Inquisition (1977)

Inquisition is a 1977 Spanish horror film which belongs very much to the then very popular sub-genre of witch-hunter movies.

Inquisition was Paul Naschy’s first film as director although he was already well established as a screenwriter and horror star. Naschy also wrote the screenplay for Inquisition.

Although this is a Spanish movie the setting is France in the 16th century. There’s a very good reason for this. Despite its reputation the Inquisition in Spain was not particularly brutal and was not particularly concerned with witch-hunting. Its main focus was on heresy. The witch craze was much more of a French and central European thing. Naschy was quite knowledgeable when it came this sort of thing so his choice of France as a setting was undoubtedly deliberate. He chose France for the same reason Ken Russell set The Devils in France (and for the same reason that Aldous Huxley set his source novel for that film, The Devils of Loudon, in France).

Three travellers arrive in a small provincial town named Peyriac. On their journey they pass through regions devastated by plague. The three travellers are the chief inquisitor Bernard de Fossey (Paul Naschy) and his assistants and they are on the hunt for witches.

At this stage you’re expecting a straightforward witch-hunting exploitation movie but throughout the film Naschy throws in subtle twists. There really are witches in Peyriac. But are they actual witches, or are they just deluded?

The three inquisitors are soon busily burning women at the stake. Most of those targeted by the inquisitors have no involvement at all in witchcraft, but some do. People are being denounced all over the place. In some cases the denunciations are inspired by a desire for revenge or the hope of personal gain. In some cases they’re the result of hysteria.

The inquisitors are fanatics. They take all accusations at face value. They assume that anyone accused of witchcraft must in fact be a witch. Their cruelty is breathtaking. On the other hand they do seem to believe sincerely in what they are doing. What they are doing is wrong and evil but they believe it is righteous.

Bernard is staying at the home of the mayor. He notices the mayor’s two beautiful daughters, Catherine and Elvire. In particular he notices Catherine (Daniela Giordano). Bernard has a reputation as an ascetic immune to temptation but he is clearly tempted by Catherine.

Catherine’s devoted maidservant Madeleine (Mónica Randall) will play a key role in the story. She is a witch. Or she may be a witch. Madeleine is friendly with an old woman named Mabille who is also perhaps a witch.

Catherine has a lover and she has perhaps not been sufficiently discreet about this dalliance. For Catherine it is more than a dalliance. She is madly in love with Jean.

The household servant Rénover (Antonio Iranzo) is ugly and embittered. He lusts after the young women of the household. He is also sly and treacherous.

It’s obvious that Bernard’s attraction to Catherine and Rénover’s treacherous nature will lead to trouble, which is what happens.

Throughout the story there are subtle ambiguities. Much of the plot hinges on a murder. More importantly it hinges on Catherine’s interpretation of that event, and her interpretation is based on a dream. It is possible that this dream is inspired by a supernatural agency although this is far from certain. Of course if it is supernaturally inspired then the dream might be true or it might be false. The audience’s interpretation of that murder is also crucial since it will determine our attitude towards the behaviour of two key characters. We need to know if the dream is true or false, but we don’t know.

There are plenty of lies and delusions in this tale, and there are multiple levels of lies and delusions. Some of the lies may be partly true.

Whether anything supernatural actually occurs is also uncertain.

The motivations of key characters seem straightforward and then as the movie progresses we find ourselves having doubts. The guilty might not be as guilty as we had assumed. The innocent might not be as innocent. The characters might themselves fail to fully understand their own motivations.

There are several villains some of whom are more purely villainous than others. The evils that occur in this story are to a large extent a result of a society that has become insane and deluded, as happens to human societies again and again and sadly always will happen.

Naschy doesn’t try to manipulate us into hating or despising, or feeling sympathy for, the central characters (or the minor characters for that matter). We have to make our own judgments.

The movie looks good and Naschy tried hard to make it look authentic.

The rather outrageous exploitation elements (there’s quite a bit of nudity, sex and gruesomeness) could easily cause a viewer to overlook the subtleties and ambiguities. In its sleazy way Inquisition is complex and even slightly cerebral. To appreciate the movie fully you need to think about it. Don’t assume this is just a sleazy exploitation movie.

The movie is of course going to be compared to movies like The Devils, Witchfinder-General, Jess Franco’s The Bloody Judge and Blood on Satan’s Claw but Inquisition has its own flavour. A fine directorial debut. Highly recommended.

