At the Mansion of Madness

Manhattan Babymarks the end of an era, which was Lucio Fulci’s most prolific filmmaking period that included classics such as Zombie(1979), The Gates of Hell (1980), The Beyond (1981), and The House by the Cemetery (1981). This isn’t to say these were Fulci’s best films; they were just some of the most commercially successful, not to mention big hits with the general horror audience.

With Fulci being synonymous with gore, zombies, and various sorts of gateways to hell, viewer expectations of Manhattan Baby were probably different than what they got, as it abandons the gothic, supernatural zombie film altogether. It was scriptwriter Dardano Sacchetti’s attempt at moving away from what he considered conventional horror, to try and close up the gates of hell and open new gates of time and space. Although there are obvious influences from The Exorcist (1973) and The Awakening (1980) (and surprising similarities to Poltergeist which came out the same year), Sacchetti wanted to create something different, and for the most part he succeeded.

There ends up being something undeniably Fulci about it, yet Manhattan Baby isn’t what you’d call top-tier Fulci. In fact, I was quite disappointed by the film when I first saw it. The nightmare logic is there, the gore is there, the visuals are fantastic, and Fabio Frizzi’s score is as mood enhancing as ever. So, why does the film end up falling flat?

Most of the blame seems to be placed on script problems, but it’s not like any of the films from Fulci’s Gates of Hell trilogy were without narrative problems. In fact, for those who weren’t nitpicking, the peculiar brand of plot incoherencies had this odd way of enhancing the nightmare world these films created. The gore sequences in Manhattan Baby are perhaps less effective and memorable than some of the crowd pleasers that preceded it, with Daniela Doria’s gut puking, Olga Karlatos’s wooden splinter in the eye, and Schweick’s crucifixion truly being the stuff of filmmaking legend. But a lot of people, including myself, have found a lot to appreciate with Fulcioutside of the gore. The gore worked, but it wasn’t the only thing to praise these films for. Also, the dialogue and dubbing in Manhattan Baby is pretty bad, but again that shouldn’t be anything new to Fulci’s horror fans.

With The Beyond and The Gates of Hell, Fulcitook the zombie film to a supernatural hell on earth, and the result was spectacular. You felt really bad for anyone in Fulci’s nightmare world. With Manhattan Baby, it’s a little difficult to become invested in any of the characters’ plights, because the threat is a little less tangible and hard to resolve. I guess this is supposed to work in a fear-of-the-unknown sort of way, but it comes off as a confused creation, with even the writers probably not sure of what’s going on. A couple of the characters use the term “inexplicable” to describe the threat, which just seems like an easy way for the film to not have to really explain anything. The threat of an ancient obscure deity could’ve been terrifying, but any kind of fear or unease the movie is shooting for is lost in the tedium of vague references to an ancient Egyptian ruler that’s somehow responsible for everything bad happening. It might’ve helped if this “Habnubanor” showed himself in some sort of recognizable manifestation instead of being talked about (the killer stuffed birds or the cobra in the X-ray doesn’t quite cut it). I understand that the metaphysical threat is supposed to be an abstract entity, but this is Fulci, and we expect a wormy, maggot ridden monster. Remember, show-don’t-tell.

I’ve always enjoyed Fulci’s particular brand of child-themed horror, such as in The House by the Cemetery, Sweet House of Horrors (1989), and here in Manhattan Baby, which is probably the film’s strongest trait. The faux Henry Jamesquote at the end of The House by the Cemetery, “No one will ever know if children are monsters or monsters are children,” didn’t seem to entirely relate to that film, but it does seem to foreshadow the brother and sister lead characters in Manhattan Baby, Tommy (Giovanni Frezza) and Susie (Brigitta Boccoli), who kind of serve as a bridge from the metaphysical world to the real world, where the unseen deity can wreak havoc on the innocent, having a particular prejudice for men with beards.

Fans of The House by the Cemetery should be happy to see creepy child actor Giovanni Frezza back again. He plays the bratty and offensive Tommy Hacker. His performance here isn’t quite as memorable as his role as Bob in House, but he does have that peculiar “punish me” moment towards the end that does succeed in being quite disturbing.

The children’s dialogue is generally bad, but Boccoli does impressively give it her all at times; it’s unfortunate her screams are in weak context, kind of like a good actor in a bad movie.

There really are hints of genius here and there. During the intro in Cairo Egypt, Susie’s mother, Emily (Laura Lenzi), loses track of her, and there’s a beautifully ominous sense of isolation in the desert when Emily calls out to Susie, with her reverberated shouts reaching no one’s ears for a moment, as the film cuts to a wide-angle panning shot of a soulless, desolate landscape of a pyramid, a tomb, and an excavated relic. This brief moment is probably my favorite part.

Lighting, ambiance, sound, and music are all ace here. Frizzi’s original theme to Manhattan Baby, an ear-grabbing electronic, multilayered piece complete with bells, does breathe a life and identity into the ancient Egypt / New York crossover element (which does make for one of my favorite DVD menus for the older Anchor Bay and Blue Underground releases). Tommy whistles it at one point. A number of sequences would be far less dramatic without it.

One of my gripes with the soundtrack was the recycled Frizzi score from The Beyond, and some cues from The Gates of Hell. I felt that the music for The Beyond was so powerful and characteristic that it belonged only in The Beyond. It isn’t generic enough to be shamelessly recycled. However, I have come to accept it over time.

Fulci’scharacters here are both nuanced and stereotypical. The children are bratty, with their noses in comic books, sassily chewing bubble gum, but at the same time they have this otherworldly strangeness to them. It’s uncertain if they are a threat or in any real danger themselves. The parents are perhaps the least memorable, pushing the investigational stuff along, not understanding what’s going on with their kids. The father, George (Christopher Connelly), has a subplot where he loses his vision in an Egyptian tomb after the cursed amulet shoots blue beams into his eyes. Blue is frequently the color used to symbolize the abstract deity that is terrorizing the family and those around them (in ancient Egypt blue represented birth, creation, and the universe). George regains his vision back home in New York just as inexplicably as he lost it. It ends up feeling a little pointless but is interesting for being a subtler exploration of eye trauma than what Fulci is known for. Fulci’s obsession with the eyes are of course prominent, with plenty of Fulci trademark eye close ups, reminding us that they are such precious, vulnerable organs that could so easily suffer irreversible damage. One character does get a spike through the eye and out the back of the skull unexpectedly in a cruel booby trap.

The most entertaining character is Andrian Mercato (Cosimo Cinieri) who’s a bit of a saving grace. Cinieri appropriately chews the scenery as an antique store owner and parapsychologist expert. He’s also a counterpart to the heroic exorcist figure. He has these red lines under his eyes that make it look like he rarely sleeps.

Carlo De Mayo from Gates of Hell is rather briefly on hand as an amusing man-child writer, Luke, who has a childlike tomfoolery about him and seems to have a thing for those cheap prank catalogue items. His death scene is the most out-there, being killed after teleporting to the desert from entering the kids’ bedroom (?!), a kind of space swapping with New York and Egypt, just because… desert sand in the kids’ room, why not?

Time travelling kids, Egyptian symbolism, and an eccentric parapsychologist substituting for an exorcist, it all sounds more intriguing than it really is. It’s fair to say, it’s one of those films that is more interesting to talk about than watch.

The elements of Fulci’s direction, the lighting, Sacchetti’s script, and Frizzi’sscore do still crystalize into a comfortable experience for those fond of Fulci’s Gates of Hell trilogy. Even given its flaws and inferiority to many other Fulci films, it’s still hard to hate it. I had my issues, but I eventually developed a soft spot for Manhattan Baby.

(I originally wrote this article for Fang of Joy #4 Fanzine (an all-Fulciissue) released October 2016, and it is reposted here with Richard of DM’s permission. Be sure to click here and head over and order a copy.)

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For me, The Devil’s Wedding Night is kind of like a Dracula movie but with Rosalba Neri playing Dracula, which is just a prepossessing idea. However, that’s not quite what it is, as it plays more like a spinoff, fanfic, or sequel to Dracula, where Count Dracula is the stuff of legend, with his power being the focus of archeological research. It’s interesting that in the film’s story Edgar Allan Poe seems to be an upcoming new sensation, which sets it around the first half of the 19th century, making it predate the events in Bram Stoker’snovel that occur around the 1890s. So, The Devil’s Wedding Night could actually be a prequel to Dracula. I mean, who was that mysterious smirking man in the woods, at the tavern, and on the castle grounds we kept seeing? The mysterious man is a nice touch who’s most likely a servant to the ring, but there’s nothing ruling out that he could have been Dracula the whole time, perhaps a powerless Dracula who needs the black mass wedding ceremony to be reborn.

Farfetched theories aside, The Devil’s Wedding Night is not a perfect film, but it makes for a perfect gothic horror experience. Just about every kind of gothic hallmark fans expect and revere are here, and they are executed exquisitely, but it is likely that the biggest reason most seek out this film is because of Rosalba Neri as the erotic La Contessa Dolingen de Vries. She does not disappoint here. The countess holding up her red light emitting ring to the moon atop the castle has always been the primary image that comes to mind when I think of this film.

This is one of Rosalba Neri’s most celebrated roles who, alongside Mark Damon, really arrests herself to the part. I would say that Mark and Rosalba have chemistry, but the show stealing chemistry is really between Mark Damon and Mark Damon. That’s right, Damonhas an amusing dual role, playing two brothers Karl and Franz Schiller. One is just a little more goth and mischievous than the other. The two scenes where both brothers interact are entertaining, especially when Damon really hams it up as the less virtuous, Poe quoting brother, Franz.

The opening grabber is a shot of a woman in one of those big white night gowns running in the woods, being chased by something off camera. It’s quick and feels detached from the rest of the movie, almost interchangeable, like it could be attached to the beginning of almost any horror movie twenty years before or after this one. Probably because it reminds me of the opening flashback from Ernest Scared Stupid(1991), I kind of like the way the person holding the camera is also running behind the fleeing woman, working like a shaky POV cam shot from the pursuer.

The following credit sequence kicks off with an exciting, epic theme by Vasili Kojucharov set to visuals of the great Castle Piccolomini in Balsorano, color filtered lesbian orgies, ritual sacrifices, and that tunneling camera effect, which I still don’t understand. I’m not sure if this is the first time the tunneling camera was used, but it did become trendy in the 1990s, being used in Stargate (1994), Spawn (1997) as well as the ending to Final Fantasy 7(1997) to name a few, although quite impressive for being pre-CG in The Devil’s Wedding Night.

The movie is supposed to be based on an original story (a book?) called “The Brides of Countess Dracula” by Ralph Zucker and Ian Darby. Judging by that title, it kind of makes sense why this feels a little like Dracula fanfic with Rosalba Neri in the role of Dracula, or at least substituting the Dracula figure.

Karl Schiller (played by Mark Damon, an actor who eventually became a producer with an impressive range of production credits, such as The Never-Ending Story (1984) and The Lost Boys (1987)) is an archeologist researching a mystical ring that was responsible for Dracula’s powers. The ring actually has an intriguing history, as it was passed between different powerful figures, such as Alexander the Great and Attila the Hun. It is known as the Ring of the Nibelungen, which is supposed to date back much further than Wagner.

What’s also charming is the cozy little gothic library/study set that I find to be inspirational. When I find myself stuck with a lot of work to do, I like to pretend I am Karl Schiller in his library surrounded by encyclopedias and mystical tomes.

Now, Karl manages to get a lot of useful information from one of those “McGuffin” books, most particularly on where to go to find the ring, the most obvious of places, Castle Dracula in Transylvania. His brother Franz crashes his research session, almost belittling him for his superstitious fancies but still lends an ear to Karl’s predictions and learns of his“plant and payoff” protective amulet of Pazuzu

Karl makes known his intention to journey to a castle in Transylvania to find the ring, which does end up feeling like a counterpart to Jonathan Harker’s diary.

Now what got me more than once in this movie is that despite Karl planning on making the journey to Dracula’s castle, without warning Franz takes the protective amulet and starts off instead. Franz did allude to having gambling debts, so perhaps he cleverly let his brother only think he didn’t believe him only to leave early to get to the ring before his brother. It was unexpected, and I had to rewind it a couple of times to make sure I wasn’t confused.

I do love the Transylvanian setting in this movie that was actually filmed in L’Aquila, Abruzzo, Italy. There’s a certain magic to the Castle Piccolomini. Around the same time, Renato Polselli was filming one of my favorite films at the same castle, The Reincarnation of Isabel(1973). A couple other great films made there were The Lickerish Quartet (1970) and The Bloody Pit of Horror (1965).

Franz stops at the village inn and manages to take the Innkeeper’s daughter’s virginity, supposedly exempting her from a curse involving virgins vanishing in the castle every 50 years. (The moral of the story: don’t be a virgin on the night of the virgin moon).

After he arrives to the castle he meets with the countess’s beautiful servant Lara (Esmeralda Barros), who’s in a lethargic almost hypnotic state. She’s a zombie and her slow languid talking is most peculiar. Also, the castle interior is suitably colorful, with plenty of lit candles in the foreground and background.

As to be expected, since it is daytime when Franz arrives, the Countess is nowhere to be found until night. It works as a nice buildup to when the film finally reveals its main attraction, Rosalba Neri. Franz finds her at the piano (that sounds like an organ synth), a beautiful and subtle way of introducing her. They connect over a splendid gothic dinner setup where the countess speaks some great lines. One of them feels like a poetic ode to introversion.

"The peace and quiet, this marvelous sense of solitude and eternal tranquility, which permeates everything around here. It makes me feel more alive." The Countess / Rosalba Neri

The Countess and Franz make love before she turns into a bat and imprisonshim. Karl eventuallyshows up, andknowing his missing brother was there before him, he begins his own investigation.

The movie falls off its rocker at about the halfway part, and it is freaking fantastic. Shit gets real during the delirious laughing part, an inebriating segment of hyperactive editing and nightmare visuals.

That memorable scene when Rosalba Neri rises nude and bloody among smoke/fog from her coffin is what it’s all about. If there’s any one moment I’d pick to represent Eurocult, this is it. The “be-all and end-all."

The narrative builds up to an exploitative occult ritual with multiple crimson executioners in what is a kind of black mass wedding where things get sleazy and bloody. During the ritual, Rosalba Neri on the throne emits a sense of power and majesty – a queen of Eurocult presiding over the exploitation black mass. Being a fashion accessory kind of person, I have to say that I love her crown and black attire here.

The closeout isn’t anything too memorable, but it could almost work as sequel bait, would a sequel had happened. Considering my previous theory on the mysterious man in the woods, perhaps Dracula could be thought of as the sequel.

If you’re looking to get your Rosalba Neri and Italian Gothic Horror fix, you really can’t do wrong with The Devil’s Wedding Night. It took years for me to come back to it, but it is worth rewatching and should be considered a cult classic. It was directed by Luigi Batzella and an uncredited Joe D’Amato– which means that Death Smiles on a Murderer (1973) isn’t the only time D’Amato went Gothic, as I formerly thought.

Something about this movie always makes me want to listen to Mercyful Fate’s Come to the Sabbath, or maybe even Black Masses, but that song has some real fucked up lyrics.

I’m not much in to demonology; I only remember a couple names of demonic entities off the top of my head, like Beelzebub, Belial, and Astaroth, but I had only heard about the demon Byleth in reference to the Italian horror film Byleth – The Demon of Incest (1972), and with the title to go off of, I pretty much thought of Byleth as some sort of ghastly, incest inducing demon. I tried to look in to it a little, but other than this film, I found very little relating Byleth to incest. The connection of the theme of incest to Byleth in this film is perhaps more in reference to the belief that the demonically possessed display sexually deviant behavior.

As far as lore goes, the demon Byleth (sometimes spelled Beleth or Bilet) is a monarch of Hell and a fallen angel. He rides a pale horse and commands eighty-five legions of demons. The sounds of trumpets and melodies precedes his presence when he is conjured. His pale horse suggests he could possibly be one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Death.

When summoned, Byleth will test the courage and worthiness of the conjuror by appearing most intimidating, frightful, and extremely pissed off, and if they are too inexperienced and unprepared, the ritual will likely result in the conjuror’s death (although it’s said that Byleth can be softened with a bottle of wine). If through all manner of advanced esoteric ritual, they manage to subdue Byleth, he reveals his true form, which is supposed to be that of a beautiful young girl who has the power to make someone fall in love, kind of like a love genie.

So, in the film, someone must’ve summoned Byleth and used her power to make Duke Lionello Shandwell (Mark Damon) fall in love with his sister Barbara (Claudia Gravy). It all makes sense now. Or maybe not. I can’t help thinking that if asked about the situation, Byleth would probably say, “Yeah, I possessed Lionello, making him into a sexually frustrated madman and all, but I have no idea where that whole incest thing came from. That was all him.”

Byleth – Il demone dell’incesto is a demonic possession movie with gothic horror and giallo slants, and was directed and co-written by Leopoldo Savona (Savonahad previously directed a lot of war and western movies as well as the delightful spooky hotel giallo, La morte scende leggera (1972)). Being a costume melodrama mostly shot in the Lazio province outside of Rome and on Elios film sets, Byleth has a little of the classic Italian Western feel to it. The film’s sentimental sounding music is by Vasili Kojucharov who also did the hokey but epic music for The Devil’s Wedding Night (1973).

The Duke Lionello Shandwell is delighted that his sister Barbara has returned home, after being away for a year in Venice, to his lonely ancestral castle in the Roman countryside. His happiness is disrupted when she reveals that she has since gotten married to Giordano (Aldo Bufi Landi - Four Flies on Grey Velvet (1971)). Although he doesn’t fully show it around others, Lionello is deeply disturbed by his sister’s new union, and it’s not in a protective big brother sort of way. While his sister and brother-in-law stay with him, Lionello sometimes retreats into a tormented, depraved, and jealous state, spying on them making love, harboring repressed aggression towards Giordano. Barbara is a red head, and meanwhile a giallo-esque killer is going around killing red heads. Could it be Lionello venting his aggressions over his unrequited love for Barbara, or is it something more demonic?

Byleth is pretty minimal on red herrings. It seems obvious that what is really supposed to be going on isn’t meant to be any kind of surprise. The character conflict is presented early on and we watch how it slowly unfolds into what I felt was a beautiful looking ending (I did like the horse rider in the mirror effect).

