At the Mansion of Madness

Down to the Cellar is a short film from Czech filmmaker Jan Svankmajer that I’ve grown fond of. I remember feeling a little underwhelmed when I first watched it, but it stayed with me, for some reason, and now it’s one of my favorite short films (I wonder if there’s a name for that kind of art). It was the same with Svankmajer’sAlice (Neco Z Alenky), a creepy vision of Lewis Carroll’sAlice in Wonderland complete with Svankmajer’sdisturbing but fascinating characteristics. For me, the last quarter of Alicebecame a battle to stay awake. I thought Alicejust wasn’t the film for me, but that couldn’t have been more untrue. Alice ended up planting itself in my mind before slowly taking its hold on me, and, as if a bug had just bit me, I spontaneously ordered off for the DVD and, on a whim, read for the first time Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. As those of you that follow my At the Mansion of Madness fan page on Facebook might have noticed, I have endeavored to watch as many AIW movies as I can slowly but surely come across. This is all primarily thanks to Jan Svankmajer’s vision of AIW. Not bad for a movie that I struggled to stay awake during on first viewing.

Down to the Cellar feels a lot like a precursor to Svankmajer’sAlice, for superficial reasons, and is most certainly recommended to fans of that movie. It features a little girl’s (Monika Belo-Cabanová) apprehensive journey into a deep, dark cellar to load her basket with potatoes from a crate in a certain room 37. This would’ve been a simple task, had the story been set in reality, but in Svankmajer’s world it’s an odd adventure into an underground nightmare where whatever tricks descending a stairway into an old, dark, spooky cellar plays on the imagination manifest and take form.

The entire story is told in a dialogue-free fashion, not counting the cat meows or the usual exaggerated oral sounds, which are a nuance of Svankmajer’sthat seem related to his frequent obsession with focusing on food. The little girl’s responses to the situations and characters she meets are translated mainly through facial expressions and silent gestures, most notably her head shaking, denoting her fearful apprehension to the beckoning gestures and offerings of the old man (Aleksandr Letko) and old woman (Ol’ga Vronská), who, despite possessing a weird unease, don’t seem to pose any kind of definite threat, but a feeling of mistrust still pervades.

A nice avant-garde approach to exploring imagined fears, paranoia, anxieties, and mistrust, Down to the Cellar could be thought of as a possible Cold War allegory. I think the use of coal (the woman using coal as a primary ingredient to bake cakes and the old man using coal to blanket himself in bed) in this film was saying something about coal pollution and its health concerns, as coal was a primary source of heating as well as a power source for industrial plants in communist Eastern Europe during the Cold War, and the result was a toxic pollution that even contaminated the tap water and was a major health hazard.

Of course, being a Svankmajer film, there’s puppetry and stop motion animation (although less than usual in this case) to make this dark journey a fun and perplexing one. It won’t blow any one’s socks off, but it does somehow lay dormant in the memory for a while before being fondly recalled and revisited.

A reviewer (Timothy Damon) on the IMDB very aptly described the little girl’s task in this movie as being Sisyphean. My abnormally lengthy time in college, for both undergrad and grad school, has felt very Sisyphean, and although it is finally coming to a close this semester, I had many times felt like the little girl at the end of Down to the Cellar, descending the dark stairs once again, having to do it all over again.

Jess Franco could film movies faster than I can write reviews for them. His films can sometimes have an overwhelming low quality feel to them, making them difficult to digest for the majority. The natural location shots, haunting tone, memorable and well-chosen female actors (Franco definitely had an eye for female leads that just seemed to resonate with the camera lens), and Franco’sbrand of bizarre surrealism and eroticism don’t seem to be enough to save the films for many, but they are nonetheless a huge hit for others. Al otro lado del espejo contains all of the aforementioned elements and yet has a higher-than-usual quality feel to it, most likely due to the terrific acting and screen presence from its leading lady (Emma Cohen of Horror Rises from the Tomb and Night of the Walking Dead) and a believable tragic story.

Jazz pianist/singer Ana (Cohen) is profoundly affected by her father’s (Howard Vernon) suicide shortly after her engagement. After calling off the wedding, Ana leaves her homeland on Madeira Island only to undergo several failed relations when she intermittently becomes hypnotically driven to kill any man that becomes close to her.

It isn’t just enough to say that Ana is haunted by images of her dead father in the mirror. She doesn’t just see him, but she finds herself at times in the mirror, in Franco’s looking glass world. It can also be viewed as Ana’s mental reflection on her emotional trauma. The memory of her father’s suicide driven by his stubborn disapproval of her marrying and leaving him is intertwined with Ana’s psyche, manifesting itself when she murders any man that shows any sexual interest in her. Ana’s traumatization, spurned the moment of her outcry into the mirror, yields a malediction that could either be viewed as some sort of curse or spell from her father’s ghost or played off as the result of a kind of posttraumatic stress disorder. If taken at face value, the goose bumps inducing ending, made more dramatic with church bells signifying the wedding that never was, reveals which one happens to be the case.

The story is versatile and multilayered. Each time Ana stabs and kills a love interest, it usually feels like the end of an act or episode. After murdering her jazz friend, Bill (Robert Woods), someone seemingly new, a stage play director Miguel (Ramiro Oliveros), who Ana appears to already be acquainted with, is sporadically mixed into the story. Likewise, an impeded attempt at Ana killing herself yields the introduction of a new female friend, Carla (the majestic Alice Arno). With Miguel and Carla, we don’t see when or how they were introduced to Ana, yielding the notorious “who’s-this-person-all-of-a-sudden?” feeling. It makes it seem a little fragmented but not necessarily disjointed, as the story does maintain continuity with leitmotifs and staying focused on its eye catching lead character and her tragic journey that stems from her past trauma.

The characters of Pipo (Philippe Lemaire) and Tina (Franςoise Brion), a vacationing couple in Madeira, are introduced late in the story, the start of a new act (act 3 maybe?), when Ana goes back to Madeira Island for the first time since her father died. The tone shifts and the story seems like it might be a little distracted from its initial focus. This is not necessarily an offense because it corresponds to Ana going through personal changes and new developments after surviving suicide, as she claims to want to rediscover Madeira as a tourist, suggesting a fresh start, which is what the film is starting to feel like at this point. Pipo’s immediate interest in her, despite the fact he’s supposed to be with Tina, is consistent with Cohen’sattention grabbing screen presence.

I couldn’t help noticing that Pipo’s enthusiasm for the Brisa beverage he raves about to Ana, Tina, and Carla seems too exaggerated to not be an advertisement for Brisa, a tropical soft drink found only in Madeira. “Brissas, cooler than ice!” This forty-one year old product placement still works, because I’ve found myself interested in obtaining some. (here’s a place where you can order it: http://www.madeiratoyou.com/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=42)

Some of the extended Jazz numbers might take some out of the movie, but I came to appreciate them a lot more on subsequent viewings, especially after realizing how downplayed they are in the French and Italian versions of this film. It helps to be a fan of ‘70s era Euro club scenes and jazz music because it’s one of this film’s major focuses. Like Franco’sVenus in Furs,the lead is a cool jazz musician, and the musical performances feel like nifty music videos, which, although superfluous to the story, manage to be essential to the viewing experience.

What fascinates me most with Al otro lado del espejo is the way it integrates a poppy jazz song “Madeira Love”, written by, I’m assuming, the film’s soundtrack composer Adolfo Waitzman, into the story. The song is conceived, born, and eventually realized in the film, coming from the mind of its lead. It has two dominant melodies, a solemn downbeat passage (the verse) and a joyful upbeat melody (the chorus), that act as leitmotifs, emerging at different times under different guises. The song is also performed in full by Ana and her band at a turning point in the story. Just as a recurring melody can create an identity all its own for a story/world created for an opera, musical, film, TV series, or video game, the recognizable phrases in “Madeira Love” are a memorable thematic characterization of the film.

Cohen’seyes have a natural sadness to them, attributed to a slight exaggerated outer downward slant in her upper eyelids, which lends a somber tone that compliments Ana’s tragedy. The movie’s occasional melancholic tone does, nonetheless, feel nicely balanced with some of the more colorful and upbeat aspects of the film, Alice Arno’s poolside dancing, to give an example; and Ana even has a few chipper moments.

It should be mentioned that Emma Cohen won the Best Actress Award from the Círculo de Escritores Cinematográficos for her performance in Al otro lado del espejo; and the full version of “Madeira Love”, performed by Ana and her band is a treat. However, in the French version, the voice is different during this song and doesn’t sound as good, and, sadly, this entire song performance is entirely cut out in the Italian version.

I’ve seen all three versions of this film, and I think the Spanish version (the one being reviewed) should be considered the definitive version, as it is the director’s cut. The alternate French, Le miroir obscéne, and Italian, Lo specchio del piacere, versions of this film seem to be the most viewed on account of usually being the easiest to come across. They differ significantly from the Spanish version, with the biggest difference being that they do away with Ana’s father committing suicide, replacing that aspect with Ana’s sister, played by Lina Romay, killing herself. Ana is instead haunted by images of her dead sister, who doesn’t exist in the Spanish version, in the mirror, committing obscene, explicit acts of sexual intercourse. As much as I don’t disagree with seeing Lina Romay, I don’t think this works as well and seems more like an excuse to insert hardcore porn shots into the film, cheapening it and being a possible reason for why this film hasn’t been more widely discovered and praised until more recently. I would recommend seeing the Spanish version, more than once, and only watch the other two out of curiosity (the DVD containing both Spanish and French versions can be bought here: http://www.artusfilms.com/le-miroir-obscene).

This film does have some parallels to A Virgin Among the Living Dead, most noticeable the spiritual connection between father and daughter, yet Al otro lado del espejo feels surprisingly down to Earth in comparison, likely attributed to the heavier focus on realistic relations between the characters. Howard Vernon, like Paul Muller in AVATLD, appears in the guise of his hanged self before his daughter, to creepy effect. An interesting difference is Vernon’s protruding tongue, which does happen sometimes in the case of strangulation by suspension hanging, as opposed to the instant death caused by cervical spine fracture with drop hanging, a method used more for execution that is less common in suicide.

Anyone feeling content with having only seen the French or Italian version should revisit this film by watching the restored Spanish version. The former versions really short change viewers both musically and conceptually and likely won’t strike a chord with harder critics. I wouldn’t call the alternate versions terrible in comparison, because I had felt pretty satisfied with what I experienced with Lo specchio del piacere and couldn’t quite understand why it was insisted that I watch Al otro lado del espejo as well, but after viewing it I realized it’s because the original intention is diluted with the alternate storyline, and to say the Spanish version works a lot better is not an overstatement.

Lightning, angry mobs, grave robbing, and a criminal’s brain, like so many Frankenstein offshoots / spinoffs / parodies, Lady Frankenstein owes more to James Whale’s classic 1931 horror film than Mary Shelley’s 1818 literary masterpiece. Despite its many fitting references to, and retreading to an extent, some of the plot points to its trendsetting predecessor, Lady Frankenstein is far from feeling like a gory, colored remake, primarily thanks to the addition of Frankenstein’s biological daughter, Tania (Rosalba Neri), a little novelty with a lot of potential, like reimagining the classic 1931 movie with the doctor’s attractive but even more ambitious daughter written into the story.

In a time when females were grossly underrepresented in science, Tania Frankenstein shatters what must’ve been a prominent stereotype, enduring her pursuit as a surgeon, even when faced with sexist instructors at the University; as she puts it, “the professors have a lot of old fashioned ideas about a woman’s place.” When she returns home from the University after becoming a licensed surgeon, her father, Baron Frankenstein (Joseph Cotten), expresses admiration for her accomplishments, and yet he and his assistant, Dr. Charles Marshall (Paul Müller), still treat her as if their work involving cadavers is too much for her delicate senses to fathom. They seem to not want to involve her in their gruesome work, but, to their surprise, she’s all for it. They attempt to make her think they are working with animals, but she has been thinking along the same lines as her father the entire time, being more interested in human transplants; “I am my father’s daughter.” Not only does she thoroughly understand her father’s work, she ends up refining it.

The movie’s featured Creature (Peter Whiteman) is admittedly silly looking, one of the film’s few flaws, but still gross and gruesome to look at. It does not become a hostile killer on account of being abused, misunderstood, physically abhorred, or shunned by its creator, as the more traditional Frankenstein myths dictate. The Creature is instead pissed from the get go, killing onsite its creator, Baron Frankenstein, before fleeing the castle to wreak havoc on the countryside. The idea is that the Creature is out to destroy those who’ve had some involvement in its creation, but, because it has the brain of a killer, it does happen to kill anyone it comes across, slasher movie style, barring a familiar incident when it spares a helpless child, a type of reimagined reference to the memorable scene from Frankenstein(1931), involving the Creature and the little girl by the lake, suggesting the idea that the monster would not intentionally harm a child (it did purposely kill a child in the book, though).

The Creature Tanya’s father created is damaged, flawed, an out-of-control experiment that needs to be taken care of. She takes it upon herself to create the perfect “manmade” life form to stop her father’s creation, not only, in her mind, to right a wrong but to protect and honor her father’s good name, correct the defects in his work, salvage his credibility, procure him his due fame, and create for herself an exceptional lover.

In order to do this, she plans to create the perfect being with the brain and heart of her newlywed husband, Charles, and the body she desires from Thomas (Marino Masé), the moronic servant with a childlike innocence that’s easily corrupted by the dynamic curves of Rosalba Neri, in one of the movie’s more naughty murder scenes.

Knowing of his unconditional love for her, Tania is able to manipulate and corrupt her husband, Charles, in aiding her misdeeds. His voice of reason is crushed under the weight of his lust for Tania, twisting Charles into one of Müller’s best villainous roles since Nightmare Castle. Despite their tainted romance, his feelings for her do come off as very sincere: “I’d rather give my life to you than to the hangman.” I can’t say the same for her feelings towards him, which are more on the sociopathic side. It all culminates into the type of monster-meets-monster final battle in the vein of the Universal monster mash movies.

There are so many notable actors to mention here that it would result in an overly lengthy article to do them all justice.

Joseph Cotten and Paul Müllerare exceptional as Dr. Frankenstein and his assistant Charles, respectively; their dramatic arguments work, their relation and acquaintanceship as colleagues is convincing, and their scientific jargon manages to avoid being corny, to an extent, and is actually believable; “the hypothalamus is damaged.” I’m not sure if I understood all of the technical details, but the surgical scenes are without a doubt terrific and some of the best any Frankenstein fans could ask for.

Other supporting characters include grave robber Lynch (Herbert Fux) and police captain Harris (Mickey Hargitay), who has it out for Lynch in what is an entertaining cat-and-mouse game between the two. The way Lynch is always taking swigs of booze is a little annoying, but he is supposed to be an obnoxious and vulgar man.

I loved him as a charismatic sadist in both Delirium and The Bloody Pit of Horror, and although this is not his most memorable role, Hargitay does carry over his usual charisma as the police captain, the only one able to make sense of the madness going on, talking in a humoring, condescending tone to those he knows are guilty and lying to him. He seems to always be just slightly shy of the evidence he needs to prove their guilt. Like many of the films Hargitay is in, Lady Frankenstein does feature The Balsorano Castle, a filming location featured in many European movies, and it makes a great Frankenstein castle, here. I am curious to know why Mickey Hargitaywas in so many movies that featured the Balsorano Castle. Whenever I see this castle in any film, I think of Mickey Hargitay and whenever I see Mickey Hargitay, I think of Balsorano Castle. I came across a DVD of The Jane Mansfield Story the other day, and (Hargitay having been married to Mansfield) that castle was the first thing I thought of.