Mondo Macabro’s Blu-Ray looks great and there are extras including an audio commentary.

Robowar (1988)

Robowar is a 1988 Italian Predator rip-off which makes a nice change from Exorcist, Star Wars and Aliens rip-offs. And it’s directed by the one and only Bruno Mattei. Robowar rips off another movie as well but to reveal which one would be to reveal a spoiler.

The US Government assigns a crack team of anti-guerrilla jungle fighters for a mission to a small island. The team is led by Major Murphy Black (Reb Brown). Much to Murphy’s disgust he finds that Mascher (Mel Davidson) will be going along as well. Mascher is one of those scientist types but he’s an intelligence agency type as well so Murphy doesn’t trust him one little bit.

There’s one thing Murphy is sure of - he hasn’t been told what this mission is really about. It certainly isn’t about fighting guerrillas although that’s what he’s been told. Mascher knows what it’s about but he’s not saying.

They do encounter guerrillas but they’re dead and horribly mangled and disfigured. No animal or human being could have mangled bodies that way.

Then the team realises it’s being stalked. And eventually they realise that whatever is stalking them can’t be human.

Murphy and his team also encounter a girl (played by Catherine Hickland) in the jungle. There has to be a girl of course. Her name is Virgin (yes really). She’s been doing some humanitarian stuff in a nearby village but now every single person in the village is dead. She will have to tag along with Murphy’s team if she wants to stay alive.

Whatever is stalking the team starts to pick them off by one. It seems to be unkillable. They fire thousands of rounds of small-arms ammunition at it with no effect whatsoever.

It will become crucial to find out what they’re up against but persuading Mascher to talk proves to be difficult. He knows they can’t kill him because he is probably the only one who knows how to kill this thing.

Mattei of course was working on a very low budget. By the late 80s budgets for Italian genre movies were minuscule. There’s no way he could afford a cool semi-invisible monster like the one in Predator so we have to make do with a robot. We know right from the start that we’re dealing with a robot so that isn’t a spoiler. And the only people evil enough to create such a horrifying killing machine would be the U.S. military so that isn’t a spoiler either.

Tens of thousands more rounds of small-arms ammunition get expended and there are plenty of explosions. There are some reasonably gruesome scenes. There’s lots of gung-ho testosterone-fuelled violence. Murphy’s team is composed of very tough hombres but they may not be tough enough.

Mattei keeps things racing along. The movie was shot in the Philippines and the jungle scenes really are excellent. Claudio Fragasso and his wife Rossella Drudi wrote the screenplay. They worked with Mattei regularly. Mattei and Fragasso would make movies in tandem with Mattei directing one movie during daylight hours while Fragasso was directing a second movie at night on the same location since they could only afford one camera. Fragasso apparently directed a couple of scenes in Robowar.

You don’t want to worry about how plausible the story is. It’s just an excuse for non-stop action scenes.

The robot is the problem. It doesn’t come across as sufficiently scary or cool and the high-pitched tinny voice is off-putting.

The acting is fine for this type of movie. We get a bunch of very colourful characters with just enough personality to make us care whether they survive or not.

Robowar lacks Predator’s very cool special effects but it is action-packed ultra low budget fun with lots of mayhem. And it has enough Italian genre movie craziness to keep things interesting. Highly recommended.

Severin’s Blu-Ray release looks great and there’s a stack of extras in the form of interviews. Claudio Fragasso’s account of the world of low-budget film-making in the 80s is worth hearing.

I’ve also reviewed Mattei’s enjoyable Shocking Dark, made a year later.

Seven (1979)

Seven is a 1979 action-adventure movie directed by Andy Sidaris. The screenplay was based on an original story idea by Sidaris.

A major criminal syndicate is aiming to take control of Hawaii. They’re not aiming to take over organised crime in the state, they’re aiming to take over the entire state. There are seven major kingpins in this criminal conspiracy. A decision is made that this situation is so critical that it cannot be dealt with by ordinary law enforcement methods. The solution adopted is to hire notorious and ruthless assassin Drew Savano (William Smith), let him assemble a team of seven equally deadly killers and have them take out the bad guys. No nonsense about collecting evidence or building a case or making arrests. The government wants these bad guys killed quickly and efficiently.