I honestly didn’t think Damon had it in him, but this is an impressive performance. I was reminded a little of Stephen Boyd’s character in Marta (1971). (Damon was Sergio Corbucci’soriginal choice to play Django(1966), but he had to back out because of a scheduling conflict.) Damon may’ve seemed a little hammy in The Devil’s Wedding Night, but he’s quite intense here. There’s a disturbing brooding madness to his character that Damon portrays with a seriousness that’s in heavy contrast to the fun, cheesy madness he portrayed in TDWN.

The demonic possession angle is handled more subtly here than in The Exorcist (1973). You do wonder, is it really madness, or is he possessed? They could’ve left it ambiguous, but I was pleased to see the movie answer this question.

I had never heard of Claudia Gravy before, but she was a pleasant surprise as Lionello’s sister, Barbara, a very striking, statuesque red head with a changing wardrobe of various alluring era attire. She is sweet and likable, with an unconditional love for her brother. She will normally rebuff Lionello when he tends to get too uncomfortably close, but her tendency to still support her brother when things get sketchy does warrant a fair amount of legitimate concern for her wellbeing.

Barbara is the one who starts to suspect that something is seriously wrong with Lionello and tells her husband who relates to a priest about a name Lionello repeated during a seizure when he was a child, Byleth. The priest, who recognizes a certain demonic pattern to the murders, recommends an exorcism, but they never really get around to it. This film came out a year after The Exorcist (1970) book and about a year before The Exorcist film, but if Byleth was made after the film, you could be sure it would’ve ended in a more Exorcist-sploitation style standoff between a priest and the possessed, but I’m glad it went for a subtler tormented psyche approach. You do eventually get to see Byleth, or at least an incarnation of the demon, and despite being a low budget solution, I found it to be pretty cool and clever.

The murder scenes would be rather forgetful if there weren’t a couple nice touches, such as the way the killer punctures the neck of the victims with a triple blade, leaving three neck wounds, an interesting variation of the signature two neck wounds left by vampires. I also liked noticing a subtle demonic occurrence that is easy to miss; when Lionello goes into a fit of rage and attacks someone, you briefly see out-of-focus inverted crosses on the wall behind him.

Murder and disturbing psyches aside, this is a gorgeous looking film with wonderful medieval looking interiors and exteriors. It is a little like a vacation retreat to the Lazio region of Italy. The partially ruined empty medieval village is a great natural locale that could work to any film’s advantage but especially in this film since ancient evil and ancient ruins go hand in hand. It is a place for Lionello to ride his pale horse around in serenity and isolation. But bad encounters with murder and demonic activity seem to happen there too.

There just may not be enough going on for Byleth to be recommended to everyone. It’s not scary, but it is unnerving. It is slow, talky, and melodramatic, but there is a surprising lack of campiness. Despite a little humor and a couple-light hearted, tender moments, the movie is pretty dead serious. The era and setting does feel oppressive and authentic. The love triangle between Lionello, Barbara, and Giordano does have demented results. The film has its nude scenes and sleazy moments that do accompany Lionello’s voyeuristic vexations which give the movie some much needed intensity. Despite being demonic, it’s not a monster movie, as I was originally hoping, but the subtlety of it makes Byleth worth revisiting and analyzing, even if it wasn’t the most enthralling thing upon first viewing

© At the Mansion of Madness

When it comes to the unique definitive Renato Polselli experience of histrionics, eroticism, violence, and sadomasochism, movies like Delirium(1972), TheReincarnation of Isabel (1972), and even The Truth According to Satan (1972) are the best examples of Polselli films that have created a small but loyal fanbase. These have long been some of my favorite cult films, but I also adore the romantic black and white early Italian horror efforts from PolselliThe Vampire and the Ballerina (1960) and The Monster of The Opera (1964). The seed for this auteur’s characteristic style of madness and set spectacles was planted in Monster of the Opera, the film itself still planted in the fun dance-meets-classic-monsters gimmick featured in Vampire and the Ballerina, but something wildly unhinged was taking shape. The entertaining delirium, screaming mad characters, and disorienting editing that is Polselli’s signature would essentially be fully realized in Delirium and Reincarnation, but for the longest time there was a missing piece of the filmography that Polselli fans were literally deprived of for many, many years, a once lost film called Mania.

Sanitized by the censors and given a limited theatrical run in 1974, Mania quickly disappeared and was long considered lost until a 35-mm print surfaced in 2007 in a film archive in Rome, Cinema Trevi – Cineteca Nazionale. It was going to be released on DVD by No Shame soon after, but they went out of business before that could happen. Miraculously a crude version of Mania showed up on YouTube without English subtitles back in September of last year. Thankfully, just recently, Terence linked me to a decent version with subs (which is also now on YouTube), and I honestly now feel like a significant void in my life has been filled.

So, is Mania the hitherto missing grand realization of our beloved auteur? Not quite, but it is still very nice to finally be able to experience it. A lot of it is essentially stuff Polselli fans have seen before, all the insanity and nuances we crave, and most of it takes place at the same house where Delirium was filmed. This is something I can’t get enough of, and I’m grateful Mania delivered in a certain respect. And yet I couldn’t help thinking that if the film were somehow stripped of Polselli’s touch, it would probably just be a rather mediocre horror film.

The movie is a composite of ‘60s style gothic horror and sci fi with ‘70s eroticism that really pushes the sleaze envelope. It’s ridiculous and funny but also disturbing and completely insane. With an absurd flow of events, exaggerated emotional outbursts, and overly dramatic character name screaming, it’s completely fitting for the title of Mania.

Following some dark poetry about the subconscious and the unconscious, the movie kicks off on the road in the rain, introducing us to lead character Lisa (Eva Spadaro) and her fiancée Lailo (Isarco Ravaiolo) on a car ride. Lisa is the one driving, and she is in a totally frantic state, fixated on her dead husband, Professor Brecht (Brad Euston), and the time she cheated on him with his twin brother, Germano (also Brad Euston). Professor Brecht died in a fire that started in his B-movie Dr. Frankenstein lab. Germano became disfigured and handicapped after attempting to save his brother from the fire. Lisa feels guilty because she froze during the emergency, even holding the key that could’ve saved her husband’s life. Ever since, she has been on the brink of a mental breakdown, as she feels her deceased husband is with her now more than when he was alive.

Lisa frantically relates this backstory exposition to Lailo while she is driving, and she is really losing it. You see, there’s mad, and there’s “Polselli mad,” and when someone is “Polselli mad,” like Lisa here, they really are in no state to be driving.

I recognize the personality of Spadaro’s character. It is nearly identical to the characters Rita Calderoniplays for Polselli, which means that there is something consistently specific in Polselli’s direction for the female leads in these films. I do admit to not really being as interested in Eva Spadaroinitially, but she did end up winning me over as the movie progressed to its climax. At first, I was like, “where’s my Rita Calderoni?” but I honestly ended up loving her performance by the end.

It’s pretty bizarre, during the intro car ride, when Lisa and Lailo get overtaken and menaced by a white car with no driver. The driverless white car obviously signifies Professor Brecht’s ghost haunting and punishing Lisa for cheating on him and for possibly letting him die in the lab fire. Is it real, or is someone screwing with her? It overtakes and stops a few times presumably to cause Lisa and Lailo to crash.

During the backstory exposition, there’s a random attack scene with Professor Brecht strangling the house keeper Erina (Mirella Rossi) with a plastic bag. It’s violent, realistic, and totally screwed up (Polselli filmed a similar scene with Hargitayin the American edit of Delirium). The resulting struggle appears to kill Erina, but she turns up mute and mentally scarred later. Whether this is from the strangulation or traumatization from the lab fire is uncertain. She still roams the mansion at present day. Erina is the innocent, sympathetic servant that Germano abuses, sometimes throwing Erina to the ground to menace her with the wheel of his wheelchair, reminding me of the pitchfork scenes in TheMonster of the Opera.

After surviving the car ride, when Lisa and Lailo get home, they find their governess, Katia (Ivana Giordan), in a nearly swooned state. Some troublemaker, I wonder who, came by and dropped off a gift-wrapped present for Lisa, which turned out to be a miniature model of her husband’s casket. It causes Lisa to faint from madness, putting her in the hospital, where her doctor, Dr. Lous (Max Dorian), advises her to return to her old house as a means to overcome her anxiety, stop her from going further than insane, and finally convince herself that her ex-husband is dead and buried. It’s not too much of a spoiler to point out that it does not work out very well.

Lisa returns to her deceased husband’s mansion (which for most viewers is a return to the house from Delirium but with seemingly supernatural happenings and the gothic horror mise-en-scene), and she eventually has Lailo leave, so she can face her past alone. Lailo hangs out around the outskirts of the mansion for almost the entire night, without getting bored.

Instead of using a frequent establishing shot of the mansion exterior, the action sometimes cuts to a colorful, atmospheric shot of windy tree silhouettes, dark clouds, and the moon, which does give this unorthodox film a slight classic horror feel.

Lisa’s mental episodes are illustrated with the power going out in the house. Things abruptly go black and the hallucinatory, turbulent editing takes over (similar to one of Calderoni’s breakdowns in The Truth According to Satan), as the narrative arrests itself to madness, disorientation, sadistic laughter, floating heads, confusing closeups, bursts of light, smoke, and heavy storm sound effects indoors. There is also some fun visual ghost stuff, despite that certain other low budget Italian horrors have foregone showing any kind of ghost manifestations like in Something Creeping in the Dark (1971) or A Whisper in the Dark (1976). And bravo to Spadaro for a couple amusing moments where she theatrically imparts her mania by striking a biting-hand pose that I always look back on and laugh.

At one moment, in voiceover, we hear Lisa read a tender love letter written by Professor Brecht. Despite both brothers being total assholes, Brecht wrote a real impressive romantic love letter to Lisa. As someone who likes to write romantic text messages from time to time, I’m actually kind of envious. The softness of the warm letter is shattered when Lisa immediately sees (or hallucinates) a Fulci-like closeup of Professor Brecht in burned zombie make-up.

To convince Lisa that Brecht is truly dead, Germano sends Lisa down to the crypt, and she gets decked out in gothic horror attire for the occasion and eventually undergoes a murderous transformation, the point in which she finally flips her top, murdering people Clue style and then, in the next scene, has the audacity to call Germano a monster for tying up Erina. Germano subjects Lisa and Erina to some kind of sci fi torture device where they scream and press their faces against a glass wall for what feels like minutes. It’s not just hilarious; it’s freaking awesome! I like to think of it as Polselli’s most entertaining S&M set-piece, even if it isn’t quite as spectacular as some of the set pieces from The Reincarnation of Isabel. It segues into an epic climax with Lisa running up multiple flights of stairs, up to the roof, just for the dramatic effect, in an unhinged state. I really like the way the ordeal at the mansion seems to take place over the course of an entire night and concludes at dawn for a Grand Guignol of a finale.

Mania has a rather melancholic soundtrack that I couldn’t recall the first time around. There is a pleasant but still kind of sad sounding synth theme frequently used that gives the film a soul. The chill sax music goes well with Lisa’s lonely moments in her room, freaking out over Scooby-Doo footprints that disappear and reappear, and the groovin' progressive rock theme really livens up the part where Lisa has a net thrown over her at random and is attacked by eels. Certain dissonant sounding noises do accompany some of the “ghost” scenes that do succeed at being unsettling.

There’s a lot to analyze and absorb in its trimmed down 82 minutes that makes for a compelling re-watch. It does have quite a small cast, but all of the main actors give it their all, with Spaderoand Rossi being surprisingly memorable. It’s safe to say that the movie is a little more about the experience and emotions than the story, especially since the narrative isn’t afraid to occasionally divert to delirious 'shouty' sadomasochistic interludes.

I hope Mania wasn’t lost for too long or introduced too late in the game to eventually achieve the same classic cult status as Polselli’s best films. It’s been somewhat of a Eurocult urban legend, and its sudden appearance online has given closure to us Polselli fans. Or has it?

You can read about Polselli’s, still lost,original version of Mania, with Fumetti inserts, on euro fever.

© At the Mansion of Madness

After realizing film was her true calling, the first lady of Czech cinema Věra Chytilová enrolled in the Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (FAMU) in 1957. At the time, she was the only woman at the school and was faced with resistance. She was pushed back, but she wanted to direct and had ambitions to make different kinds of movies. Chytilová recalls potentially upsetting the directors at the academy when she told them the reason she wanted to study was because she didn’t like the films they made, feeling that they were predictable and arranged. When the Academy wanted to throw her out, it was a major blow for her that resulted in depression and a suicide attempt. She ultimately resisted being driven out and graduated, in the process directing successful medium length films Ceiling (1961) (of which she also wrote) and A Bagful of Fleas (1962). A Bagful of Fleas and her first feature length film as director Something Different (1963) both won film critics awards.

Chytilová married cinematographer Jaroslav Kucera (Morgiana 1972); they worked well together and collaborated on The Restaurant the World (1965), Daisies (1966), and Fruit of Paradise (1970).

Daisies is Chytilová’s most popular and well-known film. It is a staple in the Czech New Wave movement that’s a fun, technically impressive film with an unconventional narrative about two young, disorderly female leads sticking-it-to-the-man, with copious amounts of style and entertainment ensuing. The movie is supposed to be a cautionary tale on the consequences of destructive behavior, but for me, it’s one of those films you fall in love with and get hooked on.

The final set-piece where the girls trespass/crash an extravagant banquet seemingly laid out out-of-nowhere contributed to Daisiesbeing banned for the depiction of wasted food. Daisies was later unbanned with media restrictions being loosened during the Prague Spring in 1968.

Chytilová’s last film before she was sidelined by the Czechoslovakian authorities from making films for eight years was Fruit of Paradise (Afterwards when she started making films again she shot Apple Game (1976) and it was a big box office success).

Like with Ján Kadár’s Adrift / A Desire Called Anada (1971), the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in August of ‘68 took place during the filming of Fruit of Paradise. However, they were filming in a location outside of the turmoil and were basically uninterrupted (footage included in a documentary of Věra Chytilová by Jasmina Blazevic called Cesta shows Chytilová on the set of Fruit of Paradise pregnant at the time with her son Štěpán Kučera, who was born July 1st of ’68).

The country’s invasion can be felt from the contrast between Daisies and Fruit of Paradise. In an interview Chytilovástates “the invasion is in The Fruit of Paradise.” Something was happening to Czechoslovakia that could not be openly talked about, so in order to impart the brutalization of her homeland, the message was framed around the biblical story of Adam and Eve. The apple becomes a vessel for truth so that when it is eaten, Adam and Eve recognize “that we live in a lie, that we are violently raped.”

Eva (Jitka Novákova) and her husband Josef (Karel Novak-voiced by Josef Somr) enjoy life in a surreal spa resort setting, a modern take on the paradisiacal Garden of Eden. There is an outwardly charming enemy among them, the proverbial snake, Robert (Jan Schmid-voiced by Jan Klusák), dressed in red. Eva is infatuated by Robert’s antics and childlike appeal, so when she’s faced with evidence that Robert is a murderer of women, she has trouble bringing herself to accept this truth at first. The truth is ugly and hard to come to terms with. It is something that one wishes to forget after knowing it.

The allegorical message of Fruit of Paradise was either lost-on or denied-by its audience. The movie was not just some kind of simple murder mystery. It did poorly because no one could understand what it meant. I didn’t know what it meant when I first saw it either, but it didn’t matter to me because it was still a rather mesmerizing Avant-garde experience with a beautifully surreal story by Ester Krumbachová and memorable and technically impressive cinematography by Jaroslav Kucera. Like the previous Daisies, there is a lot of originality and salubrious visual and emotional content to absorb in every sequence and set piece, and yet it is so unlike Daisies. In short, it’s a colorful, earthy, and captivating work of art with a lot to say in addition to its poignant underlying message.

There’s a remarkable Adam and Eve segment at the beginning that depicts the traditional account in contrast to the film’s new take on the story that will follow. During this segment, the sound and visuals gel into a wondrous experience with an evocative double exposure effect that almost makes this feel like magically found footage of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. This opening portion alone can stand as its own short film masterpiece.

The movie centers on Eva. She’s a likeable and sympathetic lead. I honestly cannot think of a moment, aside from the intro segment, where she’s not in the movie. This is her story. Even during conversations and events that don’t involve her, she’s usually off to the side watching. She’s rather enigmatic, yet there’s still something intriguing and attention grabbing about her; Novákovais is a theatrically physical and vibrant actress, which makes her unique and appealing. I love how integrated Eva feels with nature. She’s frequently carrying food items from the Earth, which almost makes me hungry for plant-based food, which doesn’t happen too often.

Eva loves to wield apples, which is very Eve-like. The Eve image is subverted a little by also giving Eva an affinity with the orange as well, kind of like with Marie in Daisiespicking a peach from the Tree of Knowledge instead of the fabled apple.

Almost in a kind of dance like state, Eva enjoys carrying a knife and frolicking and swaying like an ethereal fairy in the woods. She’s quite childlike at certain moments and rather happy-go-lucky most of the time in the first half or so.

She almost seems a little bored by her husband, dressed in boring gray, and drawn to the alluring bachelor in a more attention grabbing red, Robert, who’s kind of like a playful prankster. He stands out in every scene he’s in and is kind of like a set decoration himself. He’s got this peculiar habit of sometimes leaving behind a long red serpentine cloth, almost like a shedding snake. Early on, Robert is fun and cartoony at times in a slapstick way. Eva seems amused and entertained watching him flirt with the peacock woman (the sound of the peacock mating call manages to be an integral component to the soundtrack).

Despite there being only three key players in the story, it is surprising just how many extra people are in the movie, most of them strange additional spa resort goers. Eventually, the entire cast is assembled on the beach to play and act like children in their own imagined paradise. There’s a playful vibe that comes from the cheerful visual of adults chaotically chasing after and bumping a big orange balloon, but at the same time there’s a creepy underlying feeling that something isn’t right.

During playtime on the beach, Robert unknowingly drops a key from his pocket. Eva tries to alert him of it, but he’s too preoccupied with his injury and walks off, so, like an animal attracted to shiny things, Eva picks it up. She then enters Robert's dwelling with the key and finds his red satchel that she was attracted to earlier on. She opens it to find an inkpad and a stamp and uses it to provocatively mark her outer thigh with a red six, a symbol of weakness, Satan, and sin. It doesn’t wash off.