What’s most important is that the film is a lot of fun, watchable, and impressively gory for its time. Not a gory effect seems fake or unimpressive. The elaborate antique sets and era costumes that usually accompany the gothic horror piece are fabulous, especially Neri’s plethora of gothic maiden fashions, as well as her exquisite spiral curl hairdo.

(In this film, Rosalba Neri was dubbed by Linda Gary, of He-Man and theMasters of the Universe fame, who was a prominent voice actress. This is an interesting delight for me, being a MOU fan, especially since I recognize Evil-Lyn’s voice anytime Tania gets excitable or angry.)

Lady Frankenstein is not as campy as Elvira would have you believe, and it’s recommended to fans of Frankenstein movies in general, Hammer Horror, Universal monster movies, and ‘60s and ‘70s gothic Italian horror. Many have probably already seen it at one point or another, being that Lady Frankenstein was included in so many horror DVD bargain sets. There’s a great looking restored version of Lady Frankenstein that’s included in Roger Corman’s Cult Classics – All-Night Marathon: Vampires, Mummies & Monsters two-disc DVD set that also features The Velvet Vampire, Time Walker, and Grotesque. At first, I wasn’t too sure what connection Roger Corman had to Lady Frankenstein other than it was directed by Mel Welles, who starred in Roger Corman’sThe Little Shop of Horrors, but apparently Corman’s company at the time, New World Pictures, provided the additional financial backing the film neededin order to be made.

© At the Mansion of Madness

My good friend, and fan of this site, Terence, has a cool Eurocult Tumblr I just found out about yesterday, Chicks with Candles! Not only does it live up to its title, celebrating the beloved gothic film trope of beautiful maidens with candelabras from movies like Tragic Ceremony and Baba Yaga, the page also features posters, cover art, deleted scenes, trivia, interesting but concise observations on Eurocult films like Jess Franco’sLorna the Exorcist, and, most importantly, a lot of attractive films I’ve never heard of but really want to look at. I believe that me and Terence share an affinity for the use of lit candles as a mood enhancing aesthetic on film sets, and it's an elegant idea for a Tumblr page.

Check it out by clicking the delectable image of Rosalba Neri below, and be prepared to stay a while!

“Do you hear the clarion call? It’s calling out to one and all.” –Falconer

The horror blogging clarion call sounds again! That’s right; it’s almost time for Blood Sucking Geek’s second annual Ultimate Gore-a-thon 2014 -- Another Splatterific Extravaganza! I hope a fraction of you fantabulously awesome readers remember this event from last year, when nine sites came together to embark on an ultimate gore-centric blog-a-thon! The event will run from June 15th to the 21st. Including At the Mansion of Madness, there are, so far, twelve sites. The other blogs/sites taking part in the upcoming Gore-a-thon are as follows:

90s Horror Movies

Blood Sucking Geek

Candy-Coated Razor Blades

Craft Fear

The Info Zombie

Love Horror

Midnight Cinephile

Movies at Dog Farm

Slasher Studios

Terrorphoria

Wide Weird World of Cult Films

The last film Lucio Fulci ever worked on, The Wax Mask,was supposed to have been the grand collaboration between Fulci and Dario Argento, had it not been for Fulci’s tragic death some few weeks before filming was to begin. The project came about after Argento had approached Fulci at a 1994 film festival in Rome and suggested they work together on a new film. This was more of a sympathetic gesture from Argento who had intentions of reviving the spirits of an ailing Fulci in a wheelchair, who, at the time, had not worked on a new film in years. The two were never the best of friends, as Argento always thought Fulci imitated his filmmaking style (the separate camps weren’t only with the fan base it would seem).

Differences aside, they mutually agreed upon recreating House of Wax with Fulcidirecting. Along with Daniele Stroppa(The House of Clocks), they wrote the script for The Wax Mask, an alternate take on the wax museum myth that doesn’t necessarily feel like a remake of House of Wax (1953), even if it is.

With Fulci’s death occuring shortly before filming (out of respect, Argento paid for the funeral arrangements), the project was temporarily put on hold before Argento offered the directorial duties to effects maestro Sergio Stivaletti, who had already been working on special effects for the film. Stivaletti, actually having long been hoping for a directorial debut, accepted the position with only two weeks to work out pre-production (casting, locations, etc.) before shooting began.

According to the book Profondo Argento: The Man, the Myths, & the Magic by Alan Jones, Stivaletti did somewhat revise Fulci and Stroppa’s original screenplay, giving it more of an alchemy theme. The exhibited wax-encapsulated corpses, as seen previously in House of Wax (1953), were replaced with wax victims with an even more disturbing state of being, a nice edgy alternate take.

The Wax Maskwas intended to be an extremely modern film with a classic gothic horror style, and to this end it succeeds. It is often, and understandably so, compared to Hammer horror films, due to its period gothic style, but with its gratuitous but still essential heavy gore FX and use of colorful, contrasting lighting on dark sets, a laSuspiria and Inferno, there ends up being something a lot more Italian about it.

I wasn’t too crazy about the digital effects, which were considered highly modern for the time, but they appear dated today, and not in a charming way. The practical effects still hold up, though. As an Italian horror film in the ‘90s, not only are the gore elements satisfying and imaginative, Stivaletti’sapplication of practical effects is impressive and more technically accomplished in comparison to some of the film's more schlocky Italian horror predecessors in the ‘80s.

The symphonic soundtrack is total ‘90s Hollywood, which does fit with the material, but I wouldn’t have minded something that stood out more, something a little catchier, with a familiar theme I can recall and hum. Don’t get me wrong, it’s good, but at this moment, I can’t remember any themes to the soundtrack.

What harms the film the most is the unfortunate dubbing, which makes certain actors unfairly appear terrible, more so since they can get rather loquacious. This is nothing new with a dubbed Italian film, of course, and I’ve become a huge fan of dubbing, particularly from the legendary, recognizable voices in Nick Alexander’s dubbing team, but here it’s a big distraction, especially to those who are not used to it and will likely find themselves snickering.

The film’s moody, gothic ambiance and style does shine through as a superficial attraction, and yet the dynamic story and its continuity do succeed rather well (at least I thought so), barring some pacing problems. Viewers are left in the dark for a large portion of running time with regards to the opening flashback crime scene of a violent murder aftermath in Paris and its connection to characters in present day Rome: Sonia Lafont (Romina Mondello), who witnessed the brutal murders as a little girl from a killer with a mechanical hand, and Boris Volkoff (Robert Hossein) the wax museum curator, an elegant gentleman who’s also a monster on the inside, both literally and figuratively. The pieces of the puzzle do come together coherently, and somewhat predictably, before leading into an entertaining and dramatic fiery climax that’s like Argento’sInferno meets The Terminator. As much as I love twists, there is a last minute twist that doesn’t make much sense and probably shouldn’t have been included, because it ends up making it very difficult to draw a conclusion. It was almost as if it was trying to meet some kind of twist quota, which can be counterproductive if every twist does not add to the experience.

Fortunately, the set pieces in the wax museum and the secret basement do not disappoint and are half the fun. Cinematographer Sergio Salvati revives the classic Italian horror colorful lighting palette, making the inside of the museum look and feel like something out of Suspiria. Being that this is a wax museum movie it shouldn’t be too surprising where the idols in the museum are sourced from, but there is an added disturbing spin to the wax works (A similar idea was used in House of Wax(2005)).

The Wax Mask also has that fetishistic Eurocult sleaze factor that does feel very ‘70s. When the narrative transports from Paris in the past to present day Rome, we end up in a brothel full of lascivious prostitutes entertaining men. The text on the screen reads “Rome, 12 years later” and a voice-over amusingly repeats the text, as if we can’t read; it’s probably for dramatic effect, but it comes off as a little silly and unnecessary, an example of some of the misguided quirks that hurt the viewing experience a little.

I do still love this movie. All in all, The Wax Mask is good, but sometimes slow, fun that’s not without its flaws. However, it seems to have the general label of “recommended to Italian horror fans only.” Is this like saying Italian horror fans are different, and non-Italian horror fans are normal and therefore will most likely not get it and need not bother with such foreign nonsense? Sounds snobbish, but probably...

© At the Mansion of Madness

Today begins the second annual Ultimate Gore-a-thon 2014 – Another Splatterific Extravaganza, hosted by our partner in crime Blood Sucking Geek!!! Follow these awesome sites for a week of gore-centric mayhem:

90s Horror Movies

Blood Sucking Geek

Candy-Coated Razor Blades

Craft Fear

The Info Zombie

Love Horror

Midnight Cinephile

Movies at Dog Farm

Slasher Studios

Terrorphoria

Wide Weird World of Cult Films

With the French productions The Lustful Amazons (1973) and Les gloutonnes, Jess Franco wrote and directed two brazenly erotic takes on Italy’s own Hercules counterpart Maciste, a recurring cinematic hero from the peplum genre with respectable origins dating back to the silent film era, starting with Cabiria (1914). A different character altogether, Franco’s Maciste, played by Wal Davis, is more of a medieval playboy, adventuring to new lands full of sex hungry Amazons, randy mythical queens, and horny Atlanteans, saving the day, satisfying entire tribes, and living to tell about it.

The Lustful Amazons contains some of the most entertaining comedic sex scenes, with top tier Franco babes Alice Arno, Kali Hansa, and Lina Romay, that are quite arousing to watch, and they manage to keep an otherwise underwhelming film lively enough to sit through with a minimal level of enjoyment. On the other hand, the longer sex interludes in Les gloutonnes manage to drag down what is actually an intriguing erotic fantasy/adventure film. The settings for some of the more detached porn scenes, seemingly edited into the film, are dark and surreal (done with Franco’s tendency for up-close body worship) but couldn’t be more unnecessarily drawn out, even in a Jess Franco film, where I’m usually conditioned for such lengthy interludes.

Les gloutonnes and The LustfulAmazons share a lot of the same cast and were both shot back to back. The production values for both films are on the same level, for the most part, but the low budget costumes and natural locales seem to serve Les gloutonnes better, with the exotic, rocky, almost isolated, Madeiran coastline making for a convincing and even surreal mythical realm. Something about the background ocean immensely compliments the Atlantis theme.

The good and evil dichotomy that is the base of the film’s central conflict is embodied by the benevolent Atlantean queen, Arminda (AliceArno), and her people against the wicked sorceress, Parqua (Kali Hansa) and her accomplice, Caronte, (Robert Woods). Maciste is a sort of chosen champion, commissioned by the magician Cagliostro (Howard Vernon), to aid the refugees in their time of need. Maciste is guided to their land through a mystic water passage by a young nymphet, Bianca (Lina Romay). Needless to say, Maciste’s heroic prowess doesn’t show until much later, as he spends a lot of his time copulating with the queen and her sexy subjects.

With her sinister beauty, gothic fantasy look, and long sinewy figure, Kali Hansa’s evil, dark sorceress, Parqua, has become emblazoned in my memory. She’s like something out of a Frank Frazetta painting.

This one in particular:

She’s initially in some kind of powerless state, a mystical blind lady living alone in a clearing deep in the woods, who’s, in a way, pure evil in the guise of a beautiful woman. When a traveler, Caronte (Woods) comes along and discovers her, he is quite besotted with her and willing to guide her on a journey to some sort of magic spring, which will restore her eyesight and assumedly her power. Caronte, seduced and corrupted by Parqua, aids her in an attempt at conquering the Atlantean refugees and their realm. To achieve this aim, they will need to capture the queen and sacrifice her in a ritual that will summon Parqua’s army of creepy sheet-men, the exact same ones used in Franco’sThe Erotic Rites of Frankenstein, who despite being a near humorous representation of otherworldly hooded beings, actually manage to be quite haunting.

Oddly, comic relief comes in the form of the magician Cagliostro (Vernon) and his buffoon servant, Bigotini (Richard Bigotini). Cagliostro calls on Maciste to send him on his adventurous quest to save the lost race of oversexed Atlanteans. He lives in a castle, but the inside of Cagliostros’ abode, for some reason, reminds me of a hobbit hole. There’s a comedic talking jug that’s not all that funny, but what is really curious is Cagliostro’s magic ball that lets him view what is happening in the realm of the Atlanteans, and like most people, Cagliostro uses it to watch porn, seriously. What makes his magic ball better than the typical porn streaming device is that it can summon up an Atlantean woman, Bianca (Romay) in this case, who’ll willingly go to bed with the user. When Cagliostro’s servant sees this, he abuses the magic ball to summon a girl for himself but mistakenly bites off more than he can chew by accidently conjuring up two women (Franco’sstepdaughter, Caroline Riviere and Pamela Stanford), who take an apprehensive Bigotini to bed and basically tickle him to sleep. It’s a fun scene, and I like the way (Riviere) and (Stanford) each take a turn to wink at the camera after removing their garments.

There are certain dramatic tones in the story. The Atlantean Purpure (Chantal Broquet) betrays her people to Parqua for her love. Purpure’s plan is to use her womanly lasciviousness to lure Maciste to the woods and sexually de-energize him (which you can’t do because he’s freakin’ Maciste) so Parqua can begin her domination. What actually diverts Maciste’s attention instead is the more personal and mental connection he begins to develop with another girl, Marie (Montserrat Prous), curiously another blind character, who is practically the only celibate character in the entire story. The chemistry between Davisand Prous develops a little as Maciste helps Marie to regain her sight in the magic spring. As this distraction has nonetheless driven Maciste’s away from the city of the Atlanteans, Parqua and Caronte are able to kidnap the queen and begin the film’s climactic sacrificial ritual. Will Maciste arrive in time to save the queen? And will viewers care enough amidst all of the intercourse on display?

It’s rather obvious that Les gloutonnes, as it’s known, is missing a number of scenes, as it does feel like there are gaps in the story (at one point Purpure talks about her sister Alba whom I don’t believe we ever get to meet) that were likely replaced with the aforementioned dark, up-close sex scene padding. Its original shooting title was The Erotic Exploits of Maciste in Atlantis, which would likely have been more focused and complete.

It’s reasonable to believe that The Erotic Exploits of Maciste in Atlantiswas modified to become Les Gloutonneswith the additional sex scenes and modern day shots of Alice Arno reading a book in bed, writhing around, and fantasizing about the story that makes up the main narrative of the film (a laThe Hot Nights of Linda (1975)) being added at a different time. I like to think of the sporadic sex tangents as being a part of the narrator’s (Arno’s) sex fantasies that tend to diverge from the story. Because she’s so titillated, it’s like the adventure story in her mind keeps loosing focus to more carnal passions.

A massive thanks goes out to rulesofachia (Terence) and Aloysius 70 for putting together the English subtitles for this curious Franco fantasy/adventure film. It’s still in need of restoration, preferably in the form of The Erotic Exploits of Maciste in Atlantis, yet at this point we can only hope, because as it stands today, its existence is unconfirmed.

© At the Mansion of Madness

Now, I know what you’re thinking: “oh no, he’s reviewing another freaking giallo again,” but this isn’t just another giallo.

Short Night of Glass Dolls, Aldo Lado’s directorial debut, is actually quite the surprise, in that it manages to meet, defy, and exceed expectations right up from its mellow start to its killer climax. It interweaves elements from occult horror and the detective thriller into a nonlinear narrative that has a little bit of a Citizen Kane (1941) format and a plot that’s driven by the interesting mystery of what could’ve befallen its unfortunate protagonist. The explanation is pretty much what you’d expect, but the sheer weirdness and the way it plays out, not to mention the alternate Prague setting, causes Short Night to be refreshingly different from the more common giallo of the early ‘70s and yet still look and feel very much like one.