Drew takes on the job, for a fee of seven million dollars (everything in this movie comes in sevens).

Drew assembles his team. Lengthy preparations are made. All seven bad guys have to be hit at exactly the same time. Of course not everything goes entirely according to plan.

After a very long buildup the mayhem begins and very satisfying mayhem it is too. Lots of gunplay. Lots of explosions.

Don’t try too hard to make sense of the plot. This is an Andy Sidaris movie. The plot is there to justify the action scenes.

Andy Sidaris is best-known for the series of movies he made between 1985 and 1998, starting with Malibu Express. Seven was made a few years earlier, in 1979, and it’s clear that Sidaris already had his formula all worked out. It was a formula from which he would never depart, because it worked. And in Seven the formula is not just there in embryo, it’s already fully developed. The formula is simple - exotic locations, lots of violent action, glamour, and bare boobs.

Sidaris believed very strongly in shooting on location in exotic settings. That involved spending some money but it was way to make a movie look much expensive than it actually was. The locations themselves provided the production values. It worked.

As for the second element, the action scenes had to be violent without being graphic and they had to be fast-moving. Rapid-fire editing was an essential ingredient. Ideally each action scene had to have something in it to make it memorable. In Seven that meant using a hang-glider for a scene that could just as easily have been done with a light plane because a hang-glider was more unusual and cooler. Or having a hitman who rides a skateboard. Or having an action scene involving an inflatable sex doll. These things involved very little expense but they made those action sequences more memorable. Adding helicopters and rocket launchers is always a sound idea.

Sidaris spent much of his early career doing sports shows for television. It was ideal training for doing action scenes.

The third element was glamour. Sidaris wanted an atmosphere that reeked of money, glamour and excitement. Hawaii Five-O had demonstrated that Hawaii provided just such an atmosphere. Hawaii was perfect Andy Sidaris territory. To reinforce the glamour he’d add fast cars, expensive yachts and plenty of beautiful women.

The final ingredient was bare boobs. If you’re going to have topless scenes it makes sense to find actresses who are going to look great topless. What better choice than to use Playboy Playmates? So that’s what he did. They not have been great actresses but in an Andy Sidaris movie that’s not a major problem. His audience certainly had no complaints on that score.

There are a few weaknesses here compared to his later movies. The main problem is that the initial setup takes much too long. Sidaris learnt a lot from Seven. The pacing is much better in the later movies.

The plotting also became somewhat crazier in the later movies, which was a good thing.

William Smith is terrific - he really sells Drew as a character. We like the guy but he really is ruthless. He’s a professional killer but he’s now one of the good guys. For seven million dollars I’d join the good guys as well. He’s up against some very nasty people. He’s no Boy Scout but this is not a job for a Boy Scout.

The other cast members mostly just have to look either heroic or sinister or glamorous which they manage to do very effectively. There are lots of villains and they’re all extremely villainous.

Mostly though an Andy Sidaris movie is supposed to be good-natured fun. The violence is frequent but too cartoonish to be disturbing. The topless scenes are good-natured and rather innocent. This is clearly a movie made by a guy who has no issues with women. There is one evil woman in this movie but there are lots of evil men. The Playboy Playmates are there to take their tops off but they are never made to look foolish.

The Kino Lorber Blu-Ray offers a very nice transfer with a few extras.

Seven is not top-tier Andy Sidaris but apart from it’s pacing issues it’s reasonably good fun. Recommended.

I’ve reviewed other Andy Sidaris movies - Malibu Express, Hard Ticket to Hawaii and Picasso Trigger.

The Vampire Doll (1970)

The Vampire Doll is a 1970 Japanese horror movie, the first in what became known as the Bloodthirsty Trilogy.

Kazuhiko Sagawa (Atsuo Nakamura) has been overseas for six months. As the movie opens he is on his way to see his fiancée Yûko Nonomura (Yukiko Kobayashi). He will be staying at the home of the Nonomura family in the country for a few days. He arrives only to be told by her mother that Yûko was killed in a car accident two weeks earlier. He is of course devastated. That night he thinks he sees Yûko but of course it must have been a dream.

The focus of the film now switches to Sagawa’s sister Keiko (Kayo Matsuo). She’s worried that she hasn’t heard from her brother. Keiko and her boyfriend Hiroshi (Akira Nakao) decide to drive out to the Nonomura home to make sure that Sagawa is OK.

