Lots of potential, but the writing/story is the downfall. Good music, and some decent acting and scenes.What we have here is a bunch of characters stuck in a house. Some decent acting, some not so great. The main problem is the writing. These characters do not all come together in the story. Some of the characters interact and its great. Like when the killer plays the piano and there is a dream sequence. Great music and great scene. The rest of the story just does not add up. There's a couple of cops, that add up to zero. The professor, doctor, the caretaker and his girlfriend all did very little and their acting was poor. The married couple were decent actors and had decent screen time. The killer was interesting. But all these characters needed to add up to something. It didn't.What saves this movie is that it built some kind of atmosphere, or anticipation of suspense. It had some great cinematography and music.Rating is a C, or 5 stars. Better story and acting this could have been a 7 or even 8.

I originally bought this movie thinking it would be a giallo, which it is not, though clearly it is informed by such. It is actually an old- fashioned Old Dark House type of film. A motley band of characters are forced to assemble in an old creepy mansion on a dark and stormy night. Farley Granger is fabulous as a murderer, held captive by the police (the Police Inspector is great, too). A seance evokes what is evidently a ghost, and then spooky happenings ensue. It's the kind of a movie where everything seems creepy, but then not much actually happens. There are some acts of violence, even killings, but it's no gore fest. Go into it expecting heaps of atmosphere and not much else.

Being in the mood to watch a Giallo film,I started to take a look at a mountain of gialli DVDs.Getting near the end of the pile,I spotted a Giallo which I had heard Kim Newman & Alan Jones mention on a DVD commentary,which led to me getting ready to find out what is creeping in the dark.The plot:Arresting homicidal manic Spike on a busy road,police officers Sam and Inspector Wright get set to take Spike back to the police station. Preparing to put Spike in the car,the police are stopped in their tracks,when a bad storm causes the road to become flooded.Talking to all of the other drivers stranded on the road,Sam and Wright decide that they will take Spike and the guests to a near by mansion,where they can all stay for the night.Originally expecting the decaying mansion to be empty,the cops and drivers are shocked to find that it is inhabited by Joe.Attempting to make themselves comfortable in the mansion,the group are disappointed to find that the flood has destroyed the phone service in the area.Bored out of their minds,the residences of the mansion decide that the best way to pass the time is not to play pass the parcel,but to hold séance for the former owner of the mansion,who is rumoured to have had an interest in the occult.View on the film:Opening with a blunt stop/start credit sequence,writer/director Mario Colucci & cinematographer Giuseppe Aquari casts the film against a deep blue atmosphere,which along with subtly showing the mansion "drowning" in the flood,also creates a sharp,haunting atmosphere,as Colucci reveals something mysterious to be lurking in the corners of the mansion.Backed by a slithering score from Angelo Francesco Lavagnino,Colucci gradually scatters the hidden secrets of the mansion across the screen with ultra-stylised first person camera moves,which allow the viewer to feel the full sense of insanity gripping each of the unlucky guests.Keeping the film locked either on the road or in the mansion,the screenplay by Colucci attempts to cross the murder mystery elements with the Giallo and Supernatural Horror genres. Whilst Colucci does very well at using the Supernatural Horror edge to give the title a final sting,he sadly struggles to build any sense of the central mystery progressing,with each of the thinly-drawn characters appearing to have hardly any interest in actually uncovering the secrets of the mansion,which along with including some ill-fitting Giallo murder scenes leads to this being a film that sadly creeps back into the dark.

Well, I'm a massive fan of Italian horror; particularly Giallo and Gothic horror, so I was looking forward to this given that it's meant to be a sort of cross-over between the two. However, my hopes were dashed as Something is Creeping in the Dark is one boring and poorly made film! I spent an hour and a half watching this film, and yet I really have very little to say about it. The plot is wafer thin and simply focuses on the idea of a bunch of strangers being holed up in a spooky old house for the night. However, they're not the only ones there are some ghostly presence is there too! That's it really. The attempts to build up the characters and their relationships all fall flat, and all that is left to admire is the atmosphere; which isn't exactly anything to write home about as it's a carbon copy of the atmosphere in any number of similar films and director Mario Colucci fails to bring anything new to the table. The film was obviously made on a low budget and there certainly is worse films out there - but I seriously can see no reason to bother tracking this oddity down as there's many, many better films out there too!