The success of Rosemary’s Baby (1968) was still freshly permeating its influence around this time, and it’s no surprise that numerous films continued to capitalize on its black magic, occult, and conspiracy themes, and Short Night is no exception, with murders, kidnappings, and sanity breakdowns feeling orchestrated by some sort of secret order, also bringing to mind The Perfume of the Lady in Black (1974).

The more typical Satanism seen in occult horror is eschewed in this case for something a little more arcane and eldritch, with a secret organization of old elitists who, in order to prolong their own lives, use black magic rituals to sacrifice young people, which is supposed to be a sort of underlying cynical message from Aldo Lado about how the young are sent to die in war by the elder generation in order to maintain power. It’s disturbing and depressing but still worthwhile viewing with an exhilarating third act containing one of the weirder and more insane ritual scenes… Two words: geriatric orgy...

Journalist Gregory Moore (Jean Sorel) has found himself transformed into a motionless corpse, although still sentient and with a partially lost memory. Aware of his predicament, Gregory slowly recollects memories of events from the preceding days, while chillin’ in the morgue, as the narrative jumps back and forth from the past to the present. Hoping to remember what has happened to him, Gregory explores his own memories of when he was trying to figure out the mysterious disappearance of his lover, Mira (Barbara Bach). So it’s kind of like an investigation within an investigation. When he starts getting too close to the truth bad things happen. His situation in the morgue is made more interesting and suspenseful thanks to a certain skeptical doctor temporarily foregoing the autopsy and attempting to revive Gregory because it is noticed that the rigor mortis isn’t setting in. Can Gregory figure out the mystery and break out of paralysis before his autopsy?

Aldo Lado said that there is something Kafkaesque about Short Night. I’m still working my way through Franz Kafka The Complete Stories, and so there is probably a lot that I don’t yet understand about what it means to say Kafkaesque other than evoking a sense of bureaucratic nightmares, but the one comparison I can make is that of Kafka’s most famous novella The Metamorphosis, which starts out with the story’s protagonist Gregor Samsa waking up one morning in bed to find that he has inexplicably transformed into an insectoid. An instantaneous interest in the story is catapulted by this simple yet bizarre starting point, and the effect is somewhat similar with Gregory (who also has a similar first name as Kafka’sprotagonist) in Short Nightsstarting out and realizing his own kind of weird transformation.

Gregory’s character is the obsessed investigator archetype, a journalist who, against the warnings and hostilities from the possibly corrupted Kommisar Kierkoff (Piero Vida), continues to try and uncover his lover’s disappearance, which has all the implications of bedroom abduction. As Gregory pries further, he finds out that there’s a lot more to it, as there seems to have been an epidemic of missing girls that have been erased from the official archives. His search ultimately leads him to a secret society that on the surface is a prestigious music club.

Aside from the climactic ritual set piece, the scene where Gregory explores the music club is probably one of the more memorable scenes (and my personal favorite). Gregory walks by an audience of creepy, pasty frozen-looking people, who I wrongly suspected at first of being wax dolls (hey the movie is called Short Night of Glass Dolls).

Also of note in this pantheon of weirdness is a science experiment that demonstrates that tomatoes are sentient and feel pain, something that’s obviously mirroring Gregory’s situation in the morgue.

I couldn't make heads or tails of the dead old man in Gregory’s office, who’s just casually carried out by paramedics, while no one makes much of a big deal about it, like an employee dropping dead, perhaps as a result of being worked to death, is just another day at the office (OK he might’ve just passed out, but it’s still odd). There’s a tad bit of black humor as Gregory asks his colleague Jack (Mario Adorf) to give the dead man his hat. It’s a mind numbing moment that is never referred to again and may or may not be a bleak satire on the emotionless bureaucratic nature of work employment.

Someone who I feel is perfectly cast here is Barbara Bach as Gregory’s missing, and obviously kidnapped, lover Mira Svoboda. She’s a doll herself, and although their romance is a bit sappy at times, they have good chemistry. Given her beauty and the connection they make, his obsession over her suspicious disappearance is convincing.

She’s fabulous looking in that shimmering silver dress she wears when Gregory takes her to an elegant party full of aristocratic weirdos, where he practically shows her off. It’s not like any crazy secret cult members might take an interest in her. There’s something suggestively Eve-like about Mira during the few moments she’s juxtaposed with an apple, a prop that almost becomes a mini icon for this character.

The other love interest is Jessica (Ingrid Thulin). She is a nice looking older woman who downplays her good looks a little, making herself look older by wearing a gypsy bandana or a babushka most of the time. She is jealous of Mira and continues to pursue Gregory’s affections even after Mira disappears. She has a bitterness that’s kind of understandable. She’s more Gregory’s age and in the same journalism profession and would presumably be a closer fit. Jessica was frustrated when Gregory left her for a much younger woman and maintains her annoyance at Gregory’s obsession with Mira’s disappearance and not moving on and accepting that she left, despite the obvious signs of her being abducted. Jessica didn’t quite come off as a red herring to me but more or less a third wheel to amplify the drama.

The film was originally called Malastrana but after completion the producer insisted on changing the name, which then became Short Night of Butterflies, most likely because, thanks to Dario Argento’s animal trilogy, it was all the rage with the Italian thriller at the time to have a title that included an insect or animal like cats, flies, lizards, dragonflies, or butterflies. However, another movie called The Bloodstained Butterfly (1971) had come out, and so Lado had to change the title again. The butterfly concept is still in the story, and it carries a certain ambiguity to the plot. There are several moments that pop up in the story here and there emphasizing butterflies that don’t fly, because, as one of the characters puts it with his dying words, “”they” don’t let them fly.” It’s suggested that this is significant to the mystery of the disappearing girls in Prague, but it really never ends up being all that significant. Why butterflies? The attention paid to a butterfly statue with clipped wings could probably be seen as a kind of “McGuffin” in the script, but, thinking of the idea of grounded butterflies as some form of oppression of a species’ true nature, I can’t help sensing a symbolic reference to communist oppression.

There’s a small music number late in the movie that I always look forward to, which presents a weird feeling of walking into a music video, with a song, performed by Jürgen Drews, with lyrics repeatedly asking, “whyyyy don’t you let… butterflies with gaily colored wings fly free in the clear skiiiies”. It’s catchy and surreal, and I like the way it precedes a murder attempt on Gregory. Which reminds me, the soundtrack is a major strong point because when you have Edda Dell’Orso’s voice set to music composed by Ennio Morricone and conducted by Bruno Nicolai your film is bound to be a worthwhile experience on its soundtrack alone. Dell’Orso is a little spookier sounding here, with some chilling siren wails which when heard alongside the visuals of some of the Gothic architecture gives an uneasy feeling of something sinister underneath.

Despite the surreal orgy scene this is not something that’s considered to be erotic. It definitely succeeds as an unnerving mystery thriller, and although it’s kind of obvious what’s going on here, it doesn’t really lose any points for predictability, because it is the strong insinuation of the horrible truth that makes it work so well, and when all is revealed it’s like a direct confirmation that your paranoia was well founded. Short Night’s closeout scene seems a little forced, which the film tries to distract from with Ingrid Thulinscreaming into a freeze frame, yet it is ends up memorable and chilling nonetheless.

Short Night is quite the impressive and unique debut. Aldo Lado followed it up with the child murder mystery Who Saw Her Die (1972), which was great in the first half but became less interesting in its more formulaic second half. Lado’sNight Train Murders(1974), one of the Italian answers to The Last House on the Left (1972), is equally as impressive as Short Nightbut borders a little too uncomfortably on the rapesploitation side for it to be one of my absolute favorites.

Il mostro dell’opera is not quite what you’d call an adaptation but more an experimental variation of The Phantom of the Opera. But it’s unlikely that viewers will come to this side of Eurocult obscurity just to see what replacing The Phantom with a Count Dracula-esque vampire in a beloved and well-known canon would be like; most probably seek this out because of the movie’s co-writer/director Renato Polselli. I know I did.

If you’re a fan of Polselli’sThe Vampire and the Ballerina (1960), of which this makes a good double bill with, you are going to love this, and if you’re a fan of Polselli’s delirious S&M fever nightmares from the early ‘70s, you’ll love this too, because Il mostro dell’opera is like a predecessor to Delirium (1972) and Rites, Black Magic and Secret Orgies in the Fourteenth Century (1973) aka The Reincarnation of Isabel– minus the turbulent editing. It builds on everything that made The Vampire and the Ballerina a fun time but is progressive in a sense with certain erotic and expressionistic elements that in contrast to its old-fashioned, classic look makes it feel ahead of its time.

I’m not sure what kind of success The Vampire and the Ballerina had during its release, but a few years later, again with co-writers Ernesto Gastaldi and Giuseppe Pellegrini, Polselli had another go with the vampires-and-dancers thing but with a little more ambition and grander performances, mixing in male dancers, instead of the previous all-female ensemble, and setting the performances on a large theatre stage, instead of in front of a gothic fireplace in a living room. Of course, the dancing in a Polselli film would later reach its culmination with the sporadic dancing-nude-hippie scenes in Le veritá secondo Satana(1972) (love, love, love those dancing hippies).

Again Polselli managed to get ahold of several actors who also happened to be trained dancers, so naturally the film benefits from excellent dance choreography, which really can’t be said about the dancing in The Playgirls and the Vampire (1960) (although no one here comes close to surpassing Helene Remy’s acrobatics in The Vampire and the Ballerina). The dancers in Il mostro dell’operaaren’t just extras; they do get to be involved in the story as well, and because there are a lot of them, the effect is a little like that of a character overload.

Acting-wise they’re not bad and are comical and cartoony most of the time, kind of like pompous clowns in a play, and at times the movie has a tendency to want to cram as much people and chaos in front of the camera as possible, but it’s still a welcome cast of oddball characters, and there’s a lot of bickering between them, but everyone's enthusiasm and comical performances make it entertaining nonetheless, and, even though it can be difficult to keep track of everyone, the large volume of characters ends up being comforting company, like throwing a party in a haunted house and being in the nominal safety of a large group.

Being a variation of The Phantom of the Opera, one can sort of spot the character counterparts. Lead actress Giulia (Barbara Howard) is obviously the ‘Christine’ variation. Howard is quite comely and satisfactorily plays Giulia in a half-dazed, half-delirious state, but you’ll have to agree if this movie were made about six years later, Giulia probably would’ve been played by Rita Calderoni. She’s really good at going into screaming fits and mass hysteria, which is something I like to think Renato Polselli had a way of bringing out of his lead actresses. Giulia seems to be having complications and emotional problems, all the while seeming drawn to whatever it is that is haunting the Aquarius Theater, the opera house in question where there is actually no opera singing but more classical dance mixed with contemporary risqué dance that likes to chime in with cabaret sexiness.

The titular monster of the opera is a vampire phantom named Stefano (Giuseppe Addobbati) who has an affinity to Giulia, as she seems to be a reincarnation of the monster’s past mortal love, Laura.

Sandro (who is played by ‘60s Italian gothic horror presence Walter Brandi and not Marco Mariani who’s wrongly credited) could be the ‘Raoul’ counterpart. He’s the director of the stage production and has affections for Giulia, and he’s acquired the old rundown and very much haunted Aquarius Theatre in order to realize his own grand vision of Cyrano de Bergerac, against the warnings of the old theatre caretaker, Achille (Alberto Archetti). This might be a longshot, but Achille (Alberto Archetti), who’s somehow inherent to the theatre and a reluctant servant to Stefano, could be ‘The Persian’ counterpart.

I believe the only one from The Phantom of the Opera who made it here is Carlotta (Milena Vukotic), although one could say she is loosely based on 'Carlotta.' She wants to replace Giulia as the lead in the play, and she has a strange, cackling laugh which we get to hear several times over (seriously, dat laugh, though). She’s a little like Steffy from Reincarnation of Isabel in that she’s cute and memorable but a little irritating too.

He may go by the name Stefano, but the vampire/monster brings to mind Count Dracula. Certain Dracula tropes are visited such as one of the dancers noticing that the monster has no reflection in her makeup mirror, as well as several others. Although he seems to have traded the cape he’s wearing on the poster for a tailcoat look instead. But there’s something else about him, something sensitive, some sort of inner torment that makes him sympathetic, which can’t be said of the original Stoker Dracula. In a way, he’s replaced The Phantom but still maintains certain Phantom-like qualities, such as having an unhealthy obsession with Giulia, which has the incidental result of making him, probably, the first emotionally sensitive Dracula, who allows himself to be merciful out of his love for Laura/Giulia, with love being painted as both a salvation and a downfall.

I had originally thought that Paul Naschy’s Dracula from Count Dracula’s Great Love (1973) was the first to be an emo-softie Dracula. To be fair he probably still is since the monster in question is named Stefano, but the idea is still there.

The kinky S&M elements are secluded to the fun and playful set piece that is Stefano’s inter dimensional chamber of chained up vampire babes, who are supposed to be the souls of his past victims. You can’t help but admire everyone’s enthusiasm because that’s part of what makes it work. Curiously, Stefano has a thing for pinning a couple of the female characters under a pitchfork, in extended torture scenes where one can’t help interpret the pitchfork as a phallic symbol, even more so since Giulia has a few moments of enjoyment flash across her face when she is menaced by Stefano’s pitchfork, a masochistic Polselli trademark that will pop up several more times in later films. The tormented, sadistic madman with love issues, similar to Stefano, would be explored further with Roibert in La verita secondo satanaand with Dr. Herbert Lyutek, played by Mickey Hargitay, in Delirium.

The film reaches an entertaining climax in a grand dance performance where everyone dances like they’re under a spell and as if their lives depend on it. During this part the film cuts to a few up-close shots of Stefano’s epic Bela Lugosi eyes with cloud shadows passing over, which I like to think denotes an epic passage of time, as if the performers are dancing through the ages.

Part gothic Italian horror, part Italian comedy, and part erotic madness, Il mostro dell’opera feels like a seed to Polselli’s characteristic mania style, and he would reference it quite a bit in his later films. And don’t feel alienated if you haven’t yet seen anything from Renato Polselli because the film is still a worthwhile experience in its own right, not to mention a good starting point. And I've got to say that the scene with the dancing skeletons is worth the price of admission alone.

© At the Mansion of Madness

Count Dracula seems to have a habit of always being reborn, both within the stories themselves as well as in different incarnations across the board of entertainment media. He’s become so synonymous with horror and Halloween that he will never leave the public consciousness. You can kill him off with a wooden stake or by overexposing him with so many variations, adaptations, tie-ins, or spin-offs, but he’s never going away; he’ll always be reborn. And why shouldn’t he? Like most great ideas, there always seems to be plenty more to explore. I wonder if Bram Stoker knew just how immortal his creation would turn out to be and that killing him off at the end of the novel was only the beginning.

Much like Hammer’s Dracula films, the Spanish horror film The Dracula Saga/ La saga de los Drácula is a take that explores further possibilities with The Count. With a stretch of the imagination, it kind of works as an unofficial prequel to Stoker'sDracula, but it’s rather more of an alteration of sorts that disregards the events of the original story and takes liberties to imagine what Dracula’s family would be like, with a story told primarily thorough Dracula’s estranged granddaughter, Berta (Tina Sáinz– I could’ve easily seen Emma Cohen in this role as well). Although there are narrations from Dracula at the beginning and at the end, telling the story at the endas if it was his story all along, while the English trailer is narrated by Berta, who claims this is her story, so it's a bit of a toss up as to whose story this really is.