About halfway through the film, a murder mystery is introduced when the newspaper announces that another blond has been killed. It is revealed in the news that the most recent victim had a red number six printed on her forehead. After hearing this, Eva is reminded of her own number six stamp, making her uneasy about Robert.

One morning, Eva’s husband confesses to sinning against her, which I’m assuming means he committed adultery, as he was getting scented letters from someone and came off as a womanizer on the beach. This and her uncertainty with Robert being a murderer starts to weigh heavy, resulting in a fantastically freaky scene with Eva writhing and contorting to some kind of insane blurred motion effect and chilling music. Shortly after, Josef accuses her of seeing Robert, as it becomes apparent that she is starting to receive a considerable amount of abuse from her husband. I love that instead of screaming, Eva unloads on a set of drums in the attic, and it is badass. She also goes ‘90s grunge on it by throwing drum heads around.

Josef actually did have an affair, whereas Eva did not seem to, so it is pretty unfair for her to be judged for adultery. After having enough of the abuse, she packs her bags and leaves, but Josef and Robert intervene and basically turn her around by force. It’s movie magic when Eva drops her cylindrical suitcase and it rolls down the hill as the camera follows it.

Robert and Josef become friends oddly enough, and Eva’s likely feeling on that are best portrayed in the screengrab below that also reminded me of particular artwork from Through the Looking Glass (1871). She’s stuck with these bozos.

Eva becomes captive to her situation. She puts on a façade of sorts and tries to make Josef and Robert jealous by dressing in pink and flirting with other men. They don’t seem to buy it but end up more amused laughing and mocking her. Anytime she fights back against Josef, he laughs as if she’s behaving foolishly.

Fruit of Paradise climaxes with a theatrical showdown between Eva and Robert. The climax is quite riveting and it sidesteps a little into horror film territory.

In her denial of truth, she still becomes drawn to Robert despite what she knows about him being a killer. The heavy stone Robert was seen laboriously and kind of comically pushing around he prepared in a lonely spot for Eva after she asks him to kill her.

For the climax, there’s a certain 1920’s expressionism feel to it, like we are watching a silent movie with music. Certain segments during the climax seem to be filmed in a reduced frame rate to give it the vintage silent movie feel. There’s lost information and things appear blurry, surreal, and also quite inebriating.

Eva outsmarts Robert. She prevails and returns to her husband and, in a visual that really stuck with me, waves her red rose brooch to him in a hyper stylized manner that almost reminded me of the Goblin King brandishing a crystal ball.

From the traditional creationist story, Eve was blamed for all of mankind’s follies, but perhaps unfairly. She was the one brave enough to eat the apple to gain wisdom and free us from the paradise that, looking back on, was like a prison anyway. In the film, Eva is blamed and treated unfairly. She’s essentially done nothing wrong. When she’s returned, Josef notices that she has undergone a metamorphosis and acquired the forbidden knowledge, or better yet “the truth,” and judging by Josef’s response, the truth is scary. She offers him the truth, and he cowardly turns away from it.

Fruit of Paradise is quite an experimental film, and the experiments frequently hit the mark. You’ll realize how much of an incredible experience it is by the end. At times, the movie might have the effect of causing you to stare, transfixed and wondering what it is supposed to mean. The ways the story and drama are portrayed are unusually fascinating. Red, white, pink, and black are abstractly used to convey meaning and allegorical significance. There is also something operatic about the whole thing since all of the dialogue was originally going to be sung. The phenomenal music by Zdenek Liska really heightens so many key moments. In fact, the cinematography, directing, and editing sometimes has a music video quality to it that almost feels like watching MTV as a kid again and just being drawn in by how surreal and weird it sometimes gets. Even if you end up not being taken in by the ambiguous narrative, there’s still so much beauty to behold, so many emotions to feel, and so much to absorb each time.

One of Fruit of Paradise’s chief characteristics is its ambiguity, and I’ll admit that a lot of what I’ve said here could very likely be incorrect. However, Fruit of Paradise is also known for being open to interpretation, and if that is true then as long as the writer is sincere, there can be no wrong answer.

© At the Mansion of Madness

The onset of the Halloween season this year has really put me on a black-and-white horror kick for some reason. I’m looking forward to checking out some classics I haven’t seen yet, such as City of the Dead (1960) and Eyes Without a Face (1960), and revisiting some favorites like Carnival of Souls (1962) and Night of the Living Dead (1968).

I used to approach black-and-white movies apprehensively, thinking that they would likely be a boring chore to sit through. I missed out on discovering a lot of classics when I was younger with this mindset, a mindset that surprises me considering that I had always been able to enjoy black-and-white TV-shows as a kid like Lassie and The Three Stooges, which happened to give me the false perception that the world must’ve been in black-and-white back then. I had always preferred color, but nowadays I really have no preference. There’s something both oppressive and romantic about black-and-white cinematography, a separate experience with its own charm that I don’t think is inferior to color cinematography. What finally gave me a taste for black-and-white film and caused me to not see it as a diminished experience due to technological limitation was Mario Bava’sBlack Sunday (1960), which also turned my interest to the black-and-white Italian horrors of the ‘60s that I probably would’ve had no interest in otherwise.

Though not all of them are black-and-white, I really enjoyed exploring and collecting what I referred to as Barbara Steele epics from the ‘60s. There isn’t one I dislike; I even have a soft spot for Terror Creatures from the Grave, what seems to me to be considered one of the lesser of the Barbara Steele epics, likely because Barbara Steele isn’t in it very often and isn’t playing the good and evil dual roles she is remembered for. She makes all of her scenes count nonetheless with every one of her appearances being a high point that leaves you wanting more of her.

Apparently, the film’s director Massimo Pupillo was unsatisfied with the finished film, so he gave directing credit to co-producer Ralph Zucker. People had thought Ralph Zucker was a pseudonym for Pupillo for the longest time, but they were two different people. As I understand it, Ralph Zucker did direct a couple different violent death scenes that show up in the English version of the film but not in the Italian version 5 tombe per un medium, which is the movie’s original title and is the version I’m talking about; I’ve just known it as Terror Creatures from the Grave for so long.

Massimo Pupillo only directed three horror films, all of which were in 1965 that do make up a kind of gothic horror trilogy in their own right, Terror Creatures from the Grave, Bloody Pit of Horror, and The Vengeance of Lady Morgan. I personally recommend all three. (someone really should get to work on a Blu-ray box set).

Terror Creatures does have a clever mystery plot going for it that borrows heavily from The Third Man (1949) for its core premise, but what it might lack in originality it makes up for in style, eeriness, atmosphere, and a completely different ending than its source inspiration. It also doesn’t feel as much like a clone in the story department of its gothic horror contemporaries.

The story is set in April in the year 1911. A lawyer, Albert (Walter-Italian Dracula-Brandi) receives a letter from a Dr. Jeronimus Hauff summoning his business partner Joseph Morgan (Riccardo Garrone) to a shunned villa in a remote region in order to draw up his Last Will and Testament. Joseph is away, so Albert answers the call in his place. After travelling to the villa, he’s surprised to learn that Jeronimus had been dead for nearly a year, despite the letter he received having the official seal of Jeronimus, a seal which had been buried with the body. It is related to Albert from Jeronimus’s widow, Cleo (Barbara Steele), that Jeronimus had fallen down the long narrow stairwell in the villa to his death. Being present at the time of his death, five people, purported to be Jeronimus’s friends, signed the death certificate. Those particular people are dying gruesomely under mysterious circumstances, one by one. One of the signatures is illegible which constitutes a mysterious fifth person who needs to be warned and who could possibly be the key to solving the mystery (the fifth man?).

With an intriguing enough mystery plot in place, the narrative does also take a supernatural direction with plenty of old-fashioned scares but also some interesting special effects and themes, such as a few precursor zombie visuals that did make me think of Tombs of the Blind Dead (1972) and some nice makeup effects of up-close face sizzling and pulsating skin lesions.

The ghosts are portrayed with simple shadow effects, but the established haunting does create a convincing sense of dread. While the buildup is slow, the climax to when all hell breaks loose feels worth the wait. The conclusion is not too shocking, confusing, or unpredictable, just clever, with everything coming together and a feel-good immersive rainy closeout scene that I’m fond of since I enjoy the rain.

Walter Brandi, smoking most of the time (even during dinner), as Albert the lawyer is a rather plain lead hero but not unlikable. He isn’t charismatic at all, just an average Joe; although he seems like a nice guy. He doesn’t seem to have as much energy here as he does in Vampire and the Ballerina (1960), but perhaps he was going for the calm, cool-headed but also bewildered investigator type.

Barbara Steele as usual is given an evocative introduction, this time while having her beauty relaxation in her mansion with a creamy cosmetic face-mask pasted on that’s a far cry from the executioner mask in Black Sunday (1960). She wipes away the mask to reveal her supernatural beauty, as if the film is unmasking and revealing its main attraction.

Our dear friend Luciano Pigozzi is on hand lurking around the villa and its grounds, doing what he does, as the suspicious, quiet gardener, Kurt. He’s great at lurching around, but he does get a few moments to shine outside of his comfort zone. Since Pigozzi is one of those actors you see so often in these films, he’s kind of like an old friend. The villa and the land in this film are so well tended for, it’s hard to believe Kurt keeps it that way all by himself.

On Albert’s first night at the villa an appropriately timed thunderstorm draws in (I do love the cozy contrast of the windy storm outside the villa and the peaceful calm inside). Albert ends up staying in Jeronimus’s old room. There’s something creepy about sleeping in the room of a deceased occultist who made contact with the spirits of the dead. I doubt I’d get much sleep.

A real nice touch that gets me every time happens during a beautifully framed shot when Albert, holding the candelabrum with lit candles, stands outside of a pitch-black doorway and walks into a room that lights up when Albert enters, a symbolic way of shining a light on the villa’s secrets.

The customary dinner table scene here is a real beauty, with lovely lit candles, a smoking fireplace, glasses of red wine, a raging thunderstorm outside that’s hardly noticeable indoors, and an elegant single eyebrow raising Barbara Steele at the head of the table dressed like the princess of hell. It’s what I imagine gothic horror film trope heaven is like. I can’t tell what they’re eating, although I’m always interested in food on screen even if it’s just apples and cut up bananas.

The castle in the movie, posing as a villa, is one I’m quite familiar with. I can’t recall all of the movies I’ve seen it in, but a few that come to mind are OSS-117-Murder for Sale (1968) and Slaughter Hotel (1971). In reality, it is known as Castle Chigi and was built in 1655. In these films, this castle is almost always framed to look isolated, but it actually sits in the middle of an urban park, Castelfusano, near the seaside in the commune of Rome. Even though I’ve never been there in person, like the Castle Piccolomini, it’s kind of a special place to me and no doubt to many other fans of Italian genre film.

I’m not sure if some of the interiors were filmed in a sound studio, but the interior of the actual castle is used in the film and is complete with medieval and gothic décor, these beautiful map and landscape frescoes on the walls as well as a room of broken clocks that you just know are going to start up when the haunting kicks in.

As for the villa’s back story in the film, it was built in the fifteenth century on a lazaretto ruin, a kind of quarantine for victims of the plague. The history of the lazaretto served Jeronimus’s research. The gruesome history is detailed when Albert plays the phonograph to listen to Jeronimus’s voice recordings of his research on the plague victims and the contaminators. Jeronimus was an occultist who contacted the spirits from when the plague spread in the fifteenth century. The plague was purposefully spread by a few carriers. They were arrested and had their hands cut off. These severed hands were later mummified and framed as a museum exhibit, or as they appear in the villa at present, a wicked home decoration. The bodies of the carriers were buried in a neat little plot next to the villa.

When the plague was spread it contaminated the water, so the idea of pure water becomes the antidote and is introduced in the story as a riddle that is established through a soft but still haunting song. The “pure water” theme song is a melodious and creepy delight in both Italian and English versions. Aside from being an obvious foreshadowing of the story’s resolve, the melody is a recurring musical theme that is also a strong part of the film’s identity.

One of my favorite parts that I always recall is a brief but memorable segment that occurs one night when Albert throws on a phonograph and a child’s voice is heard singing the ‘pure water’ song. Albert looks outside at night to see a ghost girl sitting on the edge of the water bath as the music plays over this simple and effective gothic image. It’s also a little bit epic.

When it gets to the disturbing denouement, you’ll realize this movie isn’t fucking around. The wicked side of humanity is personified with evil, smiling, twitching faces that reminded me of human demons.

For all its old-fashioned hokeyness, there is still something unnerving and dare I say scary about Terror Creatures from the Grave. Even though the threat is off screen it still manages to be rather imposing. There’s a shot of the villa at one point after it is suggested that spirits are haunting the place that is probably one of the creepiest establishing shots I’ve seen in a while. I think it’s a well-done ghost movie with an intriguing enough mystery story. Many, as I did, will come for Barbara Steele, and I think she honestly delivers, especially during her freak-out moment at the end that’s another one of my favorite parts. It’s no Castle of Blood (1964), and it does have its slow, talky (and some not so talky) parts, but it’s still a relaxing, chill movie with plenty of atmosphere that will work when you’re in the mood for black-and-white, as my grand mom says, spook-a-roos. But most importantly, by the end, I’m sure you’ll agree that Terror Creatures from the Grave was a good time.

© At the Mansion of Madness

With his first four full length films, between 1968 to 1971, Jean Rollin forged his own brand of erotic and poetic vampirism. The one of a kind auteur painted over the ‘in vogue’ gothic horror tropes, changed up the rules, and gave his vampires reign over dark and melancholic vistas far removed from the familiar world. The experience ends up being fantastically vampiric while also seeming at odds with the classic notion of a vampire movie.

Rollinwould shed his brand of tragic vampire lore for a time to experiment with new dark takes on death (The Iron Rose (1973)), adventure, and revenge (The Demoniacs(1974)). To compensate for box office failures, and in order to have steady work between more personal projects, Rollin also directed several porn films under a different name (Michel Gentil).

In 1975, Rollin returned to vampires with the exceptional Lips of Blood, which also ended up being a commercial failure, and so to try and bring in money, Lips of Blood was reformatted with new hardcore pornographic inserts and transformed into the more exploitative movie Suce moi vampire (1976). For me, the existence of Suce moi vampireundermines the significance and spirit of Lips of Blood, and, kind of similar to my feelings on House of Exorcism (1975) (the reworking of Bava’s masterpiece Lisa and the Devil (1973)), I don’t have much interest in seeking it out.

Written by Jean Rollin and the film’s lead actor Jean-Loup Philippe, Lips of Blood puts a touching spin on the vampire mythos. It takes the vampire concept and amplifies the beauty and grace while diminishing the monstrous side. The evil is still there, but it is nostalgically seductive.

Although it’s not as experimental as Rollin’s previous vampire movies, it has a simple, coherent goal driven narrative that also maintains that essential surrealism, making it possibly one of the more accessible Rollin movies. The main characters are alluring, and it is worth taking emotional stock in the story’s conflict.

Being a hopeless nostalgic myself, I found the lead character Frédéric (Jean-Loup Philippe) relatable. One cannot deny that there is serious folly in his quest for the seductive past that calls out to him. Everyone should always be looking forward and not back, but we sometimes still tend to shoot for that warm place from a different past time where we feel we belong instead, no matter what resistance befalls us, and Frédéric does face some serious resistance.

A Blink-and-you-miss-it Betty Boop cameo appearance!

I also like the idea of triggering previously suppressed memories, memories of something personal and important that may or may not have been a dream. A childhood era suppressed from his memory calls out to Frédéric. There is something inherently beautiful and bittersweet about this. The way Frédéric remembers after seeing a promotional landscape photograph for a newly launched perfume product is so poetic, with the echoes of a lost child’s voice on the wind and a closeup of Frédéric’s eyes as he’s transported back to those hauntingly gorgeous castle ruins. The contents of this memory become his new obsession and consistent focus for the rest of the movie. Actually, he’s pretty intense with his focus. He’s quite the gentleman, but the look on his face when anyone tries to sidetrack him or change the subject when he waxes about his estranged childhood really shows that he means business.

At the core of Frédéric’s obsessive childhood memory is a beautiful, mysterious woman in white, Jennifer (Annie belle), an angle-like apparition who offered Frédéric’s lost childhood self (Rollin’s own son Serge Rollin) refuge, warmth, and a comfortable place to sleep in her ruinous castle. It’s never addressed just how Frédéric forgets all about such an important epoch in his life, but a strong bond develops nonetheless. The resurgence of something personal from a seemingly different life is still what makes it intriguing, something unreal that actually happened. When Frédéric remembers her twenty years later, she is able to appear to him but cannot speak to him. Jennifer’s physical manifestations in front of Frédéric are some of the most beautifully haunting images in the film. Annie Belle just feels like the perfect choice for the role of Jennifer, an enigmatic beauty capable of completely arresting a gentleman’s faculties.

He gets the message that she is imprisoned somewhere, and if he wants to be with her, he needs to find where she is hidden. Of course, external agencies will not have this, and since many will attempt to deceive and even execute Frédéric for his efforts at rescuing his princess, Jennifer guides him first to a crypt of imprisoned colorful female vampire warriors (among them Rollin’sGemini muse, the Castel twins: Catherine and Marie-Pierre) whom he unknowingly releases into the world. They become his protectors to ensure he reaches his lost love (and most likely their great queen of sorts) and uncover the mystery.

It is not only a quest for the girl from that warm place from his childhood, but it also becomes a quest for a truth that he is barred from. A conspiracy to keep Frédéric from the truth begins to develop. He ends up at peril not from the monsters but from humans. Even his mother (Natalie Perry) lies to him and even has him committed for his troubles. In fact, Jennifer seems to be the only honest one in his life.

In the struggle between humans and vampires depicted in the film, there’s a lot more compassion from the vampires. We sympathize and feel more for the monsters. The role of heroes and villains feels reversed, as the brutes who slaughter the vampires don’t seem like the righteous.

With the loss of significant financial backing shortly before filming, Lips of Blood ended up a lesser film than it could’ve been, but Rollin could create something grand from virtually nothing. Heart, a bittersweet concept, natural locations, and the night don’t cost a thing. There is an attempt at effects and violence that don’t quite hit the mark as far as horror and gore goes, but it is all still emotionally evocative. The images of the nightgown clad vampires travelling like sleep walkers over windy gothic landscapes in this film are precious visual poetry.

