Long lost in a prolonged rights battle and unseen for years, Dario Argento's Four Flies On Grey Velvet may come from his most consistently inspired period but it's still such thin and often tedious stuff you'd half suspect he was keeping it hidden himself out of embarrassment until you realise that he's happy enough for the far worse Phantom of the Opera and The Card Player to still be out there.<br /><br />The chief problem is the disjointed and unconvincing plotting, but Michael Brandon's insipid performance as the passive unlikeable and uninterestingly passive musician being blackmailed after accidentally killing someone shows up just how rickety this one is without a charismatic or proactive figure to hold it together. It's not without its compensations and a couple of striking pieces of imagery – a recurring sequence of a Saudi execution and an ultra-slow motion car crash – although Argento seems to be expending far more energy and visual flair into purely expositionary shots like letters being delivered or phone calls being made than the surprisingly few setpieces. Too often he relies on cheap gimmickry, be it Jean-Pierre Marielle's gay private eye who has never solved a case or the old 'image caught on dead person's retina' plot device, while the main character treads water. The less said about the clumsy comedy (much of which comes from brutally beating an Arab postman), the better.<br /><br />There's an appealing performance from Francine Racette that partially offsets Mimsy Farmer's hysterical overacting and a cameo from Bud Spencer that briefly threatens to liven things up but it's far more forgettable than it has any right to be in that unwelcome I-think-I'm-dropping-off-to-sleep kind of way.