This was the second vampire film directed by Leon Klimovsky, and it stars Eurobabe favorites Helga Liné and Maria Kosty in seductive vampire roles. It’s gory, silly, nightmarish, gritty, and above all beautifully gothic, a Castilian vampire film from the early ‘70s horror boom. About the only thing that’s missing is the presence of Paul Naschy. I remember coming across this film on the video shelf several years ago and nearly passing on it because Paul Naschywasn’t in it. I’m glad I didn’t though.

Klimovsky’svampire films have a certain familiarity to them but are exceptionally unique at the same time and vary quite a bit from one another. They may not be the best paced, with The Dracula Saga being no exception, but they always end up providing me with a special memory, perhaps on account of hitting the sweet spot with their look and feel and also doing something kind of cool and gimmicky, like conceiving a Dracula household in this case. As in The Vampires’ Night Orgy (1974), The Dracula Saga contains another stimulating vampire seduction scene with Helga liné.

The idea of presenting Dracula with a household family does work out well here, and I think the family has a near Addams Family strangeness to them. There’s definitely something epic about it, and it could’ve made for an appealing serialization or a TV drama. Dracula (Narciso Ibáñez Menta) is married to a predatory seductress, Munia (Liné), and has two granddaughters, Xenia (Maria Kosty) and Irina (Cristina Suriani), who are like giddy teenage trouble makers.

The plot device is that Dracula’s son is inadequate to inherit the Dracula title, and so he is in need of another heir to carry on the cursed bloodline. He has called on his estranged granddaughter, and protagonist of the story, Berta, to visit his castle, which happens to be her childhood castle, and ultimately stay. Berta does not yet know her relatives are vampires. She is accompanied by her husband, Hans (Tony Isbert), and she is pregnant.So you can kind of see where this is going.

There is a hidden member of the family, locked up somewhere remote, giving out child-like whimpers that do remind one of House by the Cemetery (1981). This prisoner is Dracula’s son, Valerio, and he is explained by The Count as representing the excess and degeneration of the Dracula ancestors.

I’m not sure what the mother was like, or who she was, but Dracula’s son is a hunchbacked cyclops monster kid with webbed fingers, who murders women that end up with the misfortune of being locked in his chamber with him. Dracula punishes Valerio by whipping him on his hump. This is some weird monster stuff from Klimovsky, almost distastefully weird. The makeup for Valerio is cool, in a vintage Spanish B-horror sort of way. In fact, the movie has good monster makeup in general, although it is used sparingly. There are also a couple of soft focus dream scenes, one with a memorable gore shock.

The film is mostly taking place at night but shot during the day, with little day-for-night filtering; it’s usually just bright daylight. I suppose the filmmakers trusted in our abilities to suspend our disbelief, or the filtering was just neglected in post-production for the most part. And I’m not sure what Klimovskywas shooting for with the net-like lens cover that occasionally pops up, or if it was just some kind of unintentional artifact from the film negative.

Aside from the dream scenes it does have a slow, low-key startup, with Hans and Berta journeying, via horse and carriage, from London to Dracula’s castle, a la Jonathan Harker’s Journal. They even stop off at a hotel in Bistritz along the way, and essentially become prisoners at the castle. The movie takes its time to set itself up with a full episode at the hotel in Bistritz before even getting to Dracula’s castle or even meeting the family.

Many might remember Tony Isbert from Tragic Ceremony (1972) or Inquisition (1978) with Paul Naschy. He’s generally criticized here for underacting, not showing much enthusiasm or emotion, and I suppose that’s true given some of the situations Hans is in, but it doesn’t harm the film much, and I personally don't find anything unlikable about him. Hans is the one who most of the vampire babes in the film have their eye on.

I did enjoy Tina Sáinz performance as Berta, most particularly her character’s breakdown and unexpected transition from distressed and frightened, as exemplified during the early dream scenes, to a scorned, righteous death deliverer. As an ill, pregnant woman she does spend most of her time in the later parts of the film in a delirious and catatonic state, from mental degradation and weakening from loss of blood, as it is implied that she is losing blood from the inside; I don’t think I've heard of unborn vampire babies before.

The Count here is an elegant, matured nobleman. Narciso Ibáñez Menta has a fantastic look for an aged Dracula. He always seems ready to retire to his quarters. He’s a homebody Dracula who looks like he’s settled in, always in his cozy bedtime robe. It reminds me of the way I usually like to settle in with sweatpants, coffee, and an Edgar Allan Poe book.

What entranced me the most when I first saw this was the pasty green makeup of Berta’s vampire relatives. It is a simple but effective way of achieving an otherworldly, monstrous feel to the vampires. I was left with a precious memory of smiling pale vampire faces, menacing Berta at one of the finest gothic dinner tables in a castle. The wine at the table that’s supposed to insinuate blood looks like Kool-Aid and bright red paint, and judging from Han’s initial reaction probably tastes like it too. It draws attention to the setup similar to the way Countess Bathory's turquoise drink did in Daughters of Darkness (1971).

As usual, the interiors are beautiful and thickly ambient, alternating between medieval crypts to gothic living quarters. The appropriately utilized harpsichord laden soundtrack gives the film a unique flavor and with it an air of authenticity. Interestingly, during the opening credits, the soundtrack is credited to Johan Sebastion Bach, which makes me think the film might take place earlier than the nineteenth century or at least before the events in Stoker’s Dracula, lending slight credence to the farfetched notion that The Dracula Saga is an unofficial prequel.

This is one delicious vampire film that should please all types of fans, as it does meld a lot of classic and new ideas. Despite being kind of lighthearted and not being meant to be taken seriously, The Dracula Saga is an intoxicating horror experience with the right kind of somber, gothic ambiance that makes a great vintage, foreign vampire film, and it will hit all the right notes for Eurohorror fans.

© At the Mansion of Madness

It’s always been interesting to get to know fellow film bloggers through their writing or vlogs. You come across a lot of great writers with a mutual passion for European genre and horror movies, yet some of them have a passion that goes beyond just talking about the movies; they make them too. Now, I confess to knowing nothing about filmmaking and I probably never will, but I can only imagine what kind of intense commitment and passion must go in to making a genre love letter like The Devil of Kreuzberg, a medium-length German gothic horror film from indie filmmaker, and I might point out fellow film blogger, Alexander Bakshaev.

I’ve followed Alex on Trash Film Addict for a few years now, so I was familiar with what kind of films he’s interested in and looking forward to how someone who knows a lot about vintage gothic horror would tackle a low-budget gothic horror film in 2015, and I’ve got to say I was impressed.

The Devil of Kreuzberg is a magnificent product, not just for a DIY film; it is a great looking and sounding film with good lighting, slick editing, and a memorable story (written by Pippo Schund), characters, and soundtrack. Even at only ~forty minutes (at least for the version I watched, as there seems to be several different run-times), the movie feels shorter than it is, which might make viewers still want more, but that serves viewers a lot better than making it too long. The closeout might seem a little abrupt, but it does end in a pretty cool way that reminded me of a Mercyful Fate song: Lady in Black (just with a lady in white in this case).

It does fulfill a lot of the gothic horror requisites (nightmare sequences, surreal editing, macabre but beautiful graveyards, somber and languid mood, etc.) without being set in a remote Victorian mansion (although we’ll always continue to return to that trope here). It’s important to mention that while there are recognizable influences that amount to a certain degree of pastiche, The Devil of Kreuzberg manages to be an enjoyable film with its own merits that doesn’t ape its influences or feel like a copycat or an overdone homage.

Alexproduced and directed the film, and he plays a weird character, almost channeling Giovanni Lombardo Radice’s dodgy persona from Fulci’sGates of Hell a little, lurching around seedy sex arcades. He’s the kill target for one of the two male leads Kurt (Suleyman Yuceer), a hitman who’s beginning to denote an expressionless remorse for killing and wants out of the killing business after he's finally able to repay a debt to what I’m assuming is the mafia. Kurt and the other male lead Jakob (Ludwig Reuter) are close like brothers, who drink often as a result of their personal conflicts; they often turn toward one another for solace. They’re stuck in a slump but trying to escape to what they feel they’ve earned for their past efforts: “sunshine, beach, hot women, good whisky,” but they haven’t gotten there yet, which is something I’m sure most of us can relate to.

Jakob and Kurt have a strong bond that feels natural, even though we don’t understand why or how they’ve happen to become so close; they’re just presented that way. We are introduced to each character separately for a while until they happen to meet up and instantly bond like old dear friends that haven’t seen each other in a long time. The two actors have good chemistry, whichhelps make it easy to accept that Jakob and Kurt are close like brothers.

The movie takes an amusing, stylish techno-song and dance break after Jakob and Kurt confess to essentially blowing off certain responsibilities important for their financial recovery, in what seems like a celebration of them abandoning their burdens, which I interpreted as a fuck-it-all here’s-to-‘bromance’ kind of sentiment. But Jakob still has one burden left that he wants to take care of, and that’s his girlfriend Linda Karnstein (Sandra Bourdonnec). Jakob’s been having terrible nightmares, and he’s entirely convinced that as long as Linda’s alive, he won’t be able to sleep; and he wants Kurt, being that he’s experienced with this sort of thing, to do the deed.

We don’t know a lot about Jakob and Linda’s back story other than that they were happy together at one point, and perhaps that is all that needs to be known. There’s a stylishly shot romance memory scene establishing that they were once very much in love.

At present, Jakob and Linda’s relationship has gone sour, his nightmares of her being a source of his growing disdain, dreading her and heavily convinced that she’s evil. In the nightmares he’s usually being overpowered, subdued, and defeated by Linda, almost kind of Succubus-like, in an erotic or provocative manner. Alex has an exceptional talent for creating nightmare sequences, as is most evidencedwith a ritualistic scene with Linda and a few cohorts seemingly draining Jakob. The toll his nightmares have on him is convincing.

Bourdonnec is a powerful presence as a double-sided character of sorts, part of the time a benevolent woman who seems to want to revive her relationship with Jakob and a lot of other times an otherworldly succubus/devil/witch-like entity who cannot escape her destiny/curse to kill her lover. Despite being a modern woman, she imbues the supernatural, ancient, and esoteric when the camera is on her anytime she is in devil or nightmare mode just from a simple change in attitude or attire, such as the white dress during the cemetery climax, which has a Jean Rollin-like beauty to it. In an effective and imaginative scene in a graveyard during the day, we learn Linda is a descendant of the husband-killing Karnstein family, through a conversation with an ancestral spirit inhabiting a memorial statue. I approve of the Karnstein reference and what I like to think is also a The Blood Spattered Bride(1972) reference.

The filmmakers really do get the most out of natural location shooting. One of the most attractive shooting locales, aside from the graveyard, is the gothic looking metro station at Berlin Heidelberger Platz station, with its groin vault ceiling, that illustrates the benefit of shooting a gothic in Europe. This location leads up to a pivotal and tense moment between Linda and Kurt. In a standoff, Kurt seems ambivalent on shooting Linda, but the film presents an uncertainty as to if Kurt’s hesitance is due to remorse or thedemonic death stare Linda shoots towards him. Alex uses fog and clever lighting to achieve an ominous effect, here, with Linda in her coat but with a hood that almost seems a little occultish.

I did appreciate a lot of the technical camera work, like the Jess Franco-like focusing techniques implemented throughout the film. Some of the camera dynamics make for more interesting shots without seeming too flashy. In one transition scene, where the story cuts to a new location, an upward camera angle, on dead tree branches, slowly tilts downward onto a character walking towards the camera, which just makes the scene intro more noteworthy.

There are hints of the giallo and Eurocrime aesthetic, but the film primarily presents itself as a modern gothic horror that still embodies a lot of what makes classic gothic horror work so well without too many of the trappings. With the supernatural elements stripped away this would probably be considered more of a character drama, and a good one at that. I do like to think that there’s a kind of uncertainty to the supernatural that guides the film’s descent into madness. It takes a more subtle approach to telling its story and doesn’t quite explain everything, but there’s enough presented for viewers to make their own conclusions as to whether or not the ghostly forces that drive this tragedy to its conclusion are real or not. The three main characters are going through personal conflicts, and both the supernatural and the realistic aspects of these conflicts seem to complement one another.

I also have to mention that while there is violence and there is sleaze, at the same time, there’s no blood or nudity, and that’s OK because this particular film doesn’t need those additions. If the intention is a sincere and enjoyable horror film that’s a proper progression of the gothic drama of yore, then it’s a successful job well done from the filmmakers. Here’s to more exposure for The Devil of Kreuzberg and many more films from Alexander Bakshaev.

© At the Mansion of Madness

The DVD of The Devil of Kreuzberg can be purchased from Carnie Films.

Be sure to check out the trailer. Who knows where that familiar music is from?

I know now that it’s Italian for ‘spasm’ (or a name giallo fans might give their pets), but when I first watched this film’s delirious trailer, I remember thinking: “who or what is Spasmo?” and after I saw the movie, I still didn’t know what Spasmo was. It’s just one of those appealing one word titles that, like Orgasmo, somehow complement the film rather well.

You don’t forget a title and a film like Spasmo. As for the details of the story and characters, that can get a little hazy, not just with time but even upon reflection the following day, since there’s so much to it. Images of assaulted mannequins meld with memories of murdered characters that may or may not have been real from the perspective of the protagonist, who is either losing his mind or is in the worst company ever. It really makes you wonder if Umberto Lenzi’s experimental giallo is either a confusing mess or a labyrinth of mysteries and riddles for the viewer to explore and analyze.

A lot had already been done with the giallo at this point, so you can tell that the filmmakers were trying to shake the genre up a bit by making the film more of a puzzling psychological thriller. There are several screenplay credits, with the core story credited to Pino Boller, but Lenzi’s addition of the stylish mannequin motif gives Spasmoa distinguishable mark that many remember it by. Someone is just leaving stabbed, molested, and hanged latex dolls around in the woods, and that really starts to mess with your mind. Is it a repressed killer acting out fantasies or some sort of depraved artist? Although the whole depraved-sadist-and-his-mannequins thing did bring to mind Bava’sHatchet for the Honeymoon (1970), it also had me thinking of William Lustig’sManiac (1980) a teensy bit.

I might as well get it out of the way now; the soundtrack conducted and composed by Ennio Morricone would be another one for the ages if this film were better known. The main theme, first heard over the credits while juxtaposed with disturbing visuals of the aforementioned mannequins, seduces the viewer into its world. It’s a soul moving piece with a soothing acoustic guitar that has something unnerving and haunting about it at the same time.

Lenzi had a tendency to shy away from the gothic, but Spasmo, as far as I can tell, might be the closest Lenzi came to gothic. It revisits the paranoia and mania elements from Lenzi’s previous Orgasmo (1969) but with an interesting twist of schizophrenia that makes the film a little comparable to Robert Altman’sImages (1972).

The order of the day is suspicious, enigmatic characters, including the lead character Christian (Robert Hoffman– dubbed by Frank von Kuegelgen), a playboy and a stockholder in his brother Frit’s (Ivan Rassimov) plastics processing company. His unusual encounters with a mysterious babe, Barbara (Suzy Kendall), lead to even more unusual encounters. Christian first meets her passed out on the beach, thinking she might be dead at first. After she recovers consciousness, Barbara slips away while Christian is distracted by his current lover (Maria Pia Conte), but he manages to later track Barbara down at her lover’s (Mario Erpichini) moored party yacht, called Tucania, thanks to a clue she left behind.

