Unavailable on DVD for years (at least in any respectable non-truncated version), Four Flies finally surfaced on home video in the UK in 2012, forty years after it first played in cinemas. Argento devotees had long feared that the film was lost. That would have been a real shame, because it is rather brilliant. The last of the Animals Trilogy, Four Flies sees Argento at his most stylish and uninhibited to that point. There are several astonishing moments, with the car crash/decapitation/bullet time sequence deserving special mention. This features the first instance (at least in feature film) of following a bullets trajectory, thanks to the aide of special high-speed cameras. Truly ground-breaking stuff. It is arty but not overly so, and the acting a shade better than you would typically expect to find in an Argento film. The Ennio Morricone score, constantly-moving camera and the well-thought-out set-pieces are all there, of course. A must-watch for those who have yet to seek it out.
