10 Real Reasons Movie Characters Seemed So Sinister
6. Renato Scarpa Couldn't Speak English & Read His Dialogue Without Emotion - Don't Look Now
Nicolas Roeg's masterful 1973 horror film Don't Look Now employs a number of clever tricks to keep the audience thrown off-kilter - namely ingeniously non-linear editing and surreal imagery - but also utilised one low-fi solution to keep viewers on edge.
Prolific Italian actor Renato Scarpa plays the movie's inspector investigating the serial killer running rampant in Venice, and who is highly suspicious of protagonist John Baxter (Donald Sutherland).
Much has been made over the years of Scarpa's odd, disquieting performance, speaking to Baxter in an unusual vocal cadence that just seems a bit wrong.
The reason for this? Actor Scarpa couldn't actually speak English: he simply read the lines phonetically as they were written with no idea of each word's individual meaning.
As a result, he wasn't able to place emphasis or tone anywhere, stripping his dialogue of its expected affect and in turn only enhancing the film's overpowering strangeness.
Whether Roeg cast Scarpa with this plan in mind or it was simply a happy accident is unknown, but it's certainly effective either way.