What they find there makes them just a little uneasy. Yûko’s mother seems a bit evasive. Keiko finds a doll that Sagawa has bought for Yûko as a present. The doll has been smashed, which seems odd. Keiko and Hiroshi are not exactly alarmed but they’re not entirely satisfied, and they’re worried that they have found no trace whatsoever of Keiko’s brother.

And they hear some slightly disturbing stories about the Nonomura family.

Something very bad happened in the past and it may be the key to what is happening now.

Speaking to Yûko’s doctor increases their unease.

What does alarm them is seeing Yûko.

The story develops in much the way you would expect a gothic horror tale to develop, with a few significant differences.

Keiko and Hiroshi start to suspect that something bad has happened to Sagawa, and that they might be in danger as well.

There’s also the Nonomura family servant, Genzo. He has a habit of attacking people and gives the impression that he sees himself as defending the Nonomura family.

This is a Japanese horror film with an unusually strong western influence. Vampires are part of the western gothic horror tradition. Vampires as such are not really a feature of Japanese folklore. The Japanese (and Chinese) concept of the supernatural is much more focused on ghosts but Japanese ghosts are not quite like western ghosts. They’re corporeal rather than being disembodied spirits.

There is a vampire in this story but in many ways this vampire is more like a ghost than a western vampire.

A lot of the familiar elements of the vampire myth are missing in this movie. There are no crucifixes or holy water and no mention of garlic. There are no mentions of stakes through the heart. The vampire does not sleep in a coffin.

Crucially this vampire does kill but does not drink blood. Blood is not the motivation for the killings. Revenge is the motivation. And revenge is the motivation you would expect of a ghost.

My impression is that this is essentially a ghost story with the apparent western influences being entirely superficial. Vampires were a big thing in western pop culture and the Japanese have always been very aware of trends in western pop culture. The Japanese have always been willing to absorb western pop culture influences but somehow Japanese pop culture remains Japanese pop culture. In this movie the vampire elements are like a seasoning but the main dish is a Japanese ghost story.

Director Michio Yamamoto provides some gothic trappings but doesn’t overdo them. He is not trying to make this movie look like a Hammer horror film. It has a certain Japanese aesthetic austerity.

The vampire makeup is also not overdone but it’s effectively creepy. There’s one brief gore scene but overall this is a movie that relies on creepy atmosphere rather than gushing blood.

The Vampire Doll manages to be a rather interesting slightly unusual vampire movie and on the whole it works. Highly recommended.

The Arrow release offers a nice transfer and there’s an appreciation by Kim Newman which is, as you would expect, informative and entertaining.

Monster of the Opera (1964)

Monster of the Opera begins with a very pretty young lady in a semi-transparent nightie, running in terror through a multi-level abandoned building. There are plenty of gothic trappings, moody black-and-white cinematography and lots of Dutch angles. At this point I was thinking to myself that this is my type of movie.

It soon becomes apparent that this isn’t that sort of movie at all. It’s something much odder.

Sandro is a theatrical director-manager. He runs what appears to be some kind of experimental theatre troupe. He’s been trying to find a theatre and finally he’s found one. It’s the building we saw in the opening sequence.

It’s been disused for years. Strange things have happened there in the past, over the course of many years. Leading ladies have mysteriously disappeared.

The structure and pacing of this movie are both very strange. We know that there is a vampire. Or maybe it’s a guy who thinks he’s a vampire. Or maybe it’s a dream. Either way the focus is now on the dramas taking place within the theatre company. And we see the rehearsals and this provides the opportunity for some musical production numbers. The theatrical production seems to be a bizarre mix of musical comedy and avant-garde weirdness.

The old man who acts as caretaker gives giving solemn warnings that the theatre company should flee the theatre although he’s very vague about the reasons.

To add to the other weirdness we get a subtle Phantom of the Opera vibe.

We also get dream sequences, or they may be dream sequences. Maybe dream and reality are one in this decaying old theatre.

The tone shifts wildly. There’s comedy and romance and lighthearted silliness, then there’s some real creepiness, some scares and some mystery. It’s not at all clear how seriously we’re meant to take this movie.

Is this a spoof? Is it intended to be semi-comic? Is this a gothic horror movie or an arty surrealist movie?