© At the Mansion of Madness

Paul Naschy had a lot of success in a wide range of film genres, playing an even wider range of characters, but he is mostly remembered for his brand of gritty and beautiful Spanish gothic horror films. These movies had their low budget and pacing issues, but there was still something so attractive about them, with a reverence for the classic monsters, most especially the wolfman, and the inclusion of plenty of female vampires and femme fatales in general. Plus, with his charisma and sincerity to the material, it’s always a joy just seeing Naschy; whenever he makes an entrance in these movies, he causes viewers’ eyes to light up like they’re seeing a dear old friend. For me, it was always interesting to see what a zombie movie, or a mummy movie, or a cannibal movie, or even a giallo would be like after getting the Paul Naschytreatment.

It was my tendency to read other people’s takes on Paul Naschy movies, be they positive or negative, that inspired me to eventually take up the quill to see if I’d have anything interesting to contribute as a genre film blogger.

With Count Dracula’s Great Love, a costume horror drama with a satiable amount of violence and eroticism that according to Naschy in his memoirs was a critic and box office success, we have one of my favorite classic monsters done by one of my favorite filmmakers. It was directed by Javier Aguirre (Hunchback of the Morgue) but was written by Paul Naschywho also stars as Dr. Wendell Marlow and (forgive the spoiler) Count Dracula. I believe it is also the first in a short but notable line of horror films with Naschy and actor Victor Barrera (sometimes credited as Vic Winner or Victor Alcazar); the other three Naschy movies with Barrera are Hunchback of the Morgue (1973), Horror Rises from the Tomb (1973), and Vengeance of the Zombies (1973).

Taking on a role previously made iconic by Max Schreck and Bela Lugosi, and in a way competing with the, then, current Dracula Christopher Lee, is no easy feat. Considering Naschy’sshorter powerlifter physique, he might physically be at odds with the public perception of Dracula as a tall 6 foot plus slender man. Nonetheless, I still think Naschy pulled the Dracula look off in his own way, while still keeping it traditional with the slicked back hair, cape, and pale features, although when in Dracula form he really doesn’t do a whole lot except stand around and transmit telepathically, a la Howard Vernon’s Dracula from Jess Franco’sDracula,Prisoner of Frankenstein (1972) and Daughter of Dracula (1972). Naschy was certainly a lot more vicious and animate playing the wolfman, but he borrows certain recurring elements of tragedy and love from his own Hombre Lobo mythos to give this Dracula a human side, and as a Paul Naschy film it kind of works. It is in no way the best Dracula, but it is Naschy’s own personal Dracula.

The premise is a familiar one for Naschy’shorror films, where true love is needed to break/fulfill a curse of sorts; this time the conditions are such that the love interest be a virgin. Why a virgin and not the love interest with the longest list of past lovers is unknown to me, but as chance would have it, a selection of some of the finest stock of potential love interests happen to be touring the Borgo Pass in Transylvania in the vicinity of a castle that used to be a sanitorium with a bloody history that was shut down, for presumably decades, before being purchased by a reclusive Austrian scientist, Dr. Wendell Marlow (Naschy).

A refined gentleman, Imre Polvi (Vic Winner), is travelling by horse and carriage with four beautiful women, Karen (Haydée Politoff), Senta (Rosanna Yanni), Marlene (Ingrid Garbo), and Elke (Mirta Miller), whose presences are certainly part of the fun. They are so colorful, each with their own distinguishing color of attire. These four will eventually feel like close friends to viewers.

Their carriage loses a wheel that literally runs away deep into the forest and is never found again; plus, the horses in their spooked disgruntlement kill the coachmen, stranding the travelers, giving them good reason to seek shelter at the nearby castle, where they are welcomed by Dr. Marlow and encouraged to stay for a week or so.

The inside of the castle is marvelous, as are the numerous gothic horror troupes that are included, such as dark corridors, candles, a lavish dinner table, and thick nightmarish ambiance. I absolutely love the use of foggy slow-motion visuals of vampires moving through dark corridors, an extraordinary technique used previously by Naschy and Leon Klimovsky in The Werewolf Versus the Vampire Woman (1971) that was later imitated by Amando de Ossorio in the Blind Dead films. The film makes use of a more diminished (aka creepy) musical number for its main theme, and it works so well for the slow-motion scenes where the visual and sound gel to create a real sense of otherworldly dread. Also, the main theme gets used a lot and manages to never feel overplayed.

An odd instance occurs when Karen awakens one night to investigate a noise, and in the dark corridor she runs into a vampire (José Manuel Martín), one of the thieves from the beginning of the film who was changed by an unseen Dracula. (This thief vampire makes my skin crawl every time I see him. He’s included as an alternative antagonist who sets the vampire character turnovers in motion.) Karen is understandably terrified and faints just as Wendell arrives to catch her and carry her back to her room. What’s peculiar is how casual the whole thing is. It makes you wonder if Wendell even saw the vampire in his hallway. This leads to an interesting ambiguity regarding Dracula and whether or not his identity as Wendell is a cover up or if Dracula is somehow reborn in Wendell.

Even though the film plays it out like a twist, most people going in already know this is a movie with Paul Naschy playing Dracula. Wendell abruptly changes identities from Wendell to Dracula late in the film, but it’s still interesting how different both identities are. There’s something genuine about Wendell’s friendly side that doesn’t seem deceptive. It’s true that at the beginning of the film Dracula attacks a couple of thieves in his castle, suggesting that his identity as Wendell is a coverup, but it is possible that Wendell has episodes of being evil before ultimately succumbing to being Dracula. It’s an unusual but interesting uncertainty that is more or less playing with viewers’ expectations, but I like it because we get to see more of Naschy’s character-acting aside from just the Dracula identity which itself would’ve been disappointing if it was all the Naschy we got here.

One of my favorite more low-key parts is when the girls go exploring the castle and find a library and end up reading several passages from Van Helsing’s memoirs, or as I like to think Van Helsing’s diary before The Monster Squad got ahold of it. A lot of cool, macabre lines about the legend of Dracula get read aloud, which mainly serves the purpose to introduce Dracula’s daughter Radna as a plot device, but I think she was underdeveloped as far as a character, and I would’ve honestly like to have her role in the story gone further instead of getting pushed aside by the new direction the climax takes.

The romance that develops between Karen and Wendell isn’t bad. I honestly thought that Naschy and Politoff have good chemistry here, although Naschy stated in his memoirs that they didn't get on very well together. I really do like the scenes of Wendell and Karen walking the castle grounds on a moonlit night.

We do escape the castle grounds a few times to witness the vampires do their nightly business of stalking, preying, and invading the homes of villagers to feed and even kidnap a sacrifice for the big ritual the movie is hinting at. During some of the outdoor scenes, I realized that the three female vampires seem intended to represent Dracula’s brides, which I thought was a clever.

Count Dracula’s Great Love may be a little slow, but it is punctuated by so many brilliant moments. The story, though not without its flaws, is passable, and for its time was an interesting new take on Dracula and vampires while still feeling faithful to the classic movies and also having an appropriate amount of influence from Bram Stoker’s original novel. I think it has some of the best vampires of the early ‘70s mainly on account of how they are presented. Some of Dracula's quarks may not work for everyone, but I will say that while Dracula’s telepathic voiceovers in the dubbed English version do seem hokey, they work better in the Spanish version. The shift in direction at the end does feel abrupt, but the theme itself is so characteristically Naschy that in any other film it would fail, but it works here. It took several viewings before I noticed the brief but still epic closeout scene. Since I have a habit of watching movies so late, it is likely that I was usually half asleep at that moment to notice, but it was freaking fantastic.

© At the Mansion of Madness

‘80s Italian horror TV movies aren’t always the most memorable and have a tendency to be a little underwhelming in comparison to the classic gialli and Eurohorror films from the ‘60s and ‘70s golden era. By the late ‘80s, we were at, or were even beyond, the tail end of the horror boom, with many Italian directors making movies more for television. Lamberto Bava directed a lot of TV movies throughout his career. His ‘80s horror TV movies paid a lot of homage to the classic gialli and horror films that sculpted the genre like The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970), Inferno(1980), House by the Cemetery (1981), his father’s Black Sunday (1960), and even his own Demons (1985). A lot of times his TV films could be a little mediocre and almost feel like near-pointless rehashes, like Demons 3:The Ogre (1988), but Lamberto Bava also had a tendency to catch you by surprise with TV movies like Demons 5: The Devil’s Veil (1989), the hilarious and ‘80s satirical Dinner with a Vampire (1989), and the (previously) hard-to-find School of Fear.

Aside from being an interesting take on the evil kid trope, the TV movie School of Fear / Il gioko does contain a lot to chew on, and like Demons 5: The Devil’s Veil and Macabre (1980) is a little more of what I prefer from director Lamberto Bava. Don’t get me wrong, Demons and ABlade in the Dark (1983) are awesome too, but I honestly lamented for a time that we never really got something as twisted, different, and well-made as Macabre. It’s still no Macabre, but School of Fear feels a little more in the right direction towards something twisted and different.

School of Fear was co-written by Dardano Sacchetti (whom you all should be well aware of), Roberto Gandus (who also co-wrote Macabre and Damned in Venice (1978)), and Giorgio Stegani (who co-wrote Cannibal Holocaust (1980)) and was scored by lucrative film composer Simon Boswell (Phenomena 1985) in the earlier phase of his career. The film was part of a television series consisting of four non-serialized movies directed by Bava, Alta Tensione, which also consisted of The Prince of Terror (1988), The Man Who Didn’t want to Die (1988), and Eye Witness (1990).

Diana Berti (Alessandra Acciai) is starting her first day teaching Italian literature to a class of twelve-year-old students at the Giacomo Stuz Private School in Pisa. No one bothers to tell her, at least not until later, that her predecessor died mysteriously, having fallen through glass from the balcony of the classroom (that broken frame, with sharp, jagged glass blades still looms dangerously near the entrance to the school, oddly enough).

The students' parents are highly conservative and influential people, as the headmistress, played by Daria Nicolodi, puts it to Diana. The children adhere to a strict dress code, with both girls and boys wearing dress shirts and ties with oversized broad-shouldered business coats with pinstripes that I thought looked like Gomez Addams’s outfit.

Diana is likable and I think would make a pretty cool teacher. Acciai does have a certain loveliness and plays Diana with a pretty even-keeled personality but can also elicit the right amount of concern and pathos from viewers when the situation calls for it. She’s friendly and approachable to the kids but becomes strict and serious for understandable reasons, but this gets her into trouble with the headmistress nonetheless. Diana’s love interest, the inspector (Jean Hebert), is completely useless and a real asshole for the most part, at least until close to the end.

The central plot mystery centers around Diana’s students’ secret club and their enigmatic and foreboding “game” they play. Diana starts to become privy to this game when she reads an older essay assigned by her predecessor from one of her students and starts to worry if something seriously wrong may be going on with the kids.

It starts to become a nightmare for her, as she starts to suspect this game may be related to the death of her predecessor and the times when certain children are absent or end up missing. Something serious is going on, and Diana struggles to get to the bottom of the mystery, with little help from her inspector friend, who doesn’t believe her since he feels children are not capable of such barbaric actions, a common theme in the movie regarding adults underestimating what children are capable of.

The writers of School of Fear seem to assume the worst when it comes to children, who in the film are suggestively portrayed to possess a dangerous mix of high intelligence and psychopathy and have a high potential for cruelty and evil, although they may not think so, and are really good at covering it up, especially when they stick together, using their childhood innocence, trivializing what they do as being just a game. The exact nature of this game in the film is not elaborated on fully, but there is much insinuation, and it seems to come about as a result of their desire to experience the adult world, a sort of reverse Peter Pan syndrome where children are tired of being children and grow up prematurely and are therefore dangerous, imitating what they read in the newspapers or see on TV, and are out of control, owing to the lack of conscience and because they can always hide behind their youthful, well educated, and properly mannered front.

The length the children go through to protect the secret nature of their game highlights a surprising lack of innocence in the face of their outwardly highly principled and strict moral upbringing. They are pseudo-moralists, as they will openly condemn the work of Pier PaoloPasolini for immorality, but they are themselves worse than what they condemn. Their game is compelling at first; it seems to involve one of the kids going missing, and the missing kid is usually shown travelling alone through some dark place, presumably underneath the abandoned wing of the school. These dark scenes are fun and had me initially thinking there was some sort of dark fantasy element to it, but the actual nature if the game is not fun or cute at all but dead serious. (During the part when the children wear masks and act cruelly, I was reminded of Rule of Rose (2006) for the PlayStation 2.)

I do like the moments at the abandoned wing of the school since it comes off more like a decrepit old haunted mansion, but it’s never really explained or expanded upon, almost like the janitor’s abnormal son Giacomo who wanders the school at night. Neither element has a payoff of any sort and are there more for horror aesthetic purposes, possibly to add a darker fantastical element. You’ve got to love how nonchalantly the janitor mentions Giacomo after Diana expresses concern about having the feeling that someone watches her at night when she’s at the school, coincidentally to the janitor, who is like, “oh that’s just my son Giacomo. I let him wander around at night when everyone is gone; he’s not normal”. Of course, the prospect of the deformed kid idea had me thinking of Phenomena, but it ends up feeling a little pointless here even if Giacomo is supposed to be for added suspense and a sort of red herring. It’s a silly addition to a pretty serious film that is otherwise lacking in camp, which I find welcoming.

For being young kids in the ‘80s, Diana’s students are surprisingly adept with technology, as they manage to hijack a television signal in order to broadcast some disturbing footage they put together to frighten Diana with on her home TV. This reminded me of the unsolved “Max Headroom broadcast signal intrusion” from 1987, an incident where a television signal was hijacked in Chicago, and bizarre and disturbing, as well as funny, footage of someone in a Max Headroom mask was broadcasted. The incident only happened a couple of years prior to School of Fear, so it’s interesting to think it may have had an influence on this particular highlight of the film.

Major Spoilers:

When Diana discovers what goes on during the kids’ game, it agitates her past traumatic memories, resulting in a flashback to when she was chased by three people in carnival costumes and raped as a child. She suffered a nervous breakdown for it and was in the hospital for a time. Diana’s students somehow discover and learn from an old newspaper article that Diana is a rape victim and even use that as leverage, thinking no one would believe her if she attempts to expose their “game.” When she does, her colleagues don’t take her seriously, saying she is too sensible and impressionable. In the end, Diana is dismissed and her accusations are discarded, poignantly illustrating the folly of not believing rape victims or taking them seriously and how the problem will just continue if nothing is done about it. Because the school is accepted as so pure and clean on the surface, it cannot afford any kind of scandal to shatter that façade. After Diana is dismissed, the headmistress’s assistant asserts that their students are not monsters, drawing attention to them while they sing so innocently in the church-like choir. Even after everything they are all smiles and the perfect outward image of piety. Their game will likely go on.

End Major Spoilers

Daria Nicolodi isn’t in it as much as I would’ve liked, although she plays a pretty important role as a kind of unintentional antagonist in that she wants what’s best for Diana, but at the same time goes against anything Diana has to say, maintaining her tunnel vision on her strictly principled and moral private school where nothing bad could possibly happen. Also, Simon Boswell’ssynth score is appropriately ‘80s sounding with a nice mix of melody and doom that succeeds at giving the whole mysterious school of secrets theme a bit more substance.

School of Fear ends up being pretty heavy-handed and isn’t really the violent killer kid movie one might necessarily anticipate, as it is a lot more subtle and psychological. A large portion of the film is a drawn-out mystery investigation that’s rather slow paced with little action save for the third act, but it’s all quite dramatic and unsettling. It doesn’t have the best script and certain additions try to make it seem a little like a fun horror movie, but those elements are discarded for a finale with grave implications.

© At the Mansion of Madness

Jess Franco had already covered Dracula by directing a movie adaption of Bram Stoker’s seminal Gothic horror vampire novel from 1897 a couple years prior. So, what does Jess do next when returning to make another Gothic Count Dracula movie?... Take the Universal route and throw Dracula in with other classic monster figures, like Frankenstein and The Wolfman, to have a go at it and see who would win in a fight.

With Dracula, Prisoner of Frankenstein, the familiar monster mashup style gets the Jess Franco treatment, which is essentially Classic Universal horror in color with Franco’s flavor of visual and hypnotic storytelling, yet for a Jess Francofilm, the eroticism is quite tame, with no nudity to be found. It adapts certain elements from Bram Stoker’sDracula for the Dracula angle, but the Frankenstein angle borrows more from Franco’sown The Awful Dr. Orlof (1962) and less from Mary Shelley’sFrankenstein.

Curiously, the opening text, credited to David H Klunne (a Francopseudonym), is pretty much a poetic and short synopsis of the film, rather than some sort of backstory setup to get viewers up to date, like an opening Star Wars crawl. That’s OK, because there isn’t really a whole lot to spoil, since the experience of the film, in this case, is a little more important than the story, which I think isn’t necessarily hard to follow, but it doesn’t really sink in either, since there's a lot of visual depth, atmosphere, and cool ideas in what is a slow and thin plot.

Anne Libert has a small role as Dracula’s victim in the opening grabber. If you felt she was underutilized in this Jess Franco Dracula movie, you’ll be much happier with Daughter of Dracula (1972), filmed back-to-back with this one.

One of my most prominent memories of this movie is that of the heavily used visual of Dracula’s foggy castle on a precipice, the Santa Bárbara Castle in Alicante, Spain. It’s such a beautiful but gloomy shot that Francoreally makes the most of, perhaps even to the point of it being a little overused.

The classic horror style soundtrack is fitting and sets the right mood. It’s credited to Bruno Nicolaiand Daniel White (who is also cast) and most of it was previously used in Jess Franco’sJustine (1969) and Count Dracula (1970).

Alberto Dalbés plays Doctor John Seward (he also played Seward in Franco’sErotic Rites of Frankenstein (1973)), who is the same from the book, but he’s also a pretty clever consolidation of Jonathan Harker and Van Helsing as well. The Condes de Castro Guimarães Museum in Portugal (a marvelous piece of architecture also seen in other Franco films such as A Virgin Among the Living Dead (1973)) poses as Dr. Seward’s sanitarium, which houses a mental patient, Maria (Paca Gabaldón), who’s essentially a female Renfield, painting the walls and blissfully singing to herself. She has a psychological connection to Dracula (Howard Vernon) and usually throws a panic whenever Dracula is active or nearby to menace her.