Barbara subtly invites Christian to her motel room for a friendly and mature bout of casual sex, under the odd condition that he shaves his beard first in her bathroom. As she puts it: “I’m very suspicious of men with beards.” (Well it looks like I’d never have a shot with her…) This leads up to the pivotal moment that sets the events in motion when the obvious bad guy (Adolfo Lastretti) comes in through the bathroom window and tries to kill Christian after he shaves his beard. Following a struggle in the bathroom (with a fabulous wall design that so elegantly matches the floor), Christian manages to shoot and apparently kill the man with his own gun. It’s not understood yet why someone tried to kill Christian, and because the door was closed Barbara didn’t notice (the gun had a silencer), nor did she want to look inside the bathroom at the body when Christian tells her: “I’ve killed a man I never saw before,” which makes him sound crazy. Things begin to get fairly twisty when Christian returns a short time later for a gold chain he left behind only to find that the body and gun have disappeared.

Not wanting to involve the police and not being sure if the killer or someone else is now after them, Barbara suggests they hideout at her friend’s house (some sort of lighthouse or watchtower, I believe) for the time being, which happens to be in a scenic location on a hill overlooking the ocean–quite an effective location for most of act two. The owner of the house, a supposed painter friend of Barbara’s who happens to be away, has a passion for birds of prey. Although the birds end up having no relevance (unless you think of their inclusion as foreshadowing that one among them is a predator), they give the interior of the house the distinguishing feature of having fancy cages with several live and stuffed exotic birds on display.

Something unique to a lot of Lenzi’s thrillers is the trope inversion of light over darkness. With most of the daytime shooting in Spasmo, Lenzi wanted to show that mystery can be more frightening in the light than in the more conventional nighttime darkness. The daylight segment when Christian and Barbara first break in to the mansion does have a strange, eerie isolation about it. It’s a little interesting to imagine how the film would’ve fared had it taken place over one unnaturally long day, sort of like with Interrabang (!969).

The ambiance does change fairly quickly when night falls, which feels a little reminiscent of gothic horror since the electricity is off, causing the characters to break out the candles, until the random and abrupt arrival of two new strange characters who happen to live there, Malcolm (Guido Alberti) and Clorinda (Monica Monet– dubbed by Carolyn de Fonseca), that turn on the electricity.

With the arrival of Clorinda, a striking but unusual woman, and her old-enough-to-be-her-grandfather companion, the friendly but still suspicious Malcolm, you can tell that there is something deliberately odd here. Their relation and presence is so unusual and unnatural that something fishy has to be going on.

One of my favorite visual highlights involves Clorinda leading the way for everyone in the darkness, with a lantern (substituting for no good reason the much cooler candelabra) in hand, to the tower where Christian and Barbara will stay the night.

Later that night, Clorinda visits Christian in his room, in a scene that ends up being quite ambient partially on account of the day-for-night window view of the coastline that stuck in my memory for some weird reason long after seeing this. It’s a good segment with an unpleasant ending.

Spasmoconsistently relies on the element of uncertainty, as Christian and viewers ponder if potentially threatening characters lurking around outside of the house are real or not. It succeeds at generating a subjective feeling of paranoia and distrust. For a while, it’s uncertain if the killer in the bathroom was hallucination or not. We frequently cut to shots of the same madman, without a scratch on him, roaming around outside the house, set to some creepy dissonant music. But I think it doesn’t really matter if the killer is real or a figment of Christian’s imagination. The brilliance to it is that he is both real and not real, a metaphorical representation of the dark, harmful side inherent in us all that we loosely keep under control. It’s always lurking, and only a minor disturbance can upset the delicate balance of sanity. The madman in question is an actual character in the film named Tatum, but he is also a representation of the unstable psych of one of the characters with a hereditary mental condition.

I like the way the story continues on into the third act with different settings and location shifts, such as a chemical plant, making the story feel, perhaps, a little episodic but also like it’s taking some interesting new developments, especially after feeling a little claustrophobic for a while at the mansion.

Christian’s brother Fritz makes an appearance surprisingly late in the game, but I ended up thinking it was a good choice to reserve an actor like Ivan Rassimov for the story’s more climactic third act.

With the third act, one cannot explain much without giving it away. The more patient fans of mystery and the psychological giallo who don’t mind being left in the dark most of the time will be relieved to find a definitive explanation, considering how suspiciously ambiguous the narrative was most of the time. It also makes more sense on repeat viewings when you know more of the whys.

Spasmo has its creepy moments, its disturbing moments, and its frustrating moments, but I do like the way everything ties together with a subtle but clever denouement and a memorable closeout that generates a true sense of gravitas.

© At the Mansion of Madness

We've all seen and celebrated the prominence of the "J&B" bottle in these films, but has anyone ever wondered about the other recognizable "Punt e Mes" bottle that is usually not far from the J&B? It's Italian vermouth. I'm interested in trying it, but I don't think I've noticed it in any wine or liquor store I've been to. I might have to special order it.

Austrian actor Marisa Mell (born Marlies Theres Moitzi) is remembered by most as a sexy ‘60s cult icon, particularly as Diabolik’s girlfriend/partner-in-crime, Eva, in Mario Bava’s comic adaptation Danger: Diabolik (1968), but Mell also starred in a fine line of Euro-thriller dramas, usually playing the seductive swindler-murderess type – Death will Have your Eyes (1974) and Diary of an Erotic Murderess (1975) to name a couple. Her particular attention-grabbing, statuesque presence could make the most routine mystery plot a delight to sit through. However, she was underutilized in her movie career in certain respects; considering her demigoddess-like physiognomy, it’s unfortunate that she didn’t play more fantastical or otherworldly characters in fantasy or horror films; and along with Margaret Lee, I thought of her as a Eurospy girl that should’ve eventually been a real Bond girl.

A number of Marisa Mellstarring vehicles currently suffer from not having proper releases, such as a little seen Spanish/Italian mystery thriller, directed and co-written by Jose Antonio Nieves Conde, called Marta aka …dopo di che, uccide il maschio e lo divora. I had been interested in checking it out for a while, and when a reader mentioned the film to me, I was finally driven to track down a copy and watch it. The version I first watched didn’t have the best image quality, but even worse was that it had all of Marisa Mell’s nude scenes edited out (the nerve), but I liked itenough to buy a DVD-R of the uncut version, which, sadly, was of even lower image quality; Marta is obviously in need of proper restoration.

Marta is based on a Spanish play Estado civil: Marta (1969)by Juan Jose Alonso Millan, who apparently also had a hand in the movie adaptation screenplay. The film stars Marisa Mell as the titular character, but it's also very much about, if not more about, the other lead Miguel, who is played by Stephen Boyd (Golden Globe winner for best supporting actor in Ben-Hur(1959)), so it perhaps would’ve been more fitting to call it Marta-and-Miguel. I suppose just calling it Marta does make her seem a little more alluring. The film’s menacing Italian title translates to “... After which, the male kills and devours.”

The movie puts a lot of stock into Marta and Miguel’s lustful but torrid relationship and the secrets each one may or may not be harvesting, and I think it succeeds for a number of reasons, one of which includes Mell and Boyd’s genuine chemistry (and it’s not just their complementary chin dimples). A lot of details in their onscreen relationship here seem to me to mirror the two actors’ lives that would transpire during and after back-to-back filming in co-starring roles in The Great Swindle(1971), also directed by Conde, and Marta. Mell and Boyd had a real life love for each other during the filming of Marta, and knowing this makes their near “soapie” character interactions that much more meaningful.

Marisafell in love with Stephen while working with him on the set of The Great Swindle, but he would decline her advances at first. However, by the time they were filming Marta, they had become an impassioned, entangled couple. They eventually got married with a non-legally recognized gypsy wedding but would eventually separate, with it being noted that Boyd had become physically unwell from the intensity of the relationship. Aside from the gypsy wedding, there are a few parallels with the development and breakdown of Boyd and Mell’s relationship and with Miguel and Marta’s in the film, almost as if the movie foreshadowed real life in a way.

The premise is that an insect collector, Miguel, lives alone in a castle mansion in the country outside of Madrid with two servants (George Rigaudand Isa Miranda), and one day this amazing woman, Marta, suspiciously enters his life; she claims to have murdered someone in self-defense, and Miguel decides to keep her hidden from the police in his castle for the time being, as she looks just like his wife Pilar (also Mell), who left him two years ago. Romance and complications arise as Marta may not be who she claims to be and Miguel struggles with the guilt-ridden, tormented memory of his deceased mother (Nelida Quiroga). The main plot conflict seems to be a “who’s-deceiving-who-here?” sort of thing, trading the suspicion back and forth as to which one of them is the real antagonist.

The filmmakers also have a fascination with filming Marisa Mell in front of mirrors. In fact, the film has a fascination with Mell in general, and for that is highly recommended to her fans that haven’t seen it yet. My particular favorite is when she dons the majestic dress, Miguel’s wife’s old gown, and the twirl and graceful bow she enters the scene with. She just seems gorgeously ethereal here, like the prom-date of your dreams.

Miguel’s inner torment seems to stem from an opening nightmare-memory scene, which is, of course, tied to the denouement. This particular sequence introduces viewers to insane-Miguel. It has a dreadful looking green tint to it though, but it’s still an effective, violent start that segues into a pleasant intro credits montage in the country to introduce viewers to sane-Miguel. The juxtaposed music is a poppy ‘70s song by Piero Piccioni, “Right or Wrong” that I find most agreeable, with a memorable melody that comes up again later during a love scene. The lyrics anticipate a tormented love that has yet to be, which is suitable for the romance to come in the film, but listening closely, the lyrics almost sound like they could be about Boyd and Mell’s real life affair.

If you were to briefly know him, Miguel would seem like a pretty even keel kind of guy. That is until you touch a certain kink in his mind, which is related to his mother. Norman Bates much? Backstory exposition involving Miguel and his estranged wife Pilar reveals that his mother did not like her at all (her unapproving glare gives me chills).

Eventually, Marta begins to pose as Miguel’s wife Pilar, to fool people, including the police (Howard Ross and an actor I can’t identify playing the inspector), into thinking she’s come back to him. It’s a little funny that Miguel just happens to have a short blond wig on hand that is the exact hairstyle Pilar had. Mell had a distinctive look yet also a chameleon-like ability to look nearly like someone else whenever her hairstyle changes (or when she wears a wig). This was something I first noticed with her part in Fulci’sPerversion Story (1969).

Though not quite a horror movie, a number of gothic horror tropes are in place, such as the celebrated candelabras, painted family portraits, secret passages and rooms, peepholes in the walls, dark family secrets, see through lingerie, etc.

The movie does imply certain growth and development dilemmas, such as the reluctance to abandon one’s childhood home, with the story painting it either as a place of protection or a prison. Miguel physically and mentally retreats into the past to escape the unsatisfactory conditions of the present (holing up in his mansion), being held back in the shadows. His inner demons prevent him from fully maturing, in a sense, from boyhood to manhood, with his mother being the most important figure to him. When any other woman becomes important to him (i.e. when he falls in love), his mother grievously disapproves, deeming her a “whore.” This results in a lasting complex in Miguel to equate any woman important to him to his mother (overlapping love), which has a toll on his sex drive, not to mention his sanity, and woe unto anyone who would insult his zeal to preserve the past and the memory of his mother.

Marta is definitely talky, with a slow burn plot development and a somewhat downbeat ending. It’s a familiar story yet one that’s difficult to pinpoint exactly; and it did remind me again why Marisa Mell was so captivating. If you’ve seen enough Eurocult thrillers with the ‘mansion-in-the-past’ drama theme, you probably already know the deal when it comes to the story. But Mell and Boyd both give great performances, and the location is perfect for this kind of film. If a slightly gothic, slightly erotic, gloomy, but still kind of fun, Marisa Mell mystery drama is your kind of thing, then there’s no reason to not add Marta to your collection, or at least as a place holder until it gets a proper release.

© At the Mansion of Madness

"The past is the only thing you can be sure of; nothing can erase that." -- Miguel/Stephen Boyd

Adrift was one of the last, if not the last, Czechoslovak New Wave films before the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. Filming was actually interrupted by the invasion, with a military bridge being temporarily erected at the filming site on the banks of the Danube River. Adrift’s co-director and co-writer (academy award winning filmmaker Ján Kadár) then fled the country and made another film in the US, The Angel Levine. After the loosening of Soviet control in Czechoslovakia in 1969, Kadár returned, and, after getting everyone back together, filming for Adrift resumed.

I became interested in Adrift (or my preferred title: A Desire Called Anada)at random while scanning for new older foreign films to watch. One drew me in by its poster design (I know, typical) that put me in the mood for a haunting, surreal fantasy about a water nymph. I also saw that it was Czechoslovak, which had me recalling At the Mansion of Madness favorites Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (1970) and Morgiana (1972). I’ve also been meaning to explore more Czechoslovak New Wave films, especially for this site, so I kind of committed myself to Adrift for review before even watching it. I decided not to read anything about it and go in fresh without knowing what it was about or if it was any good. (Yep, that’s how this blogger sometimes picks movies). Spoiler: it’s good.

Adrift is a haunting drama, the second adaptation of Hungarian novel, by Lajos Zilahy, Valamit visz a viz (1928), focusing on the psychological internalization of a workaholic fisherman, Janos, and how his conscientious moral reasoning contradicts his subconscious intentions.

An enigmatic beauty, Anada (Paula Pritchett), is adrift in the Danube River. She’s pulled from the water by fisherman János (Rade Markovic) and resuscitated by his wife Zuzka (Milena Dravic). No one knows where on Earth she’s washed up from, or who she is, or what she is. She doesn’t tell anyone nor does anyone try too hard to interrogate her. After she recovers, they let her stay with them, helping out with work to earn her keep, and in the process Anada essentially, and unwillingly, complicates the marriage between János and Zuzka for a while before disappearing back into the river.

The narrative to Adrift is of the non-linear sort, beginning towards the end of the story, with the pre-denouement scene, where Janos is aiding and preparing medicine for his bed-ridden wife after she’s contracted typhus. He prepares her medicine and leaves it nearby to investigate shouts from outside coming from his father-in-law. Apparently the young girl, Anada, staying with them has disrobed and thrown herself into the river. It’s obvious she meant a lot to Janos. He grieves by the waterside after failing to save her from being taken by the river.

The narrative then flashes back to when they first pulled her from the river an indeterminate amount of time ago, but not before shifting to a recurring setting of Janos at a campfire with three men. They appear to be fellow fishing workers/buddies, but their insistent interest about Anada and Janos made them seem like law men, in what was starting to feel like atrial of sorts. I have analyzed it more than once, and I am convinced the three fishermen represent Janos’s conscience, with the story being exposed in flashback while frequently returning back to the campfire scene, a not so typical framing-device.

There is an inner-mental conflict taking place, and Janos is in denial of something that is pushing guilt on him, and, at the campfire, he is defending himself to his conscience. Inner conscience debates can take the mental appearance of consulting with imaginary friends, the people we are talking to when we talk to ourselves. These advice giving figures vanish from sight after an important point of no return, during the climax, symbolizing that real sinners have no conscience. I believe the moral of the story is that there are some sins we can’t come back from.

