The Bird with the Crystal Plumage
Why this pick
A sleek early giallo with a traumatised witness, black-gloved murders, fashionably modern spaces, and an investigation built around elusive visual clues.
A FILM WORTH A CLOSER LOOKTHE FEATURE PRESENTATION
IF THIS ONE STAYED WITH YOU
Keep the feeling.
SIMILAR PICKS / A PERSONAL CONNECTION
Why this pick
A sleek early giallo with a traumatised witness, black-gloved murders, fashionably modern spaces, and an investigation built around elusive visual clues.
Why this pick
Matches its decadent European glamour, erotic unease, red-herring plotting, and mounting suspicion around a woman whose past may be catching up with her.
Why this pick
Its dreamlike nightmare imagery, stylish 1970s surface, and unstable line between trauma, conspiracy, and murder make it an especially close tonal companion.
Why this pick
A moody, morally murky giallo where schoolroom secrets, a concealed past, and carefully rationed clues drive the dread rather than graphic spectacle.
Why this pick
Offers a more procedural take on giallo: affluent families, incriminating appearances, shifting testimony, and a murder case whose apparent solution keeps destabilising.
Finding the atmosphere, tension and little details that made this one stay with you.
Our curator needs a little longer. Please come back shortly.
No confident matches yet. Try our personal film finder.
01 / THE STORY
Two sisters, Kitty and Evelyn, are cursed by a family painting depicting a hundred year-cycle in which a Red Queen is raised from the dead to kill seven times. Hoping to end the cycle, their grandfather, Tobias, orders the painting removed from their sight. Years later Kitty accidentally kills Evelyn during a fight. The death is covered up by their older sister, Franziska, and everyone, including Tobias, is told that Evelyn immigrated to the United States. This doesn't sit well with Kitty, who is willing to allow Franziska to cover up the murder but feels overwhelming guilt. When their grandfather dies from a fear induced heart attack, a series of murders begin to occur around Kitty, all of which appear to have been caused by a red cloaked Evelyn. The police begin to suspect that Kitty and her married lover Martin are the perpetrators of the murders, especially after Martin's institutionalized wife is found dead. It's eventually revealed that Kitty had only stunned Evelyn, who was also not her biological sister - Tobias had adopted her as an additional way of ending the hundred year-cycle. Evelyn's true murderer was Franziska, who murdered her at the start of an impulsive plan to be the only person to inherit Tobias' vast fortune. Resentful that she was not the main beneficiary despite providing his daily care, Franziska recruited some of Kitty's co-workers, who were unhappy of Kitty's station and preferential treatment by Martin. After murdering her female accomplices Franziska tricks Kitty into entering the basement of Tobias' mansion, where she tries to slowly drown her via flooding. Realizing the truth, Martin confronts Franziska and gets a confession, only for the woman to be shot by her own husband, Herbert, who had thus far been complicit with her actions. Herbert then leads the police to Kitty's location, saving her from death, but drowning himself in the process.
Showing saved details. Some information may be out of date.
02 / FACES IN THE FRAME
Lulu Palm
Herbet Zieler

Kitty Wildenbrück
Martin Hoffmann