When Dr. Seward travels to Dracula’s (poorly guarded) castle, it feels a little sudden. Since he’s also Van Helsing, he is already knowledgeable about vampires and Dracula. When Seward examines Anne Libert’s character, deceased after being assaulted by Dracula, he thrust a stake into her eye, presumably to keep her from turning undead and kidnapping children, Lucy (bloofer lady) Westenra style, which causes the lights to go out, telling him all he needs to know. He then sets out with his horse and carriage to the castle on the hill to kill Dracula. When Seward finds Dracula’s coffin and stakes him, I thought the scene had a peculiar calming effect to it, since Seward was rather delicate about it, tapping the stake rather gently, generating a soft tapping echo, as opposed to the intense staking moments you see in other vampire movies.

With Dracula being defeated, a gypsy community nearby seems to be celebrating in ritual, but the leader, Amira (Geneviève Robert, who would later go on to become a director and marry Ivan Reitman), a kind of seer, is able to see the coming of Frankenstein (Dennis Price). These scenes with the gypsy community are frequently accompanied by humming voices in choir, which makes it seem like they’re always in chant (always humming their jam). Amira usually looks mesmerized, conducting esoteric rituals, drawing runes in the sand and predicting the direction of the story. Robert is quite intense in this role and is probably my favorite character.

Just as Amira foresees, Dr. Frankenstein arrives and sets up his lab in Dracula’s castle, because apparently in this universe, you can just claim any old castle as your own to setup shop and begin work on your plans to take over the world. Dr. Frankenstein has a vague objective to enroll invincible monsters into his “army of shadows” in order to overpower the world.

Luis Barboo is amusing as Morpho, Frankenstein’s assistant, who almost seems to be chewing the scenery, with some real cartoony facial expressions. Morpho drives Frankenstein around in a new looking car, contradicting the Victorian feel of the film up until this point, especially considering that Seward travels by horse and carriage. There’s also a jukebox visible at the pub. Plus, the people attending the stupendous burlesque show scene, with Estela (Josyane Gibert) who scintillates with a playfully sexy song and dance performance, seem to come from a different era too. I consider this one of the film’s charms, whether Jess intended for it or just didn’t think it mattered.

Frankenstein’s monster in this (Fernando Bilbao, who also played the Frankenstein monster in Erotic Rites of Frankenstein) moves and looks like a generic Frankenstein monster (not bad for the budget) but acts more like Morpho from The Awful Dr. Orlof, since the monster kidnaps beautiful female dancers, Estela in this case, for Frankenstein to operate on for Dracula’s revival, in what I feel is part of a tiresome trope of sex-workers always being murdered.

Howard Vernon’s Dracula in this is unusual but works. He’s quite lethargic, which is deliberate, since he is Frankenstein’s prisoner, but the threat is still there, like an evil, unblinking, static corpse that’s dangerous if you get too close. Vernon is imposing and freaky without having to hardly move or speak a word (although it seems a little funny, in a cool way, at one point when he's sitting in the back of Frankenstein’s car looking like a still Halloween prop). After he sucks someone’s blood in one scene he looks like he’s wearing a lush shade of red lipstick, and it looks fabulous!

Livening up Dracula’s castle/Frankenstein’s lab a bit is the stunning and statuesque Britt Nichols as a lurking vampire who likes to come out and play sometimes (like Liebert,Nichols is more of a main character in the next film Daughter of Dracula). I’m assuming she’s Dracula’s bride, since her coffin is close to his. The times she emerges from her coffin are definitely memorable highlights. I like the way Nichols’ vampire is overlooked for a time by most at the castle. Since her beau, Dracula, is under Frankenstein’s control, she slips by unnoticed, lurking around and even getting the drop on Morpho.

Rounding out the monster mashup, el hombre lobo (sadly not played by Paul Naschy- he’s instead played by a stuntman known as Brandy, who is still cool) makes an entrance real late in the game, summoned by the gypsies to fuck shit up at the evil castle, or more specifically to aid Dr. Seward in the final bloody battle. The werewolf is cool and all, and he’s foreshadowed a bit earlier in the film, but he’s tossed in the mix without much backstory; I would’ve liked to have known his human side before he turns. It is probably one of the only werewolves I can think of who’s human side isn’t explored.

Dracula, Prisoner of Frankenstein is a movie I usually crave around Halloween. It’s special to me, but at the same time I can see how others might view it as nothing special. Franco is heavy on the zooming (although I feel I’m immune to the zoom shot at this point for some reason). For a while, I didn’t catch on at just how minimal the dialogue is, with most of the story told through sequences, sound, and images, so if you’re not in the mood for something real talky that you have to pay attention to, this may be something you can really relax to. It is fun the few times the monsters go at it, but the story is a little flimsy and may fail to hold the interest of anyone who isn’t feeling the gothic Francovibes.

© At the Mansion of Madness

Jess Franco filmed Daughter of Dracula back to back with the preceding film Dracula, Prisoner of Frankenstein (1972). These two films seem similar and for me were sometimes easy to confuse with one another, but after reviewing them both back to back, I realize they are quite different in many ways. Unlike the previous film, the eroticism is amped up this time around, particularly with the love/feeding scenes between Francoregulars of the era Anne Libert and Britt Nichols. It isn’t necessarily the monster mashup like the previous film since for monsters we just have Dracula, a femme vampire, and a mystery killer. Perhaps it’s more of a Eurocult genre mashup, as this one has a reputation for being confused as to whether it wants to be an erotic vampire horror film or a giallo-like murder mystery.

Daughter of Dracula doesn’t quite reach its potential, but it’s nonetheless a relaxing Gothic horror with a captivating modern ‘70s setting in an old-world location that provides the right ambiance us Eurocult fans can’t get enough of.

Howard Vernon reprises his role as his own odd, unique, near-lifeless version of Count Dracula from Dracula, Prisoner of Frankenstein. He’s even less active here, but Britt Nichols and Anne Libertget more to do this time around, even if Nichols’vampire scenes may’ve soared a little more in the preceding movie.

Somewhere in Portuguese Transylvania, the dying Baroness Karlstein (Carmen Carbonell) confesses to her daughter Luisa (Britt Nichols / Carmen Yazalda) in secret about the family history of vampirism and that they are direct descendants of “the first Count” Count Dracula, a secret she does not wish to take to the grave. (so, Luisa is actually the female descendant of Dracula here rather than his daughter). It’s hard to tell if the family curse is something the mother is ashamed of. If she was trying to warn her daughter of the curse then it was a rather misguided attempt, since she grants her the key and sends her on the way to meet her ancestor still entombed beneath the cathedral tower (the Quinta da Regaleira chapel) on their land, where Luisa gets acquainted with the barely still operable Count Dracula.

This is preceded with wonderful shots of Nichols walking the grounds outside of the mansion on her way to the cathedral tower to descend into the crypt to commune with her toxic ancestor. The forested location here is just brimming with mystique and ancestral energy and is what I found to be one of the most magnificent location visuals in the film. The location (for this particular part in the film) is the Quinta da Regaleira in Sintra, Portugal.

The relationship between Luisa and Dracula does score points for peculiarity, but I can’t help wondering if it would make any difference if Dracula wasn’t even in the movie. We already saw a female vampire, who could only have been Luisa, kill someone (Eduarda Pimenta) during the intro grabber, so we’re not even sure what Dracula’s role in Luisa’s life is since she is already a vampire when she first meets him. He’s not even much of a father figure but more like her exotic pet she keeps in the crypt who she feeds people to (Dracula communicates to her telepathically with dialogue voiceover in the Spanish version unlike the French version where Dracula is silent).

Vernon’s Dracula is still just as eerie and inanimate as in the previous film; he seems to be confined to operating from his coffin this time, so it makes sense that he would have his descendant do his work, whatever that may be, since the vampirism affliction doesn’t seem to spread in this movie. It’s still a little disappointing that Dracula never leaves his crypt, but this is supposed to be Luisa’s story after all.

Family relations here are a little confusing. I think Luisa is the step daughter of Count Max Karlstein (Daniel White), since we learn from her dying mother that Luisa’s father had died a long time ago. Or Count Max Karlstein might be Luisa’s uncle, but Karine (Anne Libert) addresses him as Uncle, and she addresses Luisa as cousin, so the Karlstein’s may just be a real extended family. The last name Karlstein is one letter off from being Karnstein, a Carmilla reference that is however rudimentary since Carmilla can easily be related to any kind of predatory lesbian vampire, and Luisa is certainly that.

Luisa beautifully plays the piano leading to a moment between her and Karine when, after talking about their childhood together, Luisa seduces and hypnotizes Karine, gently biting her lip with her fangs. Their characters are cousins, but Anne Libert and Britt Nichols have genuine chemistry. Their first love scene is so soft, tender, and relaxing. It’s the commercial highlight that does transcend its exploitative purpose that’s made ten times more artistic with the intercut shots of Daniel White serenading us and killing it at the piano with a moving modern classical sounding piece, as Jess floats the camera around White and around the entire piano. The soundtrack is credited to René Sylvianoand Daniel White, so I’m not sure who wrote what, but I’ve always liked to think that Danial White is showcasing his own composition as a character in the film here.

Jess Franco plays a well-learned, calm, and composed fellow, Cyril Jefferson, the secretary to Count Karlstein, although his position isn’t at first apparent, as I thought he seemed to be casually hanging out among the cast and going out for moonlit strolls on cold nights. Jefferson attributes the recent murders in the story to the supernatural, speaking in captivating horror poetry that could easily pass for black metal lyrics. Jefferson really fits into the gloomy setting. He and Inspector Ptuschko (Alberto Dalbes) have a few confrontations.

Dalbes’sinspector character is pretty low energy; he seems worn-out and apathetic, just wanting to solve the murder case already. He interrogates Count Karlstein with his eyes closed and his jacket collar pulled up to his face, looking like he’s sleeping on the sofa chair. This was something I considered to be more an interesting quirk; otherwise Dalbes may’ve been rather unremarkable here aside from being a welcome familiar face.

There is a cabaret scene here that is still magnificent and is a little reminiscent of the Miss Muerte performance in Jess Franco’sThe Diabolical Dr. Z (1966), but when comparing it to the cabaret scene in Dracula, Prisoner of Frankenstein, it ends up losing the battle, mainly because it is missing Josyane Gibert’s bubbly performance. I did experience some joy seeing Count Karlstein walking around the cabaret night club at the Majestic hotel smoking his pipe, seeming out of place, which is important for a certain plot point later, but without losing a shred of his elegance.

The murder mystery component of the film seems to distract a little from Luisa’s story, as it seems a little more focused on the owner of the Inn, Ana (Yelena Samarina) and her affair with Count Karlstein, who is wrongly arrested for the murder at the cabaret for trying to cover up for Ana cheating on her husband. With these scenes you sometimes start to forget you’re watching Daughter of Dracula, and in the memory, it might even seem like they were from a different movie. I did like the way we weren’t sure who Ana’s husband was until towards the end, and the conversation that ensues regarding the affair is a melancholic little wrap-up to the subplot and leads in to an unsatisfying wrap up to the overall plot that makes it seem like Jess may’ve been more interested in the murder mystery story than Luisa and Dracula’s story.

I personally didn’t mind a little Agatha Christie intruding on my gothic sapphic vampire fable, but I thought they could’ve been integrated better. There’s no doubt that there was some kind of capitalization on the then popular giallo titles of the time, especially considering the black hat, black trench coat, and standout yellow socks the killer wore.

Nichols is a majestic presence, but I felt there was more room to explore and develop her character. The potential was there for a more memorable character.

Even with its problems, there’s still a lot to Daughter of Dracula that makes it a worthwhile experience for Jess Franco fans, namely just spending time in this film’s world (there’s something magical and fairytale-like about the grounds of the Karlstein estate) and seeing those familiar faces. I fell in love with Britt Nichols and Anne Libert’s roles in A Virgin Among the Living Dead (1972) but thought the actors were underused in Dracula, Prisoner of Frankenstein, so it was great seeing them in more substantial roles here (also see Les demons (1973)).

This is a Jess Franco film through and through. Though it has been said by other reviewers that this is not the best place for first timers, and I would have to agree.

© At the Mansion of Madness

A Whisper in the Dark is a personal favorite of mine. It has been referred to as the Italian The Turn of the Screw (1898) and is a a subtle take on the haunted family category of storytelling, focusing on a wealthy family living in a gorgeous and at times spooky villa that’s like a hotel resort (probably because it was filmed at a hotel, the five-star Hotel Villa Condulmer near Venice). It’s got that gothic horror aesthetic but downplays the horror in favor of exploring family dynamics with shades of the supernatural that are symbolic of unresolved family problems. The supernatural is always kept ambiguous; almost everything strange that happens can be explained, but the circumstances do leave a lot to the imagination. As is usually the case, the ambiguity is the film’s strength and its weakness.

The cinematography by Claudio Cirillo is really the main attraction, and with Marcello Aliprandi’s direction, the visuals, coupled with Pino Donaggio’s sweet and melancholic score, end up being the stuff of fairytales, comprising some of the most majestic locations and set pieces. The villa and its somber exterior and grounds, dating back to the sixteenth century, have a deep, haunting presence, a rich sense of past generations emanating from it. And the children’s ball is an enchanting segment, with costumes and constantly falling confetti, which concludes with a phantasmagoric night time burning of an effigy floating on the river. According to Cirillo the different weather conditions, such as the foggy atmosphere seen during the opening credits, were by chance. Listening to Cirillo vibrantly talk about his craft on the NoShame DVD interview, you can tell the man is an artist.

The ghost story premise is rather intriguing and has a potential that may end up seeming a little wasted by the end, but a number of deep and emotional moments arise from it. The son Martino (Alessandro Poggi) has an imaginary/invisible friend named Luca. The name Luca happened to be the name decided for Martino’s brother who died at birth, so it draws up the possibility that Martino’s phantom friend may not be imaginary after all and could be the ghost of his brother. The entire family is made privy to Luca; the children believe, some of the adults are spooked by it, and the mother Camilla (Nathalie Delon) is eventually convinced Luca is real and starts to worry Martino may use Luca to hurt someone.

We are introduced to the family at the breakfast table, which includes Martino, his two little sisters Milena and Matilde (Susanna Melandri and Simona Patitucci-who later voiced Ariel in the Italian language version of Disney’s The Little Mermaid (1989)), their nanny Françoise (Bond girl Olga Bisera), the dad Alex (John Phillip Law), the mom Camilla, an American visitor Susan (Lucretia Love), and one of the servants Clara (Adriana Russo). Even the invisible Luca has a place at the table. There’s something warm and cozy about this family breakfast table that I find surprisingly memorable; maybe it’s the emphasis on all the different jams. It’s irrelevant, but the selection of jams in this movie always intrigues me. Martino’s little sisters messily eat it straight from the jar, which is a little gross seeing that it is community jam. Kids with jam on their faces is a minor motif here.

A couple of visiting guests arrive later, a Professor (Joseph Cotten) and Camilla’s mother Emma (Zora Velcova), so this ends up being a pretty full house (‘70s Gothic Italian horror Full House?). They even throw a ball inside the villa for all of the children in the region.

Alex and Camilla are not getting on well in the bedroom. Internally she is still coping and dealing with the loss of her child. Something is still unresolved; Luca still figuratively and possibly literally haunts her, so she is unable to be intimate with her husband, much to his frustration. The movie alludes that he is unfaithful to her as a result. It’s played as a joke, but Alex sexually assaults a woman at a nightclub after getting drunk while lamenting how his wife no longer seems interested in him. It isn’t funny, and he deserved a lot more than a slap and a punch to the face.

There’s something wrong with Martino. He gets pretty mean and scornful whenever anyone makes fun of Luca or tries to tell him Luca isn’t real. Martino threatens his little sisters for stealing Luca’s toast Martino had buttered and spread jam on by saying that Luca will punish them, and coincidentally it later starts to unexpectedly pour rain preventing them from going to some sort of party. Martino also plays a prank on Susan after spying on her playfully seducing his dad, putting a toad in her bubble bath (or was it Luca?). Disgusted with Martino’s behavior, Susan flees back to Boston. These minor shenanigans result in Camilla and her mother having Alex take Martino to Venice to see a psychiatrist (it’s also an excuse to film a scene in Venice), which ends up being a heartwarming father/son trip and a near death experience for Alex.

The shots of Martino and Alex in Venice are quite pleasant and sweet. It’s these kinds of scenes that give the film a certain magic. It does have its fair share of dullness that does get eclipsed by the magic overall. Again, the ace cinematography and music might have something to do with this.

The comedy is mostly cheesy, but some of it still works like the joyful scene of a drunken Camilla and Françoise singing at the piano, bonding over drink and song, now that the men are out the house, singing what I think is a Venetian love song. Their little performance here is stellar. They get scared talking about the possibility that Luca runs around the house at night and decide to sleep together before things seem to go bump in the night.

Françoise, the lonely but attractive nanny, secretly lusts for Alex, or maybe she has a sweaty shirt fetish. It’s the punchline to a joke about Alex wondering where his shirts are disappearing to. Later we find out that Françoise has been ensconcing them. One night, she stealthily picks up Alex’s used shirt he threw at a lamp, after having an argument with his wife, and hides it under her bed and later sniffs and snuggles with it at night (lucky shirt), dreaming of an affair with the master of the house. This subplot about Françoise secretly lusting after Alex goes nowhere but is interesting if a little at odds with the rest of the film, and yet it does give the film a little bit of an air of scandal and perversity. Françoise had fallen in love with a married man in the past, which perhaps might be why she is lonely; she may have a tendency to want what she can’t have.

After taking Martino to see a psychiatrist in Venice, it is recommended that a specialist, the Professor played by Cotten, observe Martino by staying with the family a few days.

I love the leitmotif music accompanying The Professor's entrance into the film; it gives him a certain mystique, since we pretty much know nothing about him. The Professor makes himself at home and even indulges in luxurious bubble baths and utilizes the maid services, ringing the bathroom bell so Clara can bring him his chilled vodka to drink in the nude while in the bath tub. This man appreciates the finer things in life. He takes on a mysterious illusionist persona at the children’s ball, doing magic tricks for the children. When he later walks around the grounds like a phantom, his persona almost starts to seem real.

During his phase as an illusionist masquerader at the ball, Camilla starts to suspect the Professor may be a charlatan. My personal theory is that the professor might actually be a parapsychologist interested in the possible supernatural evidence he may find investigating Martino.