The key to the strange goings-on obviously lies in the past. We get glimpses of that past but they’re (initially at least) a bit ambiguous. There’s a possibility that the old caretaker is actually very very old indeed.

Of course it will also occur to us to wonder if this stuff that happened in the past really happened. We also wonder if all the characters are really the people they seem to be.

There’s a perfectly decent gothic horror story here. In fact it’s a nicely twisted plot with some neat totally unexpected turns. It’s just handled very oddly.

One thing that needs to be kept in mind is that this movie was made in 1961 but not released until 1964. In 1961 Italian gothic horror was still in its infancy and this movie is closer in tone to a movie like The Playgirls and the Vampire (1962) than to the movies that were being made in the mid-60s.

There’s no blood and no gruesomeness and no nudity. There are lots of scantily-clad young ladies which would have been very titillating in 1961. Monster of the Opera seems rather tame by 1964 standards. But it’s not as simple as that. It’s tame in terms of overt sexual content. There is however an enormous amount of more subtle and slightly perverse eroticism. There is for example a lot of dancing and the dancing is very obviously reflecting all kinds of erotic obsessions. The director knew he couldn’t get away with nudity in 1961 but he still managed to make a gothic horror movie with an all-pervasive atmosphere of twisted eroticism.

The contribution of screenwriter Ernesto Gastaldi is hugely significant. Gastaldi was perhaps the most important of all screenwriters in Italian genre movies of the 60s and 70s. If you come across a really interesting Italian genre movie of this period you are very likely to see Gastaldi’s name in the credits.

Everything about the way director Renato Polselli handles this movie is fascinatingly off-kilter. This is not the way to direct a conventional gothic horror film but Polselli doesn’t care. He has his own ideas and he sticks to them and the result is bizarre but incredibly interesting. Highly recommended.

Monster of the Opera is included in Severin’s Danza Macabra volume 1 boxed set. The transfer is nice and there’s an audio commentary by Kat Ellinger and her commentary really does add enormously to a proper appreciation of this film.

Vampire Hunter D (1985)

Vampire Hunter D is a 1985 science fiction/horror anime feature film.

Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust, released in 2000, is rightly regarded as one of the great anime movies and certainly one of the most visually stylish and flamboyant anime films ever made. In fact it’s one of the most visually stylish and flamboyant movies of any type ever made. It is a sequel to the 1985 film.

When approaching the 1985 film you do have to take that fifteen-year gap into consideration. This was several years before Akira established anime’s first firm foothold in English-speaking markets. Even in Japan in 1985 the idea of anime aimed at adult audiences was fairly new. Anime film-makers were just starting to explore the thematic and aesthetic possibilities this would open up.

Vampire Hunter D was made as an OVA (basically direct-to-video but without the negative connotations this has in western countries) and later released theatrically. Director Toyoo Ashida did not have anywhere near the budget of the 2000 film. The 1985 movie simply cannot match the visual magnificence of the 2000 sequel.

On the other hand, given its budgetary limitations, the 1985 film is visually quite impressive. At the time it was certainly visually impressive. There are some striking images and the first appearance of D is memorable.

Like the 2000 film this one mixes familiar gothic horror tropes with Wild West elements. It is however not quite the Wild West of American westerns. It’s closer to old Mexico, or perhaps to Spanish California. In fact it’s set 10,000 years in the future so this qualifies as a post-apocalyptic sci-fi movie as well as a horror movie. The hints of the Wild West are there to add coolness, which they do.

Doris Ran is a formidable young lady who is quite prepared to take on werewolves. Vampires however are out of her league. Only a specialised vampire hunter can hope to take on a vampire.

And Doris has a problem. She was bitten by Count Magnus Lee, a vampire. This means that henceforth she will be regarded with fear and suspicion by the other villagers. It seems to her to be an extraordinary piece of good fortune when she encounters a vampire hunter, known only as D.

She knows she will have to pay him. She has no money but she hopes that he will accept the use of her body as payment (the incorporation of such adult concepts in anime was still quite ground-breaking in 1985). D does not take her up on her offer but he agrees to work for her anyway.

Before he even gets near the Count D will have to battle his terrifying supernatural minions.

