Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

****SPOILERS**** Great atmospherics keeps the movie "The Fifth Cord" from putting its audience to sleep with the plot at times making no sense at all as well as those who ended up being murdered in it. It all started at a New Years Eve party where all of the victims as well as their killer were attending. It's downtrodden and drunk reporter Andrea Bild,Franco Nero, or Mister Bill as he's called all throughout the film who ends up doing the work that the local police are supposed to do in finding the killer. The deranged killer who mails audio recordings to the police about his crimes as well as amputate the fingers of his victims in some kind of sick rituals on his part.There's also Mister Bill's estranged wife Helena, Silvia Monti, who by her standing by her man-Mister Bill-despite all the abuse she takes from him makes her a target of the masked, with what looked like a sock pulled over his head, killer. It's Mister Bill who soon discovers that only the people who attended that New Years Eve Party were the ones who ended up being murdered with their fingers chopped off by their killer. What'e even more amazing is that the killer for some strange reason choose Tuesday as the day of the week to murder them! It takes a while for Mister Bill to realize who the killer is but by then it's almost too late for him. That's when the masked killer ends up crashing into his wife's house and threatening to not only murder her but her 6 years old son Tony as well! ****SPOILERS***** With her estranged husband Mister Bill coming to her and Tony's rescue the killer who seemed to have, like a trapezes artist, excellent acrobatic abilities turned out to be a hard nut to crack or catch. That's until he lost his footing and fell down some 50 feet from the deserted factory loft landing flat on his back. It's then that we discover who the hell he or for a moment, with what looked like his face heavily and cosmetically made up, she is. And as we and Mister Bill also learn is that all his killings were for sheer revenge. But to throw the police and Mister Bill off his tracks he murdered four other persons who had nothing at all to do with his hang-up, the person who set the crazy guy off, only just to try to cover his tracks.

An exceptional thriller boasting some of the classiest production values of any Giallo. Franco Nero plays a drunken news reporter who finds himself in a lot of trouble with his bosses and the police when people around him start to get killed off. Is he the killer or is he the next victim? Director Luigi Bazzoni (who also had a hand in the script) keeps us guessing until the very end. Bazzoni's direction is dynamite, aided a lot by Vittorio Storaro's stunning photography. There are very few wasted shots in this film. Ennio Morricone's creepy score is another asset. All the performers, beginning with Nero, are great. Nero is best at playing these types of weary (in this case perpetually hungover) outsiders. The strong supporting cast includes Wolfgang Preiss as a wily cop, Renato Romano as a less than ethical doctor and Pamela Tiffin as Nero's free-spirited girlfriend.

A stylish, atmospheric giallo. Great score, great locations, superb cinematography by the great Storaro. The story, however, is quite muddled, but here, the mood makes up for that to a large extent. The cheesiest moments are the killings, where the cinematography jarringly becomes quite sloppy and day/night continuity goes out the window. This film makes me more curious about Luigi Bazzonis Footprints On The Moon/Le Orme, which I came across on VHS in a second-hand store many years ago. I was intrigued by the cover and the summary on the box, but I stupidly did not buy it. Regretting that the day after, I went there again and it was gone. Now my hope lies with Blue Underground, may they soon release it on DVD. Back to The Fifth Cord, its interesting to watch the blocking of some dialog scenes. What could easily have become, in a lesser director and cinematographers hands, simple crosscutting between two talking heads, here often becomes beautifully composed wide shots, sometimes with a dolly, sometimes static, using the rooms, spaces and architecture in a very cinematic way, and with great variety of the framing. A great lesson for aspiring filmmakers.

I like giallo as a genre but I must admit that I found 'The Fifth Cord' to be very difficult to stay interested in. Half-way through I began to get bored, and by the end when the identity of the killer was revealed and their motive explained, all I could do was shrug and rewind. I can appreciate Franco Nero as much as the next guy, but even his utter coolness can't keep this one from a one way ticket to snoozeville. Nero plays an alcoholic journalist attempting to solve a series of odd murders in which he himself is a suspect. The whole movie has a second-hand Argento feel to it, but it just meanders along in a dull and uninteresting fashion. I would only recommend this to super giallo buffs who must see every movie of this kind ever made. The rest of you shouldn't bother, as it is a disappointing example of the genre, and really has nothing but Nero going for it. Too bad.