The conflict at first has to do with Janos wanting Anada to leave, ostensibly because she’s an outsider and doesn’t really belong there, but it’s actually because he’s fallen for her, a guilt that shakes the core of his inner peace, especially since he’s married. This dilemma takes a toll on him, even becoming jealous when he thinks Anada is seeing a local man, Kristof (Ivan Darvas), although Janos never sees them together. He creates mental fabrications to try and erase his guilt, by personally blaming Kristof for Anada’s apparent suicide. When he calls her off to the side to ask her to leave, instead of coming out with the words, he kisses her instead. Noir-ish voice-overs reveal him saying the words in his head, but his action of kissing her betrays his initial moral resolve and brings to the fore his actual subconscious resolve.

Despite Janos’s depressions, there is an air of enchantment about the film, especially considering a fantastic moment around the dinning room lamp (a lamp that gets a lot of symbolic play), after Zuzka and Anada have a kind of bonding session in the dark, when the film takes a sudden, brief, and quite remarkable, expressionistic turn. Also, there are some spellbinding visual highlights that include a nude Anada submerging and re-emerging from the river as well as an atmospheric, ethereal foggy boat ride to the church fairscene.

The soundtrack ranges from intrusive to sublime, with the intrusive parts standing out more. I personally like how different it is, but some of the giggly moviegoers that I’ve been around many times who go to screenings of older movies would be in a riot during some of the moments with the more conflicting carnival-like theme or the marching waltz.

Both of the female leads give great performances. Aside from being an actor, Paula Pritchett is also a model, and the filmmakers do capitalize on her beauty, and she has the right demigoddess, dark-haired look to play someone like Anada. Zuzka is just as beautiful and I believe is given more dialogue. Her soft voice is soothing, and everything she says is like poetry (except for when she’s calling for her chickens in one scene). Despite falling ill, she comes off as the strongest character, as she endures without compromise, unlike her husband. Also, it was her that was savvy enough to realize Anada was still alive and bring her back to consciousness with CPR after she nearly drowns.

So the film never directly addresses the question: who is Anada? If she’s a villain, she’s an unwilling one, who’s more or less driven Janos to villainy. And ostensibly, her shame at this may be the reason for her drowning suicide, but what of her origin? And again who is she? I’ve thought about it, and there are clues that point to the possibility that Anada might be an earthly embodiment of the Greek Goddess of Spring Persephone.

Anyone familiar with Persephone will know that she is the Queen of the Underworld, where she spends four months of the year with her husband Hades, which coincides with the period of winter on Earth. Hades did kidnap her when she was young, with Zeus’s, her father’s, blessing. This did not sit well with Persephone’s mother, Demeter, who convinced Zeus to allow Persephone to return to her. Persephone missed her mother, and she grieved at first at being made Hades’ queen, but she eventually grew to love Hades. Persephone eats from a pomegranate and as a rule can never leave the Underworld, but a compromise is made, where she must spend part of the year with Hades and the rest of the year on Earth with her mother. When she returns to her Earthly life, it harbors the coming of spring and likewise the death of winter.

When she comes to Earth, Persephone doesn’t always visit her mother, and when she doesn’t, it is sometimes unknown what she is up to.

Anada seemed Goddess-like to me, a supernatural being that could be walking the Earth for a set period. As a Goddess who may sometimes decide to emerge to Earth in different locations, her yearly Earth walk may’ve brought her by chance to Janos’s fishing hut. There she assumes the name of Anada, finds a friend in Zuzka and a man who eventually wishes to possess her. When her time is up, or after witnessing enough of the sad state of affairs at this locale, she returns to the underworld through the same route she came. Consider when after she apparently drowns herself, the camera briefly focuses on a naturally occurring whirlpool, which would signify her descent.

Persephone is usually associated with scenes of lush vegetation, and while in the film there isn’t any indication of oncoming vegetation per se, Anada does come from a river that has supplied fish, the source of wellbeing and livelihood to Janos, his family, his elders, and the community for a long time, something that has the same purpose as vegetation, to bring and maintain life.

Persephone’s arrival on Earth signifies the birth of spring, so one of the biggest clues for me is Zuzka’s illness and her account of the death-of-winter ceremony and what it signifies. Anada and Zuzka become close in a non-sexual intimate way. Eventually Zuzka becomes terminally ill. While sick, Zuzka relates a ceremony to Janos that she remembers, from when she was a child, which signifies the death of winter and the birth of spring. In a dreamlike flashback, the ritual is depicted with young girls setting fire to an idol on a small boat and sending it downstream. When he thinks she will die, Janos fantasizes about the same death-of-winter ceremony, but it is instead Zuzka’s funeral, and it happens to consist of drink and dance, a subtle way of hinting that he is looking forward to her passing (the death of winter) and a new life with Anada (the birth of Spring). In addition, at one of the few interesting dinner table scenes, Janos notes, in comparison to everyone else eating with their hands, how Anada eats daintily with a fork like a Duchess (nay, more like a queen), further evidencing her potential royal origin.

Coming into Adrift, I didn’t know what to expect. Plot events don’t always happen in chronological order, but I didn’t have a hard time following it. As is usually the case, there’s a lot of dialogue, yet most of it is interesting, and I did enjoy coming up with interpretations for this review. It’s a little long, yet the story kind of grows on you with repeat views, and I really liked how the filmmakers handled the ending and the lesson it imparted. The lead’s depression, paranoia, jealousy, and inner conflict can get a little heavy handed, but it’s kind of the point, as the movie mostly deals with Janos and the multitude of mistakes he frequently makes. The music sometimes works quite well, but other times it is unfortunately distracting. Fortunately, there are a lot of great visuals and experimental segments that I do think hit the mark. Jan Kadar and Elmar Klos’Adrift is a well done, mentally stimulating drama that sometimes steers briefly into the fantastique.

There is something beautifully haunting about Anada, and perhaps it’s her enigma that makes her that way, but I really do believe that there are enough clues in the movie to suggest that Anada is Persephone.

© At the Mansion of Madness

Terence from Chicks with Candles has tagged me to “list ten films that describe my aesthetic.” I believe this is a Tumblr game that has leaked into Blogger in my case. Before me, Terence was tagged by @alfredsnightmare. So what does it mean to say “my aesthetic”? With movies, I think of it as a familiar visual and emotional theme that still resonates with me irregardless of how many times I experience it.

But perhaps the included images might speak a little more than words.

1) The Forbidden Photos of a Lady above Suspicion (1973): Colorful liquor bar carts, ‘70s giallo glamor, Euro-nightclubs, Technicolor, small cars, cigarettes, Edda Dell’Orso, Ennio Morricone– So these features could describe a lot of movies, but this one has one of my favorite titles and Nieves Navarro in a black high split open side dress. I thought that Navarro’s proud and confident sexually liberated character Dominique felt like a proto-Samantha from Sex and the City.

2) Succubus (1968): Provocativemuses, looming castle destinations, mannequins, inner personality conflicts, nightclub faux torture scenes, dream sequences, trippy acid parties– The hazy soft-focused sequence when Janine Reynaud’s Lorna Green drifts out of bed and ventures to thelimestone river castle in Lisbon and the questionable perspective of dream or reality remains a gold standard for surreal film experiences for me. Is she mad, or just not of this world?

3) The Reincarnation of Isabel (1973):Erotic madness, mountainous terrain, spaced out looking actors standing around the Castle Balsorano, Eastmancolor, expressive sadomasochism, comical sex scenes, day and night merging, excessive use of grandiose set pieces– This movie’s a chaotic mess, but it’s also an expressionistic masterpiece that thrives on account of its aesthetic and not its narrative.

4) The Blood Spattered Bride (1972):Ancestral mansions, sapphic vampires, Carmilla influenced, bloody daggers, blurred line between dream and reality, bloody mariticide, gothic candle lit dinner scenes, sylvan settings– Beautiful but disturbing with several uncomfortable parts, The Blood spattered Bride still works as a great Spanish horror film despite being pretty heavy with its tones of misogyny and misandry.

5) The Spider Labyrinth (1988): Conspiracy theory – How can conspiracy theory be an aesthetic? Well, have a look at the included screen grab below. That realization that you were in the lion’s den the entire time makes for a uneasy experience in denouements to films such as The Perfume of the Lady in Black, Short Night of Glass Dolls, and Rosemary’s Baby.

6) Pinocchio and the Emperor of the Night (1987):‘80s Filmation nostalgia, inappropriately scaryfor intended kid audience, creepy carnivals– This unofficial sequel to Carlo Collodi’sPinocchio did give me nightmares, particularly on account of one scene with Pinocchio at The Neon Cabaret, some sort of kid’s disco (the Playland counterpart), where the kid’s faces start to horrifically distort after he drinks the sparkly green liquid, which I like to think is carbonated Ecto Cooler spiked with absinthe.

7) All the Colors of the Dark (1972): Black Masses, Edwige fenech (yes, she counts as an aesthetic), looming mansion destinations, Bruno Nicolai, staying classy and fashionable (like something out of a JCPenny’s catalogue) while being stalked by your killer. I love black mass scenes and All the Colors of the Dark easily has my favorites.

8) The Werewolf vs. the Vampire Woman (1971): Vampires moving through space in slow motion, classic monster mashups, Paul Naschy, gothic ambiance– With the right amount of fog and dread, slow motion framing can make your monsters seem to exist outside of space and time, and the effect is quite startling, so much so that Amando di Ossorio would mimic it for his Blind Dead Templars.

9) Queens of Evil (1970): Horror movies with a fairytale exterior, provocative situations that aren’t what they seem, ancient witches in touch with modern ‘70s fashions, Snow White, free spirited hippies with a lot of crazy ideas about free love– Queens of Evil is a fantastic horror film with a biting social message.

10) Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988):Classic cel animation juxtaposed with reality, nourish style set in 1940s LA, inappropriate for kids despite being one of my favorite movies as a kid– There couldn’t be anything more awesome than cartoons being real and the existence of a place like Toontown and not to mention a chance to meet Betty Boop.

Not to be confused with Andy Warhol’sBlow Job (1963), Alberto Cavallone’sBlow Job is a witchy Italian horror film with a fairly meagre start that escalates into a reality transcending experience that wasinfluenced by Aldous Huxley’s The Doors of Perception (1952) and the shamanistic writings of Carlos Castaneda. One similarity between both films is the titular blowjob and its ambiguous nature. Warhol’sBlow Job is a thirty five minute still-shot of a young man’s (DeVeren Bookwalter) face while he is supposedly receiving fellatio, allegedly by experimental filmmaker Willard Maas. Because the sexual act itself takes place off camera, it is never absolutely certain if the fellatio is legitimately happening, which along with conflicting accounts of the filming itself adds a curious air of mystery to it.

The blowjob in Cavallone’s film only makes up a fraction of the movie during the third act and coincides with a mescaline (the main active hallucinogen in peyote) trip, and so the fellatio is also presented indirectly. The mescaline aided “blowjob” sort of doubles as a gateway act to a higher form of perception, but the fascination in this case comes more from how the filmmakers choose to represent “suchness” or “the absolute”, the ultimate nature of reality without reduced awareness. One of our lead characters Stefano (Danilo Micheli) transcends reality, under the guidance of an erotic witch Sibilla (Mirella Venturini), to take a trip through the spirit world, aka tripping balls. It involves dancing and low budget experimental set pieces and was more memorable than I was anticipating it to be.

The narrative setting in Blow Job cycles from a somewhat demure hotel, a racehorse track, a spooky house, a trip into the “absolute reality”, and then back to the hotel again for a gruesome and bizarre aftermath. The shift back to the hotel during the conclusion is unexpected and feels like a return to a less fantastical reality.

It’s a little difficult to make sense of, but looking back at it now; I don’t think the lead characters, lovers Stefano and Diana (Anna Massarelli), ever physically left the hotel setting. Analogous to the it-was-all-a-dream-ending, the entire advancement of the plot in Blow Jobcould be a representation of a bad mescaline trip, with the witch antagonists, Sibilla and Angela (Anna Bruna Cazzato), representing the essence of the drug. Just as with Dorothy waking up at the end of The Wizard of Oz (1939) and being surrounded by familiar figures from her dream, certain denizens of the mescaline trip world, Sibilla and the butler Alphonse (Valerio Isidori), show up as bystanders to the ending crime scene outside of the hotel in Blow Job, which might make my assertion that it was all drug fueled fancy questionable after all. The police officer even asks Stefano if Diana had taken any drugs, to which he replies, “not that I know of.” I think Stefano is being deceitful here and the appearance of Sibilla and Alphonse during this moment may represent his guilt.

We are first introduced to Stefano and Diana at the hotel Cristallo doing what they seem to do best, living an irresponsible, hedonistic lifestyle. Something about the setting in their room does capture that Saturday morning kind of hangover. We don’t know much about them or the nature of their relationship, other than that they are quite physical, and he’s an out of work writer, and they don’t have the money to pay the sizable bill they’ve amassed staying at the hotel.

The hotel porter (Antonio Mea) informs them by phone that the management insists that the overdue guests pay their bill in full by the afternoon or they’ll be forced to leave and forfeit all of their possessions including their car (the nonchalant way this phone conversation plays out is kind of amusing, as the porter kind of maintains his formal hospitable personality while basically screwing them over). This doesn’t seem to bother them a whole lot; it’s probably just another day for the young and self-indulgent couple. Diana immediately wants to start having sex, but Stefano cannot get in the mood knowing the porter downstairs is waiting to rip him off.

"A lot of people don't realize this, but you can put your weed in there." -Distracting Adam Sandler Reference

Meanwhile, in the room directly above them, an epochal event takes place that sets the story in motion. A pale-looking, distressed woman is being menaced by a floating POV-camera with heavy breathing. She becomes fearful enough to the point of jumping out the window to escape, and during the fall, she somehow manages to shatter and bloody-up Diana and Stefano’s window. The resulting commotion from the scene that ensues affords Stefano and Diana a chance to escape from the hotel with their car and possessions.

They, of course, end up at the horse racing tracks. Stefano convinces Diana to give him the rest of her money so he can bet it on the horses and hopefully fix their money problem. Before he places the bet, Stefano runs into a distressed, enigmatic woman with an eyepatch, Angela, who latches on to him, insisting that he has the key to opening some sort of proverbial gate she must pass through (yes, I thought of Ghostbusterstoo). Knowing he is financially distraught, she offers to tell him the winning horse if in return he helps her to unlock“the gate” that she so desperately wants to pass through. Stefano assumes that she is literally having trouble opening the front gate to her house, so he takes her up on the offer and, thanks to Angela's witchy intervention, successfully bets everything on the horse called “Moby Dick.” Now obligated but without any real understanding of what it is she wants from them, Stefano and Diana stay with Angela at her isolated gothic mansion where things definitely get stranger.

So what is this gate, and why does Angela covet passage through it? I have likened the witches in this movie to the essence of mescaline. Eventually Diana develops a spiritual and physical connection to the witch Angela, and Stefano likewise develops a similar connection to Sibilla. These connections represent the relationship between the drug and the user. The gate Angela speaks of is a wall that separates us between the everyday familiar reality and the idea of an ultimate reality that drugs, meditation, alcohol, or religious experience help us to realize. We all harvest a desire to temporarily cross this gate to escape the mundaneness of everyday life and enter a higher form of awareness, where there’s only beauty, and time and space become trivial. Angela pleading to Stefano to be the key to grant her passage through the gate is actually the drugs calling out to Stefano and Diana; they are the ones seduced and taken on a journey through the gate; in a sense, they are not using the drugs; the drugs are using them.