As a specialist, the professor doesn’t do much except try to convince Martino to make the decision to go away with him. A coincidental incident happens that prevents Martino from leaving with the professor that may or may not have been the ghost of Luca intervening.

During his brief time at the villa, The Professor does make a memorable impact, even if the story isn’t really affected with or without his presence. There’s something a little poignant about realizing that the ball is to be his last night.

I had said earlier that the potential of the ghost story ends up seeming a little wasted, but there is still a payoff, a climax the movie rewards us with for sticking with it, a fantastic scene involving Camilla seemingly being chased at night by Luca over the foggy and snowy grounds of the villa. This particular scene is cinematic magic. The sudden appearance of fog and fallen snow and the masterful way in which it was shot makes this part feel like a kind of spooky nexus between life and the afterlife and all the more magical knowing that the weather was a chance opportunity for the filmmakers.

Major Spoilers:

One night, Camilla realizes what she has to do for her son’s and everyone else’s safety. She decides to confront Luca and send him away. It’s a bittersweet moment between mother and her child’s ghost that does bring on the feels. The perceived ghost is driven away by Camilla, as she opens the front gate to the grounds of the villa, and the camera floats away from Camilla, which makes me sad every time, because you wonder where a child ghost would go after being sent away from the family home by its mother. We never know if this part was a dream or not, since when Alex comes for Camilla, she’s lying by the gate sad about Luca, and the snow and fog are gone. Alex Carries Camilla inside to the fireplace and they make love. Since she seems to have finally let go, Camilla is now able to make love with her husband again. At the breakfast table the next morning, aside from the fact that Alex has a new glow and smile since he finally got laid, not much seems to have changed. It might even be fair to say that nothing really happened, or Martino might have been full of it the whole time.

End Major Spoilers

I like to think this brief moment is John Phillip Law's one second reprise of Diabolik

The final shot in the film as the end credits roll is somehow a powerful one. The main theme heard makes me misty eyed (I’m sure it has an official title, but I like to refer to it as Luca’s Theme). The shot is of a lonely Camilla at the table after breakfast when everyone has left to go about their day, looking noble and deep in reflection in her empty nest after all she’s been through, as the camera zooms out. The events of this story make up a brief epoch in this family’s history that they’ll grow and move on from that in retrospect is a warm and nostalgic time capsule.

The subtle and minimal approach A Whisper in the Dark takes to horror should not be a reason for Italian horror fans to dismiss it. It grew on me, and I got attached to the family, their majestic villa, their past tragedy, and their problems that they live with. There’s no blood, gore, or even any scares really, only a possibly accidental death. It may not cut it for everyone, but it has heart and soul and something about it still gets under your skin.

© At the Mansion of Madness

How could any Eurocult horror fan resist being attracted to a movie with a poster like this and a title like Sex of the Devil? Whether or not the movie delivers what it promises on the cover is another matter, but when beholding such an epic, suggestively satanic, occult, and erotic poster like this one (centering on what I thought looked a little like a possessed Mia farrow), a spectacular fantasy of a movie is birthed in the mind of the observer, one that is often very different from the movie in reality, for better or worse. I admit to initially being attracted and baited in to this film based solely on this poster. Sex of the Devil not surprisingly turned out to be something other than I had imagined, and if it weren’t for that advertisement I may have never found it. So basically, the movie poster did its job, and I slowly fell in love with another movie.

Despite not being what I expected and bearing the usual pacing and plot resolution issues, Sex of the Devil still delivered the goods, and, in the end, it ended up delivering what it promised on the poster as well.

It was directed by Oscar Brazzi, the younger brother of internationally famed actor Rossano Brazzi, who plays Andrea the surgeon in Sex of the Devil. Oscar produced the superb Italian/Argentinian thriller Psychout for Murder (1969), which brother Rossanostarred in, directed, and co-wrote with Renato Polselli.

The filmmakers really embraced the location, nicely integrating Turkish culture into Sex of the Devil. The foreign cast and crew spent four weeks in Istanbul, Turkey to make the film. When the film was in production, it was referred to by the working title of “Istanbul Adventure” by the Turkish press.

Filming on the Bosporus at a waterfront house, in the Kanlica neighborhood I believe, really sets it apart. It’s one of the more underused locations, making for a more unique haunted house experience that does provide a pretty unique flavor to most of the ‘70s European horror mainstays fans keep coming back for. I personally enjoyed the idyllic waterfront house setting that the movie benefits from at times. It matches a kind of dreamhouse idea of mine by having an up-close view of the sea directly from the living room, with boats passing by.

I ended up liking all of the characters for various reasons, but, unfortunately, this one is pretty flawed when it comes to the delivery of its story, consisting of a convoluted mystery plot that seems underdeveloped and a little confusing. It teases and fiddles with a number of horror-ish plot threads and seems to provide little in the way of resolution. It unloads a lot of ideas that don’t really come together that well, even though the movie does try.

Story problems aside there are some terrific moments and segments that make Sex of the Devil a great experience, and for something that seems to have little story, the film is layered with a lot of themes exploring impotence, alcoholism, infidelity, art, esotericism, culture, (day)dreams, possession, death-and-rebirth, astrology, and more. A lot of cool, strange stuff happens, but a lot of questions are left unanswered, as storyline payoff in the end is either absent here or hard to notice.

Sex of the Devil can be cherished to an extent on its soundtrack alone, which is comprised of a lot of great themes by Stelvio Cipriani.

Immediately we hear what sounds like Cipriani’s modification of Iron Butterfly’s In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida, but Ciprianihas really spruced it up with an extra musical layer and a melodic variation that gives it a Cipriani signature and a whole new identity of its own, so much so that I hesitate to call it a shameless rip-off.

The whole ordeal is pretty much a leisurely vacation, for both the characters and the viewers. A surgeon, Andrea, and his wife, Barbara (Maitena Galli (her debut role)), are on holiday with Andrea’s assistant, Sylvia (Sylva Koscina), and a friend Omar (Fikret Hakan) at a lovely house on the Bosporus. Andrea is not able to function anymore, professionally with his job as a surgeon and intimately with his wife.

Adding the possibility that they may be there by design rather than coincidence, one of them, Omar, is surprised to vaguely remember being there fifteen years prior, after seeing the artwork of a previous occupant, an enigmatic French artist named Claudine (Paola Natale). He knew Claudine, whose arcane, sensual artwork still haunts the place. Claudine hung herself at the same house. The dutiful maid, Fatima (Güzin Özipek), who seems to come with the house, knows magic and has some kind of possibly maleficent but vague agenda that is conveniently put forward with esoteric zodiac symbolism and ritual (as I said in a previous review ambiguity is a strength and a weakness).

On the mansion grounds, there’s a sculpture with three faces, the title triptych that the movie tries to vaguely tie the events to. One of the faces I believe is Claudine, the other two her past lovers. The face on the left becomes disfigured by an unknown assailant. Andrea wants to stay at the house to figure out who the identity of the third face was, despite warnings from Omar who is smart enough to leave.

When Fatima hypnotizes her, Sylvia starts to wear Claudine’s old pink ceremonial robe (a real lovely kaftan) and begins to seemingly take on the identity of the former owner of the house, who like Sylvia was also a Scorpio. Fatima is seemingly hexing people with tea and the power of her zodiac tea cup tray. Someone, a pretty flimsy assassin (Brizio Montinaro), tries to murder Andrea multiple times. I don’t believe we ever know for certain what for (perhaps Fatima needs a sacrifice). Before he leaves the film, Omar explains that there is a terrible secret in the villa, a secret that is connected to the triptych.

I did like the way Claudine’s presence is still felt through her art, which gives her a kind of astral connection to the house even after death. A little girl, Emine (who always seems blissfully spaced out, smiling and staring out into space) comes by often at night to visit the marble lady sculpture (a self-statue of Claudine) outside of the mansion, who she refers to as “the lady who isn’t there anymore.” The statue seems to emit an energy that the girl is drawn to. The girl’s attraction to the statue of a dead woman is strange since Claudine died fifteen years ago, which suggests a spiritual/ghostly connection rather than one made between them when Claudine was alive, seeing as Emine wouldn’t have been born yet.

The art collector, Mr. Oblomoff (Aydin Tezel), is a kind of wild card. He reminds me so much of Eduardo Fajardo’scharacter from Lisa and the Devil(1973). Oblomoff is frequently seen following Barbara and Sylvia around the city. Since he’s in plain sight and they never see him, he comes off more like a ghost who’s haunting them. These moments are quite peculiar.

Oblomoff is pretty yearnful over Claudine, hoarding her artwork in his own waterside house, brooding over her. It’s hard to believe he hasn’t moved-on after fifteen years, but that might have something to do with the magic he and Claudine shared. With regards to the evil, magical triptych sculpture with the three faces, I think it becomes obvious that one of the faces is supposed to be Oblomoff with the other two being the faces of Claudine and Fatima in what was likely a three-way love triangle that probably didn’t end well.

Brazzi seems to enjoy filming Sylvia and Barbara tour and explore the city, with Sylvia being inspired to photograph Barbara modeling around historic looking architectures, while the viewers lounge to Cipriani’sscore as creepy Oblomoff follows them around, maintaining a feeling of leisure and mystery.

There’s a lot of smooth subtleties to notice on a re-watch for the more attentive and invested viewers. On a repeat view, I noticed at the beginning that the movie subtly reveals to us that Andrea has trouble having sex with his wife, by having her approach him in bed, dropping her clothes, and revealing her nude silhouette. We believe they are about to make love, but then she descends into bed, and the camera lowers revealing that they are in separate beds. Nice touch, movie.

When he does try to have sex with her, it is usually on his terms. During these moments, he seems to be ready, but once she starts to reciprocate and show interest towards his advances, he suddenly loses his libido, and her response is to pitifully laugh at him. It doesn’t help that he also seems to have an attraction to Sylvia. His impotence may be related to potential insecurities about his age and his younger wife talking to other younger men (it could also be all that smoking and drinking he does). He doesn’t seem to jive with her generation’s sense of fashion. It also seems to bother him deep down that his wife does nude modelling.

Late in the movie, after pulling an all-nighter in a nightclub, Andrea has an abrupt hallucinatory dream-like episode during the day that was more of a personal payoff for me. It’s that kind of moment when the movie starts to seem like it’s falling off its rocker and starts to disorient and weird us out, which usually has people wondering what they are watching all of a sudden, but I personally love these kind of left field surprises. It’s mostly about his attraction to Sylvia and a soft-focus fantasy love scene on the beach. Sylvia is a muse-like focus to his hallucinations, an angel-like apparition (Koscina is phenomenal during these moments). He’s drawn to her (could she really be Claudine’s spirit?). In his fantasy, she beckons rather than rebuffs, leaving him with a lot of running to do to catch up with her. The idealized dream sex does not last, as she abruptly begins to hauntingly laugh at him (like his wife does), reminding him of his impotence. I’m not going to try and guess what point the filmmakers are trying to make here, but it is still such a fantastically shot highlight of the film.

Another one of my favorite parts is when Andrea is playing chess with Fatima. It has to be one of the most rock ‘n’ roll chess games I’ve ever seen. The camera floats around the players along to the hard rock Cipriani track that just makes this scene badass. I loved seeing Andrea getting pummeled by the (secret occultist) maid every time. She can navigate the stars from her tea tray, so it makes since she would have the kind of needed foresight to win at chess every time.

Sex of the Devil is a flawed movie that despite its problems I got pretty attached to. It’s convoluted but also so deeply layered, making for a rich re-watch experience, something I enjoyed studying and taking in. It all sort of comes together, just not satisfactorily, as ambiguity and confusion seem to be the final word, but maybe we are not supposed to know all of the answers. It does still deliver the macabre and occult goods up until the end.

I can’t wholeheartedly recommend it, but I couldn’t resist the urge to write about it, which might say something about the film’s ability to stick with you and become an unusual obsession.

© At the Mansion of Madness

Before AIP’s The Dunwich Horror, a 1970 film adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s horror novella of the same name, not a whole lot had been done yet to try and bring Lovecraftto the screen. The Haunted Palace from 1963 is partially based on The Case of Charles Dexter Ward; Die, Monster, Die! from 1965 is a loose adaptation of The Color out of Space; The Shuttered Room from 1967 is an adaptation of August Derleth's story of the same name that was inspired by Lovecraft, and The Crimson Cult from 1969 only takes mild inspiration from Dreams in the Witch House. As far as I can tell, The Dunwich Horror is the first film to be a faithful attempt at a direct title adaptation of an HPLovecraft story. Not surprisingly some liberties were taken with this film, such as updating it for the late '60s, early '70s, but that’s always to be expected. I do think the The Dunwich Horror movie, for its era, does do Lovecraft justice, even if it doesn’t quite live up to the novella.

It was filmed in Mendocino California, a small coastal community that kind of passes for a New England looking town. I don’t think there was any kind of ocean near Dunwich in the original story, but the seaside connection is suitably Lovecraftian and serves the film well, as it’s usually filmed at night to look dark and ominous with unseen horrors.

The stylish occult and satanic animated intro credits set to the classical and catchy main theme by Les Baxteris a great start that gets you into both a ‘70s and a Lovecraft mood. It has a cartoony and imaginative way of painting the ceremonial birth of the main character Wilbur Whateley on Sentinel Hill. Even the film's detractors agree that this animated segment is terrific.

When I originally read the book, I imagined the Whateley house to be more of a worn-down farmhouse, but it is quite the colorful, stylized gothic mansion in the film, something I found to be very Bava-esque; in fact, The Dunwich Horror was originally slated to be a Mario Bava project in 1964, with Boris Karloff starring. It wasn't until around 1969 that the production finally moved forward, with director and lead actors revamped.

Apparently, several actors were in mind to play villain/protagonist Wilbur Whateley, such as David Carradine and Peter Fonda, who turned it down, but the role ultimately went to Dean Stockwell (Quantum Leap). Directing ended up going to Daniel Haller, who also directed Die, Monster, Die!

Sadly, Wilbur Whateley isn’t the physically half human, half creature here that he is in the book, but Stockwell, a Lovecraft fan, has an interesting ‘70s creeper occultist approach, and I really did sense his commitment to his take on the character; his heart is in it. I also love his shaggy, curly hairstyle (it kind of matches mine when I let it grow out).

Academic themes and settings usually abound in Lovecraft tales, and this film manages to touch upon that motif with a passable looking Miskatonic-like University and its library that houses the fabled Necronomicon under lock and key. The University’s visiting Ph.D, Dr. Henry Armitage, the appointed hero with enough of an understanding of the occult and the unsavory Whateley family history to be Wilbur’s foil, is ably played by Ed Begley, his last film before passing away shortly after. Somewhat ironically, Dean Stockwell played Dr. Henry Armitage in the 2009 version of The Dunwich Horror.

Nancy (Sandra Dee- Gidget 1959), a character not from the original story, fills the role of love interest for Wilbur Whateley in a classic Hollywood romance way, almost like a requisite to make The Dunwich Horror more watchable as a film to 1970s audiences.

Nancy is a coed trusted with watching over the Necronomicon at the University Library. One day, Wilbur shows up, politely asking if he could read the forbidden book for a while. Nancy's friend Elizabeth (Donna Baccala) turns him down, but something about him makes Nancy trust him, so she lets him peruse it for a while. I like to think Wilbur hypnotized her with his eyes. When Nancy’s criticized for it by her friend, her reasoning is his great eyes, as if someone with such beautiful eyes can be trusted.

When Wilbur reads the text aloud (mildly paraphrased actual text from Lovecraft), looking mesmerized, about the Old Ones and Yog-Sothoth, I feel like it is stuff he should already know. Dr. Armitage interrupts Wilbur’s perusal, insisting he put it back, warning him of the great value of the book and the fate of one Oliver Whateley who was publicly hanged in the Dunwich town square. After Wilbur informs Dr. Armitage that he is a Whateley and Oliver is his Great Grandfather, Wilbur, Dr. Armitage, Elizabeth, and Nancy get together for a friendly dinner. Wilbur misses his bus (probably on purpose), and so Emily kindly offers to drive him a long way back to his house in Dunwich, where he invites her in for tea.

Wilbur and Nancy might have some sort of chemistry, and she does seem legitimately attracted to him. Too bad Wilbur turns out to be a toxic jackass. He acts sweet and kind to Nancy at first, and she finds him interesting, but Wilbur is a charming, manipulative sociopath with an ulterior motive, as indicated by the way he drugs her tea (which keeps her in a kind of lethargic state and gives her nightmares) and rips a part out of her car engine without her knowing to keep her stranded at his mansion with him. She’s fond of her captor, for a time, but I wouldn’t call it Stockholm Syndrome, since she doesn’t know she is captive. Elizabeth and Dr. Armitage come out to Dunwich to find Nancy, but she assures them she is enjoying her time spending the weekend with Wilbur.

Nancy and Wilbur enjoy pleasant walks in the Dunwich oceanside country and have deep conversations about her dreams, but Nancy is sometimes half-comatose and is plagued with nightmares of horrors from another dimension where she is menaced and chased by strange orgiastic hippie people who are most likely the Old Ones Wilbur is so fond of trying to bring back to our world.

Nancy is way too trusting, even when Wilbur gets creepy and starts taking her up to the ceremonial alter in the Devil’s hop-yard on Sentinel Hill. Of course, it is likely her drugged tea Wilbur keeps giving her that makes her partially unaware and submissive for the ceremony he wants to use her for. In something that feels like a dream sequence, she’s suddenly in an ancient ceremonial robe and in another hazy world surrounded by dark hooded figures. Wilbur disrobes revealing a full body of ancient alphabet symbol tattoos. There’s an ambiguity if she’s dreaming or not. Wilbur is sure he’ll succeed with the ritual this time, stating that the previous girl resisted and died, suggesting that the submissiveness of the sacrificed is key to the success of the ritual. I love that moment when Wilbur appears among the hooded cultist in Nancy’s ceremonial vision.

I ultimately decided that I did like the film's interpretation of the mountainous invisible monster featured in the book that escapes the Whateley Mansion to wreak death and destruction on Dunwich. Seeing that the monster in the original story was mostly invisible, since it existed between worlds, we did get vague descriptions from Lovecraft, and consequently the film does give vague glimpses of something tentacle-based with multiple heads. Instead of growing to take up the entire house though, the monster is only locked away upstairs in what I’m assuming is an attic room. Of course, the filmmakers are unable to achieve a monster of a visual horror that Lovecraft mostly hinted of, but it still works in a fun ‘70s B-monster movie way. When it first attacks, after Elizabeth unwittingly releases it, it’s an insane mess of unnerving sounds, edits, and tentacle slapping.