The Count is not simply out for victims for the sake of their blood. He is 10,000 years old. He gets bored. He needs amusement. Marrying a human girl should provide plenty of amusement. It’s not specifically stated but it is implied that vampires are very attracted to human women. He has chosen Doris to be his bride. Doris is of course horrified. She would choose death rather than succumb to the embraces of a vampire. That’s why she hired D - to save her from such a fate.

There are some twists that make this more than just a conventional vampire tale. D is a dampiel, the offspring of a vampire father and a human mother. He has a vampire side to his nature, which sometimes asserts itself in disturbing ways. There is another dampiel in this story but I’m not going to give away a spoiler.

There are conflicts with the aristocratic vampiric Lee family. There is tension between the Count and his vampire daughter Ramica. There are conflicts within the human population of the village as well.

These conflicts and divided loyalties will pose problems for D, and he has his inner conflict between his human and vampire sides to worry about as well.

Interestingly this movie was based not on a manga but on a series of novels by Hideyuki Kikuchi. It was later adapted into a manga. The character design for D was retained almost exactly for the 2000 movie.

One fascinating thing about this movie is that it deals with a subject that is a crucial ingredient of Bram Stoker’s Dracula novel but which is often rather glossed over in western vampire movies - the class issue. In Stoker’s novel Dracula is seen as a particular threat because he represents the power, glamour and seductiveness of the decadent aristocracy. Dracula’s opponents are solidly bourgeois. In Vampire Hunter D the vampires represent a decadent oppressive (but glamorous) aristocracy which preys on the poor and the middle class.

There’s plenty of violence and gore and there’s some nudity. There’s no shortage of adult concepts. Vampirism in fiction and movies is usually a metaphor for sex but in this case the sexual motivations of vampires are made much more overt.

The overall concept is brilliant, the world-building is done effectively and economically, there’s lots of mayhem and for a low-budget production the visuals are stylish and imaginative. Highly recommended.

Happily the Urban Vision DVD includes the Japanese language version with English subtitles. In general the English-dubbed versions of 80s and 90s anime should be avoided like the plague. There’s also been a Blu-Ray release. One thing that should be noted is that some of the character names are totally different in the subtitled version compared to the English dub.

The House of Lost Women (1983)

The House of Lost Women (La casa de las mujeres perdidas) was released in 1983 and belongs to Jess Franco’s Golden Films period. With Golden Films he was working on micro-budgets and as an added problem they proved to be spectacularly incompetent when it came to securing distribution outside Spain. On the other hand Golden Films gave him total creative freedom. Franco loved working for them. If he had total freedom he simply didn’t care how little money he had to work with. In this case he’s come up with a script that requires nothing more than a camera and a handful of good actors and as so often he’s also found a perfect location.

The House of Lost Women stars Lina Romay (who as so often at this period is billed as Candy Coster).

As with most Franco films of this era assigning The House of Lost Women to a genre is a bit of a challenge. It’s an erotic movie, but Franco’s erotic movies were not like other people’s. And describing it as an erotic movie is likely to give a false impression. It deals with sex, but it’s unsettling rather than arousing.

Mario Pontecorvo (Antonio Mayans) is an Argentinian actor who now lives on a tiny Spanish island with his family. Mario was forced to leave Argentina after some unpleasantness with the authorities there, unpleasantness relating to his sexual activities with a young woman. Mario is rather vague on this subject.

Mario lives on the island with his wife Dulcinea (Carmen Carrión) and his two daughters by a previous marriage. Paulova (Asunción Calero) has the body of a woman but the mind of a very small child. Desdémona (Lina Romay) is another matter.

Desdémona is the central character and provides voiceover narration.

This is one strange disturbed family. Mario seems to live in the past, dreaming of his past triumphs as an actor. He is entirely unable to satisfy Dulcinea’s sexual needs. Dulcinea is as a result crawling the walls. She has a few other issues as well, including a taste for sexual sadism.

Desdémona’s problem is that she is a virgin. She would very much like to change that situation. Given that there are no men on the island other than her father that’s a bit of a challenge for her. She has considered the possibility that her father might be able to solve the problem for her but her attempts at seduction fail and he rebuffs her approaches. Desdémona spends most of her time pleasuring herself but she desperately craves a man.

Then Tony Curtis arrives on the island. No, not that Tony Curtis. This is a young man who claims to be a hunter. As you might expect both Desdémona and Dulcinea are very excited by his arrival. You might also expect that Desdémona won’t remain a virgin much longer, and you’d be right.