While they are staying at the house, things are of course weird and suspect. The next day, without them knowing, Angela uses black magic to incapacitate Diana and make her sick. Stefano is sent away into town to get help. Angela then uses a magic powder to “cure” Diana and “pass the gate that opens into the garden of happiness.” When she comes to, Diana becomes hooked on Angela, as they’ve now become close lovers, but Diana has of course reached a sort of no-turnaround point now, as she gets stranger and more and more hooked on Angela, to the point of never wanting to leave the isolated mansion and return to reality. If this isn’t a metaphor for substance dependence, I don’t know what is.

Despite his greatest effort, Stefano is unable to get through to Diana. Eventually a second witch, Sibilla, enters the house through a mirror to latch her claws into Stefano, eventually helping him reach a state of complete contemplation with an herb-based hallucinogenic drink before the film slowly climaxes to the promised blow job only to reveal it is not a blow job per se but a transcendence of reality that is portrayed through dance.

I love what’s achieved during the dance scene, which transitions from phantasmagoric, to ballroom masquerade with a nude Diana dancing arm in arm with Angela as Stefano tries to reach her through the crowd but never quite managing.

Death on a motorcycle shows up, parks her bike in the mansion hall, and removes her leather jacket and helmet to reveal that death is Sibilla in a Walmart skull mask. But she still looks cool and downright evocative. Death joins the dance and touches other dancers, one at a time, who fall dead. This is when I first realized I love this movie.

Further supporting my idea that Diana and Stefano are still at the hotel, where I feel they’ve been the whole time, the hotel porter from earlier makes an unforeseen appearance, before the climax, in the front hall and greets Stefano. The porter has the pale, distressed woman from earlier, who jumped out the hotel window to her death, up against the wall, nude, and upside down. He is indulging in some esoteric act of painting a circle across her butt cheeks and kissing each cheek one at a time. The whole butt cheek kissing thing is beyond me, but I like to think of the upside down dead woman, still bloody but seemingly still alive and smiling, as having the same meaning as a reverse tarot card. When a tarot card is drawn in reverse, the card is supposed to have an opposite meaning. Since the meaning is opposite, she is a dead woman who appears alive. Everything in the world Stefano is in now is deceitful; it is a hallucination, not reality, not real consciousness but altered consciousness.

Mescaline trips can range from euphoric to fearfully unpleasant, with the unpleasant being unbearable to the point that the taker considers or commits suicide. A suicide does occur, which, after the veil of deception is lifted, is related back to the first death at the hotel, where the truth is finally revealed.

Since it could be seen as a drug metaphor, Blow Job could’ve been more psychedelic and colorful, but perhaps its bleak look and grim ending serve it better as a cautionary tale. A. Huxley’s essay was in support of mescaline over all other drugs; Cavallone’s Blow Job feels more like a warning.

© At the Mansion of Madness

I first saw Horror Rises from the Tomb many years ago (around 2003) as part of a four movie bargain set of zombie movies, and my initial thoughts were, “too slow and not enough zombies.” I had no idea who Spanish filmmaker Paul Naschy was at the time, nor would I have probably cared. I was disappointed I didn’t get the zombie movie the misleading box cover promised. I then cast it aside as an irrelevant film that was best forgotten. (Boy is adult-me really annoyed at teenage-me right now.)

In the midst of my giallo collecting craze around 2008, I eventually came upon a Naschy thriller called Blue Eyes of the Broken Doll (1974). Needless to say, I dug it and finally became interested in director/writer/actor Paul Naschy. My next Naschy film was Human Beasts (1980), which to me was an even greater experience. Then, after having fun with a couple of Naschy’s werewolf movies, I thought, despite my disconcerting memories of the film, I’d give Horror Rises from the Tomb another go with a new perspective as a Naschy fan and without my zombie film bias.

Horror Rises from the Tomb was written by and stars Paul Naschy, in three roles. It came about as a rush emergency product. Film producer José Antonio Pérez Giner urgently needed a horror screenplay in order to get a new production company, Profilmes, off the ground. With only a day and a half to do it, Paul Naschy offered to quickly write up a screenplay. In his memoirs, Naschy stated that he managed to write up the screen play for Horror Rises from the Tomb in record time with the help of amphetamine pills. The movie was originally to have been directed by Leon Klimovsky, but he was not available, so the job went to Klimovsky’s assistant Carlos Aured. Aured would direct Naschyin three other films, Curse of the Devil(1973), The Mummy’s Revenge (1973), and the aforementioned Blue Eyes of the Broken Doll, before the two would have a falling out, as Aured seems to have shunned Naschy from what was supposed to be their next film.

It is safe to say that Horror Rises from the Tomb is one of themost well-known Naschy films and emblematic of Naschy’s particular brand of horror. It also features one of Naschy’s most iconic monsters, next to the wolf-man, Alaric de Marnac, an evil French sorcerer/knight who is kind of a mix between Gilles de Rais and Count Dracula. Naschy would reprise the role of de Marnac in Panic Beats (1983). Pacing issues aside, this movie is a beautiful gothic horror piece that’s a lot more dreadful than most of your atmospheric candles, nightgowns, and ghosts fests. There’s just something depressing, hopeless, and pessimistic about it. The characters seem doomed to die horrific deaths in an inescapable, claustrophobic nightmare world.

When I first saw it, I was anticipating a fun zombie film, one that followed conventional zombie-film rules, instead of a dark and disturbing tale of occult cruelty. I had also thought that it dragged its doom and gloom, stilted conversation scenes, contrived climax, and ritualistic resurrections to an uninspired conclusion.

I remember thinking that the short zombie segment was too little too late, but I was overlooking that the zombies were more of an addition to the meat and potatoes, like a condiment, a little George Romeroto go with your gothic horror. Also, the scene with the zombies, seen from a distance, emerging from the swamp is highly effective at eerily foreboding the film’s brief transition into a zombie film. The landscape and sound effects that sound like some sort of unidentified sea creature make this one of the creepier parts.

My negative opinion has of course long since passed. I’ve come to hold Horror Rises in high esteem. The film really is a nightmarish experience akin to Fulci’sThe Beyond (1981). It also helped that, when I revisited it for the first time, I chose to watch BCI’s marvelous HD restoration, which brought out the sheer beauty that makes up every interior set and exterior location, because beauty paired with gloom is an intrinsic element to this kind of film.

Aside from the visuals, my favorite quality would have to be the dark fantasy element, which includes sorcery, occult rituals, and resurrected evil from the middle ages. The antagonists are introduced at the beginning in a terrific medieval flashback. Alaric de Marnac and his faithful love and partner in evil, Mabille de Lancré (Helga Line) are being led to the gallows to be executed for a list of heinous crimes, which includes “drinking human blood”, “eating flesh”, and “bloody sacrifices of the newborn and of young girls.” Naschy and Line do seem born for these roles, with the evil sorceress/vampire Mabille being kind of like a red-headed mix of Circe and Evil-Lyn. Linewas about forty years old at the time of filming, and I do believe that Mabille, along with the Loreley from Amando de Ossorio’sThe Loreley’s Grasp (1974), is probably Line’s most popular role. (By the way, today July 14 happens to be Helga Line’sbirthday).

Happy birthday, vampire queen!

Before their violent executions, both Alaric and Mabille manage to spit out rather elaborate, vengeful curses to the descendants of those responsible for their sentence, namely Alaric’s brother Armand de Marnac (also Paul Naschy) and Andre Roland (Victor Alcázar). This setup does bring to mind Bava’s pivotal gothic horror Black Sunday (1960), and likely a number of other films that followed suit.

Flash forward to ‘70s Paris, where the descendants (and modern counterparts) of Andre and Armand, Maurice (Alcázar) and Hugo (Naschy), are living what appears to be comfortable lives, each with their respective girlfriends who could pass as supermodels.

So that’s three roles for Naschy, and although Armand is only briefly shown, the character range is, as usual with Naschy, exceptionally impressive. When I first watched this, i.e. when I was ignorant of Paul Naschy, I didn’t even notice.

A skeptical Hugo attends a marvelously shot séance, where they learn of the location of Alaric’s head buried somewhere on the land near Hugo’s isolated winter mansion. To see if it was all a hoax, and if not, to possibly find buried treasure, Hugo suggests to everyone that they travel down for a sort of getaway for the weekend to the chalet on his family grounds. (The gorgeous isolated country house located in Lozoya Valley in the film actually belonged to Naschy’sparents).

During the drive up to the estate, they are stopped and molested by bandits (a common scene in Naschy’sfilms), who wreck their car. Vigilantes come to their aid, and they turn out to be even more brutal than the bandits, as they violently murder the bandits with the authority of an execution squad. Every time I watch it, I’m disturbed by the summary executions, which feel like an appalling abuse of authority. The leader of the gang, who is a dead ringer for Daniel Day-Lewis in Gangs of New York (2002), sells Hugo and his companions a clunker so they can reach their destination where all Hell will eventually break loose.

It’s funny that the curse would take over five-hundred years to be realized. You’d think Alaric and Mabille’s vengeful souls would’ve moved on and gotten over this execution incident from way back in the Middle-Ages by now and perhaps acquired some sort of enlightenment whilst in whatever purgatory they were confined to before resurrection, yet this is true evil itself, which would only intensify with centuries.

I do like the way the groundskeeper becomes possessed and transitions into something similar to a slasher movie villain to do Alaric’s bidding in order to procure the parts he needs to be resurrected, namely Alaric’s head, a heart, and a nubile body for Mabille’s resurrection.

While at the estate, Hugo develops a love connection with one of the house keeper’s daughters, Elvira (Emma Cohen). (The name Elvira is in tribute to Naschy’sreal life wife, Elvira Primavera, one of many times Naschy would name his character’s love interest after his wife). Cohen’s performance is sincere; she puts a lot of terror and sadness (her character did recently lose her father and sister to the forces of evil) into her acting, making certain scenes like the zombie assault more believable, as she stands behind Naschy while he pushes the zombies back with a torch, and her facial expressions here give a genuine sense of fear. Elvira ends up being the heroine of the story, transitioning from the damsel in distress to the final girl, with the power to destroy Alaric and Mabille. This power is in the form of a “deus ex machina” plot device known as the Talisman of Thor. I find it rather peculiar that with the film’s villains being in league with Satan, instead of a Christian symbol of good such as the cross, it is a pagan symbol that overpowers the evil force. However, a cross probably could’ve been found anywhere, but a mythical talisman is quite unique. I do think it is unusual, but a good kind of unusual, addition, probably because it had me thinking of fantasy themed heavy metal. The villains who were pretty terrifying up to this point do become pushovers when pit against the Talisman of Thor, which was conveniently pulled out of a well. But the seemingly invincible evil has to be defeated somehow, and I’ll accept a fun trinket like the Talisman of Thor, which could easily adorn the cover of a power metal album.

So I made the point that I didn’t like it at first, but that was more of a shame-on-me sort of thing, because Horror Rises from the Tomb is awesome. It may slow to a grinding halt at times, but the mood, tone, and atmosphere always persist. The soundtrack is also creepy and quite effective; there’s a particular disturbing, scraping sound effect heard during some of the esoteric ritual scenes, and usually when Alaric’s presence is known, that sounds like some sort of reptilian mating call that adds to the unease. I can’t recommend it enough to Naschy fans that haven’t seen it yet, and with the right audience this would make for some great midnight movie madness.

© At the Mansion of Madness

During the time I was writing this review, I was saddened to learn of the passing of Emma Cohen on July 11, 2016. Thank you and rest in peace Emma Cohen. I haven’t yet experienced the full extent of your acting, but your talent was and will continue to be a special treat to us fans of Spanish cult/horror films.

Despite there being a finite number of Jess Franco films, it virtually feels like I won’t ever run out of Francomovies to choose from, since there are so many (over 200) and from many different eras (from the ‘50s up to 2013). I’ve explored and hunted for Jess Franco films for close to a decade now and still have quite a journey ahead of me, which will probably only end for me if I ever lose interest. The selection pool is deep enough to be a lifelong endeavor, especially if you plan on really absorbing, studying, and digesting most of them. I’ve got my favorites that I return to when I can, but more frequently I always get an itch for a new one, but the list is long, which is equal parts comforting and overwhelming.

When it comes to the large selection of erotic Lina Romay featured Franco titles, it can be difficult to make a selection. You want something that goes beyond just lengthy porn scenes; you want something worth keeping, something that’s erotic but also dark, ethereal, metaphysical, with a dreamy ambiance, emotion, and artistic merit. Well, if you haven’t seen it yet, and you’re looking for a sweet Jess Franco and Lina Romay fix, the film I’m pulling out for you tonight, Night of 1,000 Sexes, will meet your demands.

Early on, I felt that ‘80s Jess Franco films tended to be a bit iffy at times, so I would mostly play it safe by staying in the comfort zone of Franco’s‘60s and ‘70s output (I’m so terribly behind with the ‘90s, ‘00s, and ‘10s material), but there are treasures to be found in the ‘80s, such as Macumba Sexual, Sinfonia erotica, Faceless (I’m really curious about Bahia blanca), and I’m happy to add Night of 1,000 Sexes to the list of worthwhile ‘80s Franco. I’m having trouble deciding if it’s a masterpiece, but for me it felt like a return to a type of form that matches nicely with Succubus, Nightmares Come at Night, She Killed in Ecstasy, and Female Vampire.

It was filmed in Las Palmas in the Canary Islands and in Costa del Sol, so as usual the evocative natural locales help to elevate the film beyond its super low budget. The music is by Jess Franco and Daniel White, whose hauntingly beautiful Female Vampire theme is brought back, which is something I’d normally gripe about, but it kind of feels appropriate here, with Lina playing another cursed killer, also named Irina, who deep down is actually a benevolent soul.

Irina is not a tragic vampire this time around but a performing medium of sorts. She and her partner, Fabian (Daniel Katz), have a traveling nightclub act in which Fabian blindfolds and hypnotizes Irina, and, upon asking, is able to have her describe any item someone from the audience might hand him. This would be pretty freaking cool to actually witness in a club, although Iwould probably remain skeptical myself and assume they had some sort of camera trick going on. It goes on a little long, but it’s a memorable segment and is also the film’s way of introducing a number of relevant faces (the dramatis personae?), some of which will show up later to have the special honor of being Lina Romay’s victims during Jess Franco’s brand of languid but hypnotic murder/sex scenes.

Later on during this 1,000 sexes night, before the killing starts, Fabian evades Irina’s affectionate bedtime advances, as he seems to be more interested in reading The Necronomicon instead of snuggling with her. He suggests they break up, because he’s apparently not happy living in her shadow. Or so he says, because he never really goes away. He and a witch princess of sorts, Lorna (Carmen Carrión), seem have an agenda that involves metaphysically exploiting Irina.

The premise becomes similar to Nightmares Come at Night, with Irina usually on the brink of a mental breakdown from memories of having killed certain individuals without being entirely certain if it was a nightmare. Plus it becomes apparent that she is either mad or under someone’s mind control spell. In erotic dreams, an eerie voice chants in her ear (who I think sounds like Jess). She’s summoned by the evil sounding voice in her head to a sunny temple, where in a sort of catatonic/hypnotized state; Irina occasionally visits Lorna the witch princess, who enchants Irina with the warm and tender witch’s kiss on her forehead. Could it be a blessing or a curse? These scenes where Irina meets with Lorna are quite spiritual and in these instances Lina is usually seen in non-erotic, almost more religious, attire, and her performance is still captivating, especially when she’s passing through the dark set with the colorful stained glass window backdrop that reminds one of sleepwalking in a dream.

Lina is a skilled screamer, and she does let loose a couple times here with fits of soul piercing screams; think of the closeout to Macumba Sexual, but a lot more animated. There are also a couple of moments, that I like to think are self-referential, with Lina slowly walking towards the camera from a distance, evoking memories of a similar visual ten years prior in Female Vampire.