The way the monster stalks and attacks in POV is acceptable, complete with heart beat, inhuman breathing, and film-negative vision to give it a more otherworldly perspective. When we do get somewhat of a look at the monster at the end, it reminded me of the Malboros from Final Fantasy.

To give the film even more Lovecraft flavor, a mental institution that houses Wilbur’s mother Lavinia (Joanne Moore Jordan) is included. Lavinia went insane five years after giving birth, and lives out her remaining days in a violent state, gibbering in her white padded room about her sons and opening a gate. Also, an interesting note, a pre-Adrian Talia Shire is here as a comely nurse and inevitable monster fodder.

The presence and workings of the whippoorwills, the birds in the book that flock by night to catch the souls of the newly departed, are handled and executed nicely here when certain key characters pass away.

The Dunwich Horror hits a lot of the right notes for me, despite the usual pacing issues and what many consider to be a weak ending. I suppose I would agree in a way that the first half is a bit more intriguing and engaging until it gets more into the actual sacrificial ceremonial stuff towards the end that probably could’ve been more climactic. It does start to seem a little tired after it becomes pretty obvious what is going on, but the inclusion of the monster saves the second half a little. It’s still really cool stuff in my opinion, a nice ‘70s filmic materialization of Lovecraft. You can tell the scriptwriters researched the book thoroughly. It’s by no means a direct retelling, but it ends up being an interesting take on the novella. Despite its current 17% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, I still feel it’s a classic in its own right and a graceful early attempt at adapting The Dunwich Horror to film.

© At the Mansion of Madness

House of the Damned is that generically titled, sort of misleading, pleasant delight that reminds me of why I still enjoy exploring near-forgotten Eurocult films from decades past with the word “House” in their titles. It’s far from the traditional haunted house horror and is more of a peculiar seaside murder drama that still hits a lot of the right notes for Spanish horror fans. The translation of the Spanish title is something like The She Wolf and the Dove, which I think is referring to Sandra and Maria (played by Carmen Sevilla and Muriel Catalá), the two female leads who are also featured on the different regional title posters.

Which one of them is supposed to be the wolf and which one is the dove?

There are some notably fascinating characters in House of the Damned, as everyone comprising the small cast of characters seem to have peculiar and memorable performances. I especially enjoyed Donald Pleasence as Martin Zayas. Also, every shot of Maria, who is a seemingly mute character, is just fantastic. The framing, the intense melancholic expression and blank stare (it's a total mood), she is silenced innocence among scoundrels. There’s also something quite angelic about her.

House of the Damned was co-produced by Harry Alan Towers and filmed on multiple locations in Oviedo, Asturias, Spain, the homeland of the film’s director and co-writer Gonzalo Suárez, who is still active in making films, having just written and directed El sueño de Malinche (2018). Suárezalso co-wrote Vicente Aranda’sLeft-Handed Fate (1966) and The Exquisite Cadaver (1969).

The music in the film is by British film composer Malcolm Lockyer, whose orchestral compositions infuse it with a kind of magic. House of the Damned looks to be the last film he composed music for before his death in 1976; decades later his compositions have appeared on the soundtracks to a surprising number of TV and movie productions such as Mallrats(1995) and Seinfeld.

House of the Damned is set around a charming fishing village that’s a short boat ride away to the grounds of a pretty rundown but still marvelous looking waterside house, where our “damned” characters reside. The storyline isn’t convoluted but rather simple and easy to follow, and it utilizes the classic "MacGuffin" technique. An ancient solid gold statue is the object behind the characters’ motivations. A small but good cast of characters pretty much treat each other like crap, as they murder, abuse, manipulate, and deceive one another over this valuable artifact. A young girl, Maria (Catalá), the last one seen with the statue, is believed to be the only one who knows where it is, only she seems to have been rendered non-communicative, having spent many years in an asylum after witnessing her father being murdered over the statue.

Everything is setup quickly with a prologue that initially feels more like an adventure genre film before things get pretty serious. Two childhood friends, Acebo (José Jaspe) and Zayas (Pleasence), are seen venturing out to an island before they moor their small boat at the entrance to a water cave. Zayas seems super focused as he hops into a cavern while consulting a map, obviously looking for buried treasure. This ain't no Treasure Island or Goonies, because it doesn’t take long before Zayas finds the gold statue they’ve been searching for, which he hands off to Acebo before Zayas falls off a ledge and breaks his foot. Acebo, hearing the painful cries of his friend (when Pleasence can be heard screaming, “my fucking foot!” it almost seems a little funny, like he’s hamming it up a little), flees with the statue, leaving Zayas for dead.

Later that night, while having dinner with his daughter Maria, Acebo’s guilt follows him home as he hears the cries of Zayas outside, who's managed to swim back from the island, bloodied and barely able to walk. Despite being completely disheveled, Zayas only expresses a desire for the statue. Acebo assures him that it is in a safe hiding place, but when he shows Zayas the hiding place, the statue is gone. Zayas, not in his right mind, thinks Acebo is trying to cheat him. A scuffle breaks out, and Zayas murders Acebo. Maria witnesses this as she is standing on the stairs holding the statue (she had taken it thinking it was a toy). Zayas sees her with the statue, after mistakenly killing her father, but passes out cold as Maria crouches in the corner holding the statue. It’s nutty, but I love this prologue.

I like the way the camera roves under the mansion mote, over flowing water, to denote the passage of time, reminding me of the old adage, “water-under-the-bridge”. We flash forward in time and now that what’s-done-is-done, Zayas is out of prison, holding a small sack of his belongings, traveling back to that house on the water, but not before ironically paying respects to the grave of the man he murdered. I'm not sure how he got out of prison so fast for murdering someone, since he doesn’t appear to have aged a day.

With grey neck beard, instability, and constant focus on the statue, Donald Pleasence is gritty, intense, and (for me) memorable in this. He goes all out as Zayas who seems like a team player, true to his word, but he’s so untrusting of others and acts before he thinks. Despite being a murderer, he’s oddly likable and seems to be the most trustworthy. Just don’t cross him and you’ll be just fine. He just wants his share.

Breaking-and-entering is probably not the wisest thing to do as soon as you get out of prison, but it’s pretty obvious Zayas must’ve been brooding over that gold statue his entire time in the slammer, and it's probably the only thing that matters to him. When Zayas enters the house, the old place looks the same, but he’s about to find out that some things have changed.

It seems like no one is home, as Zayas helps himself to a bottle of rum, but then a small man peers out of the interior kitchen window. This man is Bodo, and he is played by Michael Dunn (Dr. Miguelito Loveless in The Wild Wild West 1965 – 1968), an actor with medical dwarfism. When Bodo comes out of the kitchen to confront him, Zayas is rude to Bodo and intimidates him with hisses and grunts, taking advantage of Bodo’s small stature, and looking amused with himself after he orders Bodo around. I’m not sure what it is, but the food Bodo serves Zayas looks good and kind of reminds me of potatoes in yellow curry sauce.

When the current owners of the property show up, new characters Sandra (Sevilla), Bodo’s sister and Maria's cousin, and her husband Atrilio (played by Spaghetti Western bad guy Aldo Sambrell), things start out tense but turn out to be a little comical because of how Zayas handles the encounter. Zayas even gets sarcastic with Atrilio when he starts shoving stuff around, trying to intimidate Zayas who’s helped himself to a hospitality that was never offered to him. Atrilio’s anger is understandable.

Sandra knows who Zayas is and that he murdered her uncle, and yet she doesn’t seem to be bothered by his presence, oddly enough, even when he keeps asking where Maria is, who we find out was sent to a mental home when she was found, half dead, two days after the night she saw her father murdered.

They all break the ice pretty quickly and are soon breaking bread together at the dinner table when Zayas lets them in on the reason for his showing up. He lets them know of the precious golden statue Maria was holding the night he murdered her father. This convinces them to fetch the mute Maria from the asylum to bring her home to see if they can somehow get her to talk about where she may’ve hidden the statue. Obviously, all of this greed and lack of trust isn’t going to end well.

Maria never smiles, given her dreadful circumstances she has no reason to. Zayas varies from patient to impatient with her and has hope she’ll eventually come around. Everyone tries to get through to Maria in their own way.

Bodo tries to warm up to her as a friend and entertainer, treating her like she is some kind of precious fairy princess and using puppet shows as a way to better communicate with her and earn her trust, but he’s really no friend. Sandra seems to take on a kind of protective mother figure to Maria, although she’s oddly compliant to a lot of abuse but does redeem herself in the end, but kind of like Lady-Macbeth isn’t able to live with her guilt. Atrilio is the meanest and the biggest threat to her. Being violent and abusive to those physically weaker than him makes him feel more like a man (toxic masculinity much?).

I do like that Bodo isn’t portrayed as a dumb or moronic servant, but he’s actually articulate and well cultured. Bodo does have moments where he gets to act a little on the nutty side too, with clownish giggling and a tendency to hide in the bushes and spy on people.

I thought that Bodo’s narration during his puppet story time segments to Maria were actually pretty good. Even Maria lightens her usually somber expression a little. Dunn has a talent for narration. I’ll always remember “the great Bodo, king of the seven seas and lord of the thousand winds.” Michael Dunnreceived an Oscar nomination for best supporting actor for his role in Ship of Fools (1965).

House of the Damned is such a well-done film. My favorite part is during the storm in the old cathedral when Zayas desperately pleads with Maria to talk, encouraging her as well, guiding her back to reality in a sense, almost like a spell is being lifted. The scene is so intensely dramatic that it gives me the chills.

Zayas is an asshole to Sandra, but for some reason Sandra can’t resist cheating on her husband and going to Zayas’s room at night to reward his boorish behavior with a little adultery. The very brief sex scene between Carmen Sevilla and Donald Pleasence was apparently a selling point to House of the Damned at the time it was released. The director even claimed that Sevilla’s nude scene, where one of her breasts was exposed at a time, to have been "the first tit in Spanish cinema."Unless I'm confused or there's something lost in translation here, I’m afraid Suárez is mistaken, as there are earlier Spanish films consisting of exposed breasts, such as The Blood-Spattered Bride (1972) and even in The Exquisite Corpse (1969), which Suárez co-wrote.

I do like the way things end up working out and the overall direction, even if a certain clue to the mystery ends up being painfully obvious. House of the Damned is a satisfying experience even coming into it expecting a Spanish horror/thriller but getting a quasi-Shakespearean character drama instead. The old-timey sea element and a beautiful, surreal beach shot really does give it a pleasant and unique feel for something that kind of presents itself as a house-thriller of sorts. Pleasence and Dunn are a couple of expert actors in top form (even if both are hamming it up at times) who fortunately also lend their real voices in the post-dubbing. The other actors aren’t bad either. The story isn’t altogether that unique, but there’s enough peculiarities with the characters to make it seem pretty different, nonetheless. It feels like a near-forgotten film, a status it doesn’t deserve, as far as I can tell. The good characters, Pleasence’sintense performance, Lockyer’s score, and the seaside locations is probably what gives House of the Damned its legs; it has a potential for renewed discovery. It’s heavy-handed but also a good time too.

I’ve been a fan of Alice in Wonderland since I was a kid, although I didn’t read Lewis Carroll’s Alice books until I was an adult, which was prompted by my first viewing of Jan Svankmajer’sAlice(1988), and ever since reading them I’ve been pretty enthusiastic about keeping an eye out for films inspired by or adapted from the books, which was what attracted me to the French surrealist film Alice or the Last Escapade in the first place. I thought the film did a pretty good job at creating an interesting new take on Alice in Wonderland (without actually being about Alice in Wonderland) while also being a bit derivative and having an ending that viewers will no doubt have seen before that I still thought was beautifully executed. It’s also very much of the ‘70s Eurocult sensibility and a product of its time, but it feels like there’s also a little something here for everyone, including the curious Alice in wonderland fan (who doesn’t mind a lightly inspired non-adaptation), and even the surreal, the arthouse, or even the gothic horror fan.

I’ve only seen a few films from French New Wave filmmaker Claude Chabrol (specifically Alice or the Last Escapade, Le Bonnes Femmes (1960), and This Man Must Die (1969)), but from what I understand, Alice or the Last Escapade is supposedly a departure from Chabrol’susual style and is a foray into the more aesthetically surreal brand of storytelling/filmmaking involving a beautiful albeit tragic female muse-like lead and a co-starring mansion, sort of along the lines of Jess Franco’sA Virgin Among the Living Dead (1973) and Mario Bava’sLisa and the Devil (1973) but without most of those directors’ particular characteristics.

Being a fan of so many different genres in movies, music, and video games, I’ve honestly never been bothered by seemingly endless different takes on the same trope; it’s how the creators approach it with new interpretations, developments, and personal signatures that help keep the product from seeming too cliché, and despite the familiarities that are all over the place, Alice or the Last Escapade manages to hardly ever feel too cliché.

Another major draw here is the appealing presence of Sylvia Kristel in the leading role as Alice Carroll. Viewers do get to spend the entirety of the film with Kristelduring her escapade into a sometimes startling but mostly relaxing sojourn of isolated leisure and interspersed encounters with poor conversationalists, who seem to be trying to be as enigmatic and least helpful as possible. She’s seemingly trapped in a kind of beautiful green but still nightmarish at times dreamland, with a mansion at its core that itself is quite generous, laying out food and tea for her, and even fixing her car, not to mention classical vinyl records and a plethora of books for her to consume. Her windy, spooky first night at the mansion suggests that horrors await her, but come morning, she’s all alone in a sunny, well-tended mansion and there’s bread and butter and tea laid out for her, and later she’s greeted with raw pork chops that she gets to butter and cook to her liking.

Understandably, Alice is not happy. After a few futile attempts to escape the mansion grounds, repeatedly ending up in the same place or following an insurmountable wall and coming full circle, she seems to reluctantly accept her situation for the time being. The place won’t let her go (a little like Hill House not letting Eleanor go). Is being trapped in a reality of leisure and peace, isolated from the real world, really a life worth living? How long will it last before you’d become permanently detached from reality?... Here I am, asking questions, a violation of the film’s central rule, NO QUESTIONS, as several characters who appear out of the blue remind Alice whenever she questions her startling new situation, kind of like the first and second rule of Project Mayhem ;).

The pendulum clock in her bedroom seems to be an indicator of when the hauntings come. Things get tumultuous when the pendulum starts to swing, and Alice gets the idea one day to try and flee the mansion when the clock starts up, and whatever it is that’s keeping her there tries to hold on to her, as space and time distort (an interesting visual post-editing effect), and Alice is pulling herself against indoor wind along the floor to get out. She floors her vehicle out the gate in time, eventually leading up to what I thought was the most memorable and funny part, involving a bonkers crowd at a homely looking restaurant she stops in (a tea party counterpart?), where Alice pretty much realizes she’s still a prisoner in whatever reality has trapped her (like a never-ending trip or dream) before consigning herself back to the old mansion again.

There might be a little too much not going on most of the time, but I really enjoy the surreal nature and ambiance of the entire film, and Sylvia Kristel is an absolute delight; she really is wonderful for the part, and you do get a sense of concern for her. I like Alice’s way of rebelling against some of the other characters by staying hardened and not answering any of their questions either; they seem to admire her for this.

The film really is a visual masterpiece. Elegant, classical images are presented in all their brilliant luster, as cinematographer Jean Rabier follows Kristel in varying wardrobe with his camera, exploring the mansion and its grounds, overgrown with green, inside and out, a strange reality that seems to be in operation just for her. At one point, Alice strikes a nude pose that resembles Sandro Botticelli’sThe Birth of Venus.

So, what is the movie trying to say? Or, what does it mean? Of course, it could mean a lot of things, especially to different viewers, and I enjoy finding meaning in movies as much as anyone else, but I’m going to sit this one out and choose to play along with this movie’s game and cease asking questions at this point. A reader and friend of mine Terence once pointed out to me that there is a reference to Rene Magritte’sTherapist painting during the part where Alice talks to the enigmatic boy who carries a bird cage dressed-up like that resembling the one from the Magrittepainting. The boy likes to liberate birds in his cage one at a time; I like to think he is freeing souls from captivity. He too does not answer questions. As another character puts it, “questions are useless… when there are no answers.” There’s a quote from Magritte that resonates with this film: “when one sees one of my pictures, one asks oneself this simple question 'What does that mean'? It does not mean anything, because mystery means nothing either, it is unknowable.” -Rene Magritte

© At the Mansion of Madness

This wicked looking poster for the nominally X-rated Italian/German drama The Sex of Angelsand the Google plot synopsis, which reads “young women steal a yacht and kidnap a young man and spend a weekend having sex and doing drugs,” really aren’t all that misleading, although there’s a lot more to the story. The poster also exaggerates the situation, as what is depicted is rather the result of a conundrum brought on by irresponsibility followed by an even more irresponsible course of action.

The setup to The Sex of Angels is, of course, an appealing one to the male fancy. Being seized by three beautiful modern-day angels and taken on a boat ride into the endless summer of ’68? Why not? It sounds like a good time, and for the most part it is, but in trying to postulate what the film might be trying to say with its outcome, I can’t help but put it in the context of ‘60s youth counter culture and the sexual revolution and see it as a cautionary tale of seduction and widespread use of LSD and what I thought was a kind of critical impression of the behaviors of the “sexually liberated.”

The film is written and directed by Ugo Liberatore, who also co-wrote and directed Damned in Venice (1978) (see also Bora Bora, Bali, and May Morning). He has fewer directing and far more writing credits to his name, which includes The Witch (1966) and The Cruel Ones (1967). Music in the film is by Giovanni Fusco (A Black Veil for Lisa 1968) and (according to the intro credits) is directed by Bruno Nicolai. Not surprisingly the music is a strong point, consisting of acid-rock cuts and a bombastic, fanfare-y main theme that really hits me in my 1960s sentimental core, almost in a similar way that the music in Barbarella (1968) does.

