of the magazine Virginia had seen in her vision. Virginia’s friend Luca, who studies psychic phenomena, is more open to Virginia’s visions and helps her in her quest to unearth the mystery behind them.

Virginia and Luca begin by trying to track down a taxi driver who could have given the dead woman a ride five years ago. They find one who recognizes the dead woman from her photograph. The driver claims to remember driving her and a gentleman with a limp to a gallery. Virginia tracks down the gallery’s curator who bears a resemblance to the man descending the stairwell she saw in her vision. When she meets him and asks him about the dead girl, he turns hostile and asks to be left alone.

Soon Virginia sees and buys the magazine that appeared in her vision. However, the magazine is less than a month old. Luca deduces that the photograph of the girl is from an older photograph, taken perhaps when she was alive. They also discover that the photo on the magazine was a cutout from a larger photograph where the girl was standing next to a horse.

A trip to a stable reveals that the horse belonged to the curator of the gallery. The photo was taken in a horse show that happened after Francesco had left on his business trip. The fact that the girl was alive after Francesco left for his business trip becomes his alibi and exonerates him.

At this stage, Luca comes to the realization that Virginia’s visions are not from the past but are premonitions of events that are yet to occur. Next, Virginia gets an anonymous call with a woman’s voice that claims to know the facts about the murder of Francesco’s former lover. The person on the call asks Virginia to meet her at a certain address.

Virginia takes a yellow cab, which she has also seen in her vision, to the address where danger awaits her. The missing pieces of the entire puzzle, which involves Virginia’s visions, the old woman, Francesco’s dead lover, and perhaps Francesco himself, will unfold as the movie comes to its chilling, unpredictable end.

The sets and cinematography are extremely interesting. In typical Giallo fashion, lavish mansion rooms with bright flashy indoor decor like red wallpapers, red lamps, and strange ornaments are used to set the tone. There are also some dark scenes that use shadow lighting techniques seen in noir scenes. Seven Notes in Black is an absorbing paranormal mystery thriller. The Tamil thriller, Nooravathu Naal (1984), which was also remade in Hindi as 100 Days (1991), is loosely based on the screenplay of this movie. It is certainly worth watching.