The Pontecorvo family was wildly dysfunctional to begin with but this new arrival makes things dangerously unstable.

This is a classic setup for an erotic thriller or a murder mystery but that’s not at all what Franco is interested in giving us. It’s more of a psycho-sexual melodrama but heavily laced with black comedy. This is a rather amusing movie at times but it’s also at other times quite bleak. We don’t expect things to end well but Franco is not going to give us the bloodbath ending that we might have anticipated.

There’s some crazy humour in this film. Desdémona always has the TV on and while various sexual shenanigans are going on we hear a series of bizarre TV commercials in the background, and the TV station is clearly supposed to be broadcasting Dallas but this is Jess Franco’s crazed idea of Dallas. Surprisingly this stuff is actually quite amusing. It also adds an extra touch of weirdness. This is not the real world. This is Jess Franco World.

Antonio Mayans gives a very impressive performance as Mario. Mario lives in a strange world of fantasy with only the most tenuous grip on reality. It would be wrong to describe him as either villain or a victim. He’s more of a non-participant in life. He doesn’t really wish ill upon others because he’s hardly even aware of their existence.

Asunción Calero is frighteningly childlike and disturbing as Paulova. Carmen Carrión is chilling as Dulcinea.

At first we assume that we’re going to see Lina Romay once again as a sexually obsessed mad girl but as the story unfolds we start to question this. Perhaps Desdémona isn’t mad at all. She’s certainly sexually frustrated but she’s also desperate for love and she’s very bored and very lonely. She seems mad and sometimes her behaviour is unsettling but that’s because she’s in such a mad environment. Desdémona is more of a lost girl than a mad girl. It’s a subtle and poignant performance by Romay.

The House of Lost Women dates from a period at which Franco felt under no compulsion whatsoever to conform to any genre expectations. This is a story idea that appealed to him so he made the movie. The more I see of Franco’s 80s work the more of these odd neglected gems I find. Highly recommended.

Severin’s Blu-Ray (they’ve released this as a DVD as well) includes some very worthwhile extras. The audio essay by Robert Monell is good and as usual Stephen Thrower’s appreciation of the film is informative and perceptive.

The Seventh Grave (1965)

As much as I love Italian gothic horror movies it’s not easy to find too many positive things to say about The Seventh Grave (La settima tomba, 1965).

The setup is fairly standard. In 19th century Scotland the heirs have gathered in the hopes of getting their shares of the fortune of recently deceased Reginald Thorne, lord of Nofis Castle. 

They’re also attracted by the stories about a treasure concealed in the castle, a treasure that had belonged to Thorne’s ancestor Sir Francis Drake.

A young notary is also there, to read the will.

Young Katy is reputed to be a powerful medium so it seems like a good idea to persuade her to contact Reginald Thorne’s spirit. A séance is held. With inconclusive results.

The first body to turn up is that of the castle’s caretaker Patrick. There will be more corpses. It could be that one of the heirs is a murderer, which would make this more of an Old Dark House movie than a gothic horror. But it could of course be a ghost or some other supernatural entity.

There are empty coffins in the Thorne family crypt, coffins that should not be empty. Corpses appear and disappear. Mysterious lights are seen in the crypt.

The castle is vast. The only one who knew all its secrets was Patrick and he’s dead.

The good news is that the law has arrived, in the person of Inspector Martin. He’s confident that he can find the killer. He doesn’t seem to be having much success.

And then the will disappears.

There are some clues that point to what is really going on but no-one notices since the truth is too strange to be believed.

Director Garibaldi Serra Caracciolo offers us most of the standard gothic horror trappings but there’s something missing. To get the gothic atmosphere right it’s necessary to take some trouble to get the lighting right and the framing right and that doesn’t happen here. It all looks a bit too flat, with no real sense of gothic weirdness or menace or creepiness. That might be because the people who made this movie were just not in the top rank as far as Italian genre cinema was concerned and they lacked the skills, and the instincts. This was Caracciolo’s only directing gig and it’s easy enough to see why.

This is also a very low-budget movie and that might be the problem - there may simply not have been enough time and money to allow the necessary effort to be made. This is a cheap movie that unfortunately looks cheap.

A major problem is the music which is very tacky and obvious and makes the movie seem even cheaper.