I’m assuming our trio of angels are college students on summer break, as Nora (Doris Kunstmann - Seven Deaths in the Cat’s Eye 1973) seems to be planning an important trip on her father’s yacht with her two friends, Nancy (Rosemary Dexter - Eye in the Labyrinth 1972) and Carla (Laura Troschel - Four Flies on Grey Velvet 1971). They stop by an old mansion to pick up Nora’s lover, Luca (Giovanni Petrucci– The Man with Icy Eyes 1971), who Nora wants to take along for their private pleasure cruise. Luca is not too keen on the idea of leaving his work post to head out to sea with Nora and her crew earlier than planned, and so the girls ditch him and leave the mansion. Here, it’s almost like the film is saying, “nope, we’re not setting this story in a mansion this time around.”

Instead of having an all-girls vacation at sea, the angelic-three seem to need to bring a male with them for unclear reasons. They head over to a beach side club, where all the young, cool people on summer break populate to hit the dance floor. It’s here that they spot the perfect male companion for their trip, the blond golden boy Marco (Bernard De Vries), a third-year medicine student. When Marco’s girlfriend steps aside, Nancy moves in for the capture by asking him a bunch of personal questions before asking him if he’d like to "make it" with her. Because this is a time of loose sexual morals, Marco shows casual interest and agrees to meet her at some private place out on the water, where later Nora, Nancy, and Carla pick him up on their yacht. As they sail off, unbeknownst to Marco, he has just agreed to leave with them to Yugoslavia.

I’m not sure exactly why they needed to trick a boy into coming with them, other than, I guess, the fun of having a good-looking guy around, and being a horny guy, Marco is game to play along. Nancy refers to Marco as “our Neptune,” the Roman god of the sea. Seems fitting…

Young people dream of getting away, without chaperone and with total freedom (what better than the open sea). It reminds me of when I always wanted to get a car so me and my friends could drive a long distance away to have a fishing trip with plenty of beer and cigarettes. There was something appealing when you were much younger about the idea of travelling with friends, farther than you’ve ever gone before, without parents, to be free to make a lasting memory that for many would usually involve sex and drugs. I’m thinking this is sort of related to what Nancy, Nora, and Carla have in mind.

Marco doesn’t seem to mind being kidnapped, too much, in this case, given the lovely company, and as consolation he’s taken it upon himself to try and have a brief love affair with each girl. Although, if Queens of Evil (1970) taught us anything, this is not a good idea.

He’s eventually peer-pressured into joining his kidnappers for an LSD session, locked in a cabin with them and a tape recorder in case any of them experience amnesia. The buildup to the trip with LSD laced sugar cubes almost seems magical, until the next morning when reality sets in. They wake up without any memory of what went down, The Hangover (2009) style. The post LSD trip section of the movie becomes uncomfortable, starting with Nora’s moans and cries for her father during her morning hangover, which for me had a visceral level to it that nearly made me feel her pain and nausea.

We spend most of the film on a boat with the same four characters, and it eventually feels claustrophobic despite mostly taking place on the open sea. Sort of like in Top Sensation (1969), they end up with a bit of a conundrum on the boat, and shit gradually goes from sunny to dark. No one really meant for anything bad to happen; it’s just the result of irresponsibility compounded with stupidity.

I feel like Liberatoremay’ve embedded the script with a counter sex revolution argument that the new generation of females are being irresponsible with their new freedoms, and it is men who pay the price. But on the other hand, Marco made a number of stupid decisions that helped put him where he ended up. Marco’s also pretty boorish himself and not a good guy.

For the record, I don’t agree with the potential message, but I still enjoyed The Sex of Angels for its summer aesthetic, music, characters, and story. Conflict-wise, I also think it is well-written, if underdeveloped in certain areas. I also ended up pleased with the contrast between the setup and direction. It goes from, “where could this possibly be going,” to “hey, this has gotten pretty good,” as it eventually starts to seem that our trio of seafaring angels may actually be more like demons, as I recall the old saying that evil or bad luck comes in three.

© At the Mansion of Madness

HEAR NO EVIL

SEE NO EVIL

SPEAK NO EVIL

Evil Eye is that kind of movie that gracefully tries to do it all but ends up not really knowing what to do with itself afterwards. When looking at the film as a whole, it feels like a nice recap of the enduring motifs of the giallo, occult, gothic horror, and erotica film, and for that it will surely find a place in the hearts of Eurocult fans (it certainly has for me), but it’s hard to tell if it is a work of genius, a mistake of a masterpiece, or just an empty, routine cash-in. Is it great or not-great? I honestly have referred to it as both.

The Spanish, Italian, Mexican co-production Evil Eye(aka Mal de ojo in Spain, Malocchio and Eroticofollia in Italy, and Más allá del exorcismo in Mexico) is directed and co-written by Mario Siciliano. It was also co-written by Spanish writers Julio Buchs and Federico De Urrutia. Interestingly, Buchs and De Urrutia have several co-writing credits together, such as Alta tension(1972) and A Bullet for Sandoval (1969), many of which Buchs directed. Evil Eye seems to be the very last film either writer worked on. Julio Buchsdied in 1973 before the film was released.

The leading man is Mexican movie star Jorge Rivero (who, like me, graduated college with a degree in chemical engineering) as nightmare-plagued, wealthy, debauched playboy Peter Crane. Despite my issues with the direction of the story, I thought there was something appealing about Peter and the way Rivero portrayed him with minimal charisma and just the right amount of elegance, without seeming too trashy or unlikable. I thought the opening when Peter wakes up (at 6 pm), after having a nightmare about a terrifying cult that is seemingly menacing him, looking absolutely hungover and partied out, surrounded by other passed out partiers, in his own living room, really captured that hedonistic ‘70s vibe, as does a few other parts of the movie. Peter has to walk over passed-out bodies in order to find his servant, Walter, played by Eduardo Fajardo, who kicks the party guests out by first waking them up with loud music.

Peter actually reminds me a lot of a 1970s Dorian Gray; he lives in excess, hosts parties at his mansion, is wealthy but doesn’t work, lives alone with his servant/major-domo, has a reputation for his not so wholesome lifestyle, and has a certain agelessness, mainly thanks to Jorge Rivero’s weightlifter physique.

Peter is plagued with nightmares of an otherworldly cult, and these nightmares are related to blackouts, where he murders people and remembers it later as a dream. It reminds me of the hypno-killer theme seen in many a Jess Franco film. Peter starts to look more and more disheveled as the body count increases.

When he starts to suspect there might be something wrong with himself, Peter visits and eventually checks into a psychiatric hospital under the care of Dr. Stone (Richard Conte). The film does tease with a loose insinuation that Dr. Stone might somehow be involved with what is happening to Peter. Some of the parts where Peter is in the hospital under observation seem wasted and uninteresting (except for when he’s sneaking out with one of the female doctors, played byPilar Velázquez), where nothing about Peter’s dilemma seems to really be explored satisfactorily. He does mention to his doctors about the people in his dreams and alludes to a kind of “they made me do it” cult conspiracy. At least while he’s in the hospital, Peter’s friend Robert (Luis La Torre) throws a party (consisting of a lot of extra cast members, including Eva Vanicek), where a very PG attempt at an orgy takes place in his living room. (During the party, a lot of times, you’re just like, “I don’t know who these people are or what’s going on, but I kind of like it.”)

Evil Eye is a film that bleeds a little bit of the occult horror into the giallo but only to a degree to where it feels more like a mild accessory to the proceedings. It’s a minor novelty that could’ve gone a long way given how creepy the occult moments are, but it is too loosely/ambiguously integrated into the main plot. The occult parts are awesome and unnerving, but aside from the photo of Peter Crane used in a ritual, it is almost like they could’ve come from another movie or been easily transferred to another movie to simply be nightmares to antagonize another protagonist. (I really like Johan Melle of euro fever's noticing the vague implication that the delirious and tormented looking nude figures in Peter’s dreams are the souls of murdered victims who are channeling energy to get revenge from beyond through Peter, but like a lot of plot threads here, this is never really expanded on and ultimately discarded. Maybe this is what happens when too many ideas are pushed in to the story; the stronger ideas get watered down.)

One of my favorite parts that I recalled the most when I first watched it was when the movie decides to go on a haunted mansion interlude/side-quest, where Peter decides to go for a long drive after getting a menacing phone call from someone. His car breaks down in front of a spooky house that is occupied by non-other than Italian low-budget cult movie icon Luciano Pigozzi (it really feels like the movie is unknowingly paying fan-service here). It comes off like a mini-vengeful ghost story. This little segment could be expanded into its own movie. Daniela Giordano occupies the house too and is nearly unrecognizable with bobbed red hair. Of course, the occupants seem to know Peter well, but Peter doesn’t seem to know them. The lady of the house even fondly remembers she and Peter spending a night together. Does he just score so much that he can’t remember everyone, or is something else going on?

The strange Elizabeth Stephens, who remembers having a passionate night with Peter despite his not remembering her, is played by Daniela Giordano.

For some reason, before I saw Evil Eye, I thought Anthonny Steffen would be in the leading role, but Steffen comes in later as the good-guy side character Inspector Ranieri, who's newly assigned to homicide. With Ranieri, the film takes opportunities to try and further explore the supernatural elements by having unexplained hauntings and visions visit the inspector that ultimately come off as ambiguous and insignificant. I don’t believe Ranieri ever even meets Peter in person. I did still enjoy the haunting incidents the inspector endures, particularly the grinning vanishing woman and the creepy sound effects when he temporarily loses his hearing. Ranieri has a little bit of a side story with his wife who paints an impressive portrait of him. She gives him a keychain-like charm of an eye, which you’d think was the evil eye of the title, but it is actually for his protection. (In Italian superstition, the 'evil eye' is considered a curse, and in order to protect oneself from the evil eye, a ‘horno’ charm pendent that resembles a southwestern chile is worn, so having an eye as a protective charm, as in the film, is kind of an interesting inversion of the legend.)

Spoilers: I’m convinced the writers were not sure how to end the movie, or unsure of which of the many alluded possibilities to use to explain Peter’s nightmares, the hauntings, and the murders, and so they took the easy way out with a throwaway ending that had me in disbelief. Jess Franco films of the same nature do at least give far-fetched explanations. But it is what it is, and I’ve come to accept the framing as a sort of ‘Peter in Gialloland’ take on the genre. There is a certain amount of elasticity to it, so that someone could probably develop their own interpretation. I believe it is also suggested that events will repeat themselves only a bit differently, as it is someone else calling Peter on the phone when he awakens. Perhaps by living his life as a dream first, he can do better the second time around. End Spoilers

One of Peter's more steady girlfriends Tanya is played by Maria Pia Giancaro, although she is often mistakenly thought to have been played by Daniela Giordano.

This doll really has nothing to do with anything aside from aiding in the movie's irresistible giallo aesthetic, and I am so here for it!

It also has to be mentioned that Stelvio Cipriani’s score, which ranges from eerie to romantic, does help give the movie a little more emotional substance and bite.

To watch Evil Eye is to step outside of your life for an hour and a half and put your problems behind you temporarily and take in the beauty of the moment, savoring a period of sweet, relaxing intoxication. Everything the ‘70s cult horror fan could want is here: cult-conspiracy, mystery, murder, dream sequences, sex parties, mansion hauntings, etc. At times it seems empty, and at other times it seems like such a beautifully woven nightmare. There are a number of good directions that either don’t pan out or are discarded. Despite my ambivalent thoughts on it, I still have a lot of love for this film. It hits the sweet spot so many times while also being an unfortunate mess. Evil Eye isn’t very well written as a whole, yet it has so many well written parts, but unfortunately, in the end, it just doesn't end up amounting to much.

© At the Mansion of Madness

For me, going back to Macumba Sexual is going back to my Jess Franco origins, as it was the second Jess Franco film I ever saw, the first being Mansion of the Living Dead (1982). I came across both Severin DVDs of these films at a video store in 2007 and took a chance with Mansionfirst even though I was expecting it to be terrible (I had heard of Jess Franco and a not so revered zombie movie by the name of Oasis of the Zombies (1982)). At the time, I was desperate for something new, and I was sort of fascinated by the cheap looking blind dead Templar rip-offs on the DVD cover (Diet Tombs of the Blind Dead?). My expectations were low, but it turned out to be a funny, sexy, ultra-weird, and surprisingly atmospheric horror movie with a captivating lead actress, Lina Romay (bornRosa Maria Almirall). I shortly went back to the store for Macumba Sexual and, despite some frustrations, have been hooked on Jess Franco ever since (thanks Severin!).

Mansion of the Living Dead and Macumba Sexual both benefit beautifully from the Gran Canaria filming locations in the Canary Islands. As with Vampyros Lesbos (1971), Jess Franco once again does Dracula his way. With Macumba Sexual, the Dracula storyline is whisked away, transformed, sexually charged, and reborn in Las Palmas in southern Gran Canaria and retold in eternal daylight (not a single scene in the movie is shot at night). Dracula is now a Macumba Priestess, Princess Tara Obongo, played by transsexual actress Ajita Wilson, who resides in her desert oasis lair furnished with African artifacts and statues, where, she remotely casts a spell and haunts the sex life of two tourists: real estate agent Alice Brooks (Lina Romay) and her (nameless) writer husband (Antonio Mayans).

From her hotel room, Alice has sun drenched nightmares of Tara and of being sexually ravaged by her human beast servants. She wakes up shaken and horny and satiates herself by fellating and then fucking her husband, but Tara haunts the vacationing couple’s coitus in a way that appears to enhance it, as the Princess sexually possesses them both and inserts her astral self into the act in a beautifully eerie way that makes for a real witchy and haunting three-way. Neither Alice or her husband seem to realize what transpired, while Alice slowly comes-to after an intense orgasm.

Alice’s vacation is interrupted when she gets a call from her company requesting her to take a boat ride to a nearby island to meet with a Princess Tara Obongo, who is interested in buying a house in America from them. Could that be the same Princess from her nightmares? You better believe it.

Macumba Sexual has its fair share of fever sex dreams, prompting fantasies of ritualistic orgies on the hot desert sand that you never knew you had. The base storyline is similar to Vampyros Lesbos, but here there are more elongated sex scenes that drag down the pace a little. But it really is a wildly bizarre world to get lost in for eighty minutes, and everything is always so hypnotic and otherworldly that it is hard to lose interest. The three key players played by Romay, Wilson, and Mayans do give great performances. Plus, Jess Franco is also on hand indulging in his favorite acting role of playing the fool, the hotel manager Mehmet, who almost feels a little like a reprisal of Basilio from A Virgin Among the Living Dead (1971). Tara’s animalistic sex slaves nicely round out the small cast. Speaking of Tara’s sex slaves, during Alice’s nightmare, the shot of the Princess walking two of her human pets on leashes is so brilliant and striking. It’s a BDSM nightmare visual from another world, a simple idea that goes a long way.

The sex scenes between Antonio Mayans and Lina Romay aren’t half bad, but it’s Ajita Wilsonand Lina Romay who have terrific chemistry. Mayans and Wilson have scenes together, too, and the Princess’s servants are thrown into the mix to explore further combinations of orgies in the film’s particular brand of ritualistic, wild, and surreal sex scenes, although it is a bit rubbish that the film excludes male-to-male interaction, which Jess Franco did not shy away from in an earlier film Sinfonia erotica (1980).

The soundtrack consisting of a lot of chanting and vocal cantations very much draws you in and helps engulf you in the film’s world and atmosphere. The shamanistic vocals sound a lot like Jess Franco(although there really doesn't seem to be any confirmation on this), who frequently contributes to his own soundtracks.

I really like the homage to The Shining (1980), mainly due to a creepy subtlety. If you pause the film and look closely at the top of the typewriter text, in the particular scene, you’ll see Alice’s husband, who’s working on a novel, writing a perfectly normal story at first, with dialogue between characters, that suddenly transforms midway to “Tara, Tara, Tara” repeatedly for many lines, pinpointing the exact moment he was possessed by her. It’s very creepy and convincing.

Lina Romay proves that she is one of the greatest screamers in cinema, especially her screams at the end of Macumba Sexual, which are chilling but also work on an emotional and empathy-inducing level.

Lina Romay’swig in this, as I understand it, is not to everyone’s liking, but I thought her bobbed blonde look was rather cute and rebellious (maybe even a little like a blonde Valentina-now that I think of it, Macumba Sexual does have a few similarities to Guido Crepax’sBaba Yaga). I’ve referred to it in the past as the Candy Coster wig. Candy Coster was a screen pseudonym Linaused during several productions in the early ‘80s timeframe (she went by Candice Coster for Sinfonia erotica where she wore a long blond wig). Since it somehow was thought that Lina Romay was in too many movies, she changed her screen name, put on the wig, and became someone else. Linaalso appears in the same wig in Mansion of the Living Dead, La casa de las mujeres perdidas (1983), and Camino solitario (1984).

Ajita Wilson is the most memorable and an incredible addition to the film. I actually like to think that this is her movie. During the esoteric rituals with runes and statues in the desert, Ajita gives it her all when she goes into a mad, religious trance after fellating a phallic looking monk statue. These rituals, as well as the shots of Tara standing outside of her lair, were some of the most evocative images that stayed with me long after watching Macumba Sexual. Ajita should’ve done more films with Jess Franco. I believe it was just Macumba Sexual and Sadomania (1981). In the interview that was included on the Severin DVD, Voodoo Jess, Jess Francorefers to Ajita Wilson as "a kind of female Christopher Lee" who "was born to make horror films" and was a “very expressive” “force of nature”.

© At the Mansion of Madness

Manhattan Baby (1982)

Help for a Friend in Need

The Devil’s Wedding Night / Il plenilunio delle vergini (1973)

Byleth – Il demone dell’incesto (1972)

Mania (1974)

Fruit of Paradise / Ovoce stromů rajských jíme (1970)

Terror Creatures from the Grave / 5 tombe per un medium (1965)

Lips of Blood / Lèvres de sang (1975)

Count Dracula's Great Love / El gran amor del Conde Dracula (1973)

School of Fear / Il gioko (1989)

Dracula, Prisoner of Frankenstein / Dracula contra Frankenstein (1972)

Daughter of Dracula / La fille de Dracula (1972)

A Whisper in the Dark / Un sussurro nel buio (1976)

Sex of the Devil / Il sesso del diavolo - Trittico (1971)

The Dunwich Horror (1970)

House of the Damned / La loba y la Paloma (1974)

Alice or the Last Escapade / Alice ou la dernière fugue (1977)

The Sex of Angels / Il sesso degli angeli (1968)

Evil Eye / Malocchio (1975)

Macumba Sexual (1983)