Although sex and murder make up the main platter, the film isn’t really all that pornographic, not nearly as much as Female Vampire, nor is it really all that violent. Irina does penetrate victims with a curved dagger, but it’s implied, off camera with no wounds, just a little blood on the blade and a good measure of jazz music. This may not be enough to really satisfy anyone looking for riveting, visceral kill scenes.

The murder scenes are still pretty remarkable, slowly playing out with a certain feeling of inebriation and languor. They could just hypnotize you to sleep if you are watching while tired after a long night at work. The best one takes place in a snazzy boudoir of sorts, where Irina, looking a little like an escort, visits the man from earlier at the nightclub who always has his two short-haired ladies with him. I’m imagining they are in some sort of three way relationship, sort of like Thom, Toni, and Laura from Messiah of Evil. When Irina arrives, the guy passes her a joint, and she looks quite apathetic in what is probably one of the most remembered scenes from this movie of Lina eerily staring off into space. A foursome ultimately plays out, where the unnerving sounds (including distorted moaning that I think is Lina and Jess), multiple camera angles, and visuals fuse into one hell of a fever dream. Lina owns this scene (in fact she own the entire movie), but you’ll also have a hard time forgetting those purple, white-striped couches.

One could argue that Night of 1000 Sexes doesn’t have the greatest wrap-up, although it does involve Jess Franco’s brief role as a psychiatrist, and I kind of like the two antagonists as well as the main idea of the story, however familiar for Franco, despite its conclusion seeming rather abrupt. In the end it’s the experience of the film that counts. I’m pretty sure none of it was filmed at night, although there is a good measure of dreamy day for night, like living life in blue. Linais sometimes rocking the ‘80s hair, which can be hideous on others, but she pulls it off, although I’m not sure if it’s a wig; she’s known to wear wigs at times.

If it’s getting to be about that time when those warm, oneiric memories of Lina Romay resonating with Jess’s camera in some exotic, touristy locale start calling your name, than be sure to give Night of 1000 Sexes a look.

© At the Mansion of Madness

It seems like only yesterday when we were checking out The Devil of Kreuzberg (2015), a respectably accomplished modern gothic horror film directed by Alexander Bakshaev that’s gotten a lot of due praise, and now, seemingly out of nowhere, Alex and the great folks involved follow it up with a killer Jess Franco tribute S & M: Les Sadiques.

I had viewed a lot of compelling images of this film when it was in production, and one of the images, which did not end up in the cut of S & M that I watched, displayed lead actor Nadine Papechanneling an iconic image of late ‘60s, early ‘70s Franco lead Soledad Miranda, and I thought it looked cool. It captured the original spirit but also had a different energy about it that was trying to impart a new vision, something that’s not only a great tribute but also works on a number of other levels, which is something that could also be said about the overall film.

It’s safe to say that Alex has upped the ante this time around with S & M, as the murder is more violent and visceral than in TDoK, and there is an appropriate amount of nudity for a movie called S&M, whereas TDoK had none. It’s not only a sexy movie; there’s lots of atmosphere, colorful lighting, and good character dynamics. In fact, I was surprised at how attached I felt to the characters, especially the lead Marie (Pape). I did really like the way she remains a sympathetic character despite her unsavory transition into a murderer.

In the spirit of Franco, there is a sapphic element to the proceedings, with lesbian sex scenes and stage performances shot with a sensibility that’s equally naughty and artistic. The intro to the film feels a little like an overture, consisting of some real smooth synth music that gives us a stylish taste of sensual S&M before transitioning into the main plot, which has to do with uncertainty in life’s destinations and braving the trail from a sheltered home towards independence, albeit without a solid plan.

Our lead girl, Marie, is a runaway of sorts, seeking independence, a new home, and companionship in Berlin but instead finds poverty, disappointment, and rejection. The first stranger she comes across for help kindly takes her in only to attempt to sexually abuse and assault her. She escapes and reaches her absolute low before, through a chance (or perhaps fateful) meeting, finding comfort and a home in an enigmatic, caring, but fierce woman’s arms.

Sandra (Sandra Bourdonnec) takes in the homeless Marie after coming across her in a pitiful state sleeping on the stairs outside of her apartment, and a tender relationship develops that isn’t without its fair share of conflict, gas-lighting, and the occasional tragedy or two. Is she an angel of salvation or damnation? The two female leads have chemistry and there’s a convincing sensuality in their love making, although Sandra is the dominant one and has a fierce side, biting back at Marie for any slight suggestion, firmly asserting that she takes orders from no one. Marie also serves as a kind of muse for Sandra’s erotic photography.

During her time under Sandra’s wing, Marie is introduced into her world - love, death, sex toys, corsets, pornography. I’m sure Marie has seen all of this before she met Sandra, but not with this type of emphasis. It’s a kind of awakening for Marie, one that leads to corruption (foreshadowing the theme of corruption, De Sade’sJustine is in clear view on the bookshelf). Marie’s character arc is quite sudden, one moment she’s gently caressing her pet bunny during a flashback, the next she’s strangling a male prostitute with her belt, at Sandra’s whim.

I’m not sure if I'm detecting a bit of misandry with Sandra, but she somewhat objectifies males, loving them as her playthings that she has fun with and eventually murders. When she tasks Marie to go out and find a new “playmate”, the drama is amped up with a third wheel, in the form of a nightclub singer, Corrado (Kevin Kopacka), a role inspired by Dylan Dog (which I can dig very much). Things get complicated, as Marie’s attempts at finding love and independence only seem to catalyze tragedy.

There’s an impressive image that gives me chills with Sandra coldly walking down a hallway spattered in blood wearing nothing but red thigh highs after murdering someone in a sexually disturbing manner. She comes off as a total psychopath, and the effect is awesome.

There are pleasing visual aesthetics in S & M that do feel like vintage Jess Franco, like soft focusing, hypnotizing erotic nightclub performances, and a pervasive use of red with lighting that calls to mind a particular reddish smoking scene I’m fond of from Les nuits brûlantes de Linda (1975) with Lina Romayand Alice Arno. The couple of times Corrado is performing in a club, I’m reminded a little of the great musical nightclub performances in Al otro lado del espejo (1973). Alex infuses the film with the natural locale and makes Berlin a living, breathing entity in the film. I recognized the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church in the shopping district that had me thinking of the finale to Succubus (1967).

You'd think this was a romantic scene, but you'd be wrong... Oh so wrong...

S & M is a surprisingly polished and emotionally rewarding experience from Bakshaev and co. The soundtrack is pleasant and the lighting and cinematography are all ace. I salute the love, work, and creativity put into it. It’s obvious that Jess Francofans won’t want to miss this, but S & M does manage to elevate beyond being a mere homage and is a highly watchable and impressive piece of work.

© At the Mansion of Madness

Mario Colucci’sSomething Creeping in the Dark has been off the radar for a long time. I didn't even know about it until recently, and this is the kind of stuff I live for. This might be because it is rather mediocre in certain aspects, some might even say a little boring if this isn't your kind of thing. It's a curious little low-key Italian horror, and even though it's not that scary or original, it has its creepymoments. The ambiance and familiar setting is comforting if you’re in the mood for this type of movie. Also on the plus side, all the genre traditions we know and love are here: séances, portraits, fleeting shades of black magic and the occult, contrived gathering of suspicious characters, spirits, candles, storms, murders, babes, a spooky but marvelous gothic mansion, and night gowns. It really is a beautiful looking gothic thriller despite being routine in the story department, but there’s a lot to chew on with its concept, and there’s so many nice touches that keep it afloat. At times, it’s got a strange charm to it, with near Polselli-like moments with actors looking spaced out, standing around like model figurines.

The setup is one we’ve seen a thousand times before: a chance gathering of characters in a remote gothic mansion. It’s contrived but almost always works, especially if you’re a big fan of this type of film, like me. They all have a sinister but cozy night ahead of them. Well at least cozy for the viewer.

I’m definitely a fan of sensational intro credits, such as the creepy witch-cackling during the intro to Maniac Mansion (1972) and the kitschy “Fumetti-neri” style of the Baba Yaga (1973) credits, but the intro credits leave something to be desired with Something Creeping in the Dark. The dramatic freeze framing seems uninspired and almost distracting while we are being introduced to a set of mildly uninteresting characters. It’s supposed to indicate unease and menace, but the somewhat lazy editing pulls viewers out, failing to generate a convincing sense of dread.

A bickering husband and wifecouple (Giacomo Rossi Stuart and Lucia Bose), a serial killer named Spike (Farley Granger) being pursued by two police characters (Franco Beltrammeand Dino Fazio), a doctor and his assistant (Stelvio Rosi and Mia Genberg), and a professor of the arcane (Angelo Francesco Lavagnino) happen to all cross paths. A broken bridge from a supposedly fierce but painfully absent storm causes them all to have to take shelter at a nearby remote manor with an exterior that is portrayed by a rather obvious looking but still charming maquette.

The dark-and-stormy-night-with-the-bridge-out cliché is a sacred classic horror tradition, but it comes off as a lazy setup here. I understand that it’s low-budget, but more sound effects, heavier wind and rain, as well as a fog machine are sorely needed, as the presence of the big storm that is keeping everyone confined is hardly felt. It's just a little bit of rain and faint thunder, with it being completely calm when everyone gets out of their cars to talk.I guess this might work in a surreal, strange sort of way, but I honestly think a similar filmManiac Mansion had the right idea with the excessive fog. Early on, there doesn’t seem to be much reason to be emotionally invested in anyone, but oh my gosh does this film transition from bland to gorgeous once the stage shifts to the mansion interior, with a visual aesthetic that’s part gothic horror, part giallo.

With the phone lines out (big surprise), everyone is stuck spending the night. They eventually get bored enough to have a séance and conjure the ghost of a killer madwoman who used to live in the house. Spike eventually escapes custody and later Sylvia (Bose) is mysteriously murdered. Was it her fed up husband, the red herring killer, the ghost, or someone else? In the end, it isn’t clear, but that didn’t really matter to me. The first time I watched this, I enjoyed the comfy gothic mansion aesthetic and a number of supernal sequences. On subsequent re-watches, I noticed how much more psychological the film is, with some interesting profound concepts. There’s also an eerie surreal climax where several characters freeze up, suggesting a communal possession or hallucination, but a letdown of a “deus ex machina” ending follows that just kind of ends things just because the movie’s over.

I’m not sure if there ended up being any real reason to have everyone in the house together, unlike say in Agatha Christie’sAnd Then There Were None, of which the genre owes so much.

Lucia Bose is stunning in this as social elitist Sylvia Forrest, and her presence does add a lot to the viewing experience; with her enchanting, glamorous party outfit and saucy demeanor, she’s the belle of the ball. Well, at least to those who aren’t married to her, because she does seem to fill the role of demeaning wife to her husband, Donald Forrest (Rossi Stuart).

One of the more striking moments occurs somewhat early on with a highlight piano scene between Spike and Sylvia, where she is almost hypnotized by him and his piano playing (serenading and romancing her), and we go into a theatrical dream segment, which is basically Sylvia’s character having an abstract fantasy about what being intimate with a violent killer sadist might be like. It’s wonderfully shot and beautifully enhanced by the piano music. (Spike has a total rockabilly/greaser look to kind of signify that he’s a bad guy). Spike is probably the most interesting character, along with Sylvia. I can't quite tell if she's turned on by him, but she does seem to be drawn to him, as if being alone with a notorious maniac might be a strange kink to her. She even fantasizes about trying to stab him repeatedly but to no avail, as he laughs and mocks her attempts to play the role of killer.

For some reason, the enigmatic butler/caregiver Joe (Gianni Medici), who, as usual, just sort of comes with the house, has a hot babe (Giulia Rovai) he makes love to who hangs out in a hidden room, wearing no pants, reading on the bed, looking like a boudoir pinup model, and is pretty much forbidden to show herself to the company for some strange reason. She stays in the room a long time and ends up having nothing much to do with anything for the most part; I can’t figure out her purpose other than eye candy. She and the butler both seem suspicious, but their relation seems to serve little purpose. I’m not complaining though, as she is still a delightful presence. She does come out of her room to the living quarters with everyone else eventually to participate in the eerie climax.

A malevolent spirit of an occultistis apparently haunting the house and possessing characters, opening up their base desires. The ghost is a husband killing mad woman who used to live in the manor, Lady Sheila Marlowe (we only see her in a model photo portrait; the model is Loredana Nusciak from Django (1966).

There’s a terrific roaming POV ghost cam, complete with high reverb moans and creepy siren-like wails that’s almost like being in the consciousness of a ghost. We become intimate with the ghost, despite never seeing it. The ghost wanders the halls and picks different rooms to enter, taking hold of the soul of the occupant as well. The ghost unlocks hidden desires, such as Donald’s repressed desire to kill his wife or Susan’s deep down desire to sleep with her boss.

It’s a ghost movie, but you won’t be seeing any ghosts. The ghost is never seen but its presence is sure felt. They did something similar with A Whisper in the Dark (1976). With Something Creeping in the Dark, the ghost exists in the narrative more as a concept. Instead of showing a hokey ghost, they attach human psych to it, in the process making it a metaphor for our base instincts, a ghost within us that is lurking in the darkest parts of our subconscious, something creeping deep down inside every one of us, in the dark places we’ve been conditioned since birth to repress. If something is repressed, like an emotion or a wish, the ghost unleashes it in someone, sets it free.

There’s a cool part about halfway through when the ghost visits Susan and all the ticking clocks in the house stop, generating a surreal frozen-in-time feeling.

Up to this point Susan has the studious tied hair and glasses look, with the obvious intention of downplaying her good looks, telegraphing that she’ll be doing the ol’ “remove her glasses and drop her hair” trick and look totally different. It’s a pretty interesting way of changing her physically after the ghost seemingly affects her (possesses her?) where she finally opens up to her boss, Dr. Williams.

The doctor (Rosi from The Hanging Woman (1973)) seems totally concerned for Susan when she tries to seduce him, aware that this is completely unlike her. He ultimately concedes. Susan becomes ambivalent about it afterwards when a bolt of lightning breaks the spell, and she no longer remembers seducing and sleeping with Dr. Williams, afterwards feeling ashamed and uncertain as to why.

As I said before, there are also hints of the occult and arcane, most notably with the presence of Professor Lawrence (Lavagnino), the eccentric arcane professor with his metaphysical words of caution and theories, whose role is pretty much to remind everyone that there aremysterious forces we do not yet understand. The scene of the professor playing solitaire resembles someone reading tarot cards. In fact, he flips a card to reveal a dual playing/tarot card, the death card/5 of clubs. (Interesting fact: the actor playing the professor also did the music for the film, and the soundtrack is impressively haunting.)

We escape the mansion a couple of times when the police have to chase after Spike in the woods. It gives the allusion of the area’s isolation, having immediate forest region surrounding the house, a troupe still used to this day (AHS:Roanoke(2016)).

Something Creeping in the Darkis mostly good old fashioned haunted house fun with enough nuances to not make it feel too much like a pointless waste of time. It’s a very talky mystery horror/thriller, but I personally enjoy relaxing and reading a lot of subtitles, but this could be a turnoff for some. It’s long and has quite the languid pace, but, despite its flaws, weak startup and conclusion, it’s definitely something creepy, moody, and atmospheric to unwind with when the mood for classic style Italian Gothic horror in color arises.

© At the Mansion of Madness

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