There are no major names in the cast. The acting isn’t terrible but on the whole it’s rather dull and the lack of even a single charismatic performer is a weakness. The audience isn’t given enough reason to care about the characters.

The most interesting thing about this film is that it’s a reminder that even the most satisfying genres vary in quality. It’s worth seeing some of the lesser movies in order to appreciate more fully just what it was that made the great movies in these genres so great.

There’s nothing terribly wrong with the basic story. In fact it’s perfectly adequate. It’s just that it’s executed without any real style or sense of menace or suspense.

The Seventh Grave is quite simply dull.

This movie is included in Severin’s Danza Macabra Blu-Ray boxed set. The transfer is good and there’s an audio commentary in which Rachael Nisbet struggles valiantly to find positive things to say about the movie. It’s a fine boxed set and if you’re going to buy it (and you should) you might give The Seventh Grave a spin merely out of curiosity but make sure to set your expectations very low.

The Voyeur (1994)

The Voyeur (L'uomo che guarda) is a 1994 Tinto Brass movie based (loosely) on Alberto Moravia's novel.

Tinto Brass has had a fascinating career. In the 60s he was being hailed as the next Antonioni. His art-movie credentials were impeccable. Then in 1976 he made Salon Kitty and all hell broke loose. It dealt with a subject that obsessed Brass at the time - the links between absolute power and sexual excess. It was not a movie for the faint-hearted. He followed it up with Caligula which ignited an even bigger firestorm.

After which Brass more or less decided to go his own way. He’d make the movies he wanted to make and if the critics hated them then that was their problem. And the movies Brass wanted to make were erotic movies. Intelligent, sophisticated, witty, arty erotic movies.

The 70s had been the heyday of art porn, a period when it really did seem possible (to a lot of people) to make erotic art movies. Some put the emphasis more on art than eroticism and some focused more on the eroticism. The results were mixed but some genuinely extremely good and interesting movies were made. By the 80s the advent of home video and hardcore killed the softcore movie market stone dead. What Brass wanted to do was simply no longer possible. He did it anyway. And made a successful new career out of it.

Tinto Brass made arty erotic movies but do not make the mistake of thinking that these movies are going to be dull, earnest and miserable (as is usually the case when British or American directors try to do arty erotica). Most of Brass’s erotic films contain a great deal of humour and quite a few are in fact arty sophisticated sex comedies. Brass is famous for his love of the female posterior but there’s a lot more to him than that. He has a playful sense of humour. He has the crazy idea that sexuality is a good thing and that sex can be enjoyable. It can also be amusing.

Which brings us to The Voyeur. Eduardo (Dodò to his friends) is a professor of French literature. He is married to Silvia (Katarina Vasilissa). They live with his bedridden father who is also a professor. He is bedridden due to an accident but is expected to recover. Silvia has moved out but she still sleeps with Dodò. She seems strangely distant emotionally. Dodò thinks she may be having an affair.

Dodò is a voyeur, in a sense. It is partly a sexual kink with him but it’s also a professional interest. The main focus of his academic work is voyeurism in art and literature, but voyeurism in a wider sense than the purely erotic. To Dodò the pleasure of observing is one of the keys, perhaps the principal key, to an understanding of art and literature.

He met his wife through his interest in voyeurism - he used to spy on her through her open window. Then he found out that she knew he was watching and it excited her. Silvia is an exhibitionist so they’re well-matched.

Dodò begins to suspect that Silvia is having an affair with his father. His father is certainly very interested in sex, and he receives certain sexual favours from his pretty nurse Fausta (Cristina Garavaglia). Dodò has watched them together.

Dodò becomes increasingly obsessed. He is insanely jealous. He has to find out what is really going on even if it leads to disaster.

This is a movie about voyeurism but it’s also a movie about secrets, and lies, and fantasies. Some of the secret things may be merely fantasies. Some of the lies may not be lies. And when we observe things we can’t always be sure that they’re true, and if they are true we can’t always be sure what they mean. Fantasies can be difficult to distinguish from reality. Dodò may in fact be living in a world of his own fantasies. On the other hand it might all be true.

So there’s lots of artiness here. There is also a staggering amount of both male and female frontal nudity. And lots of quite graphic sex. It goes as far as it’s possible to go while remaining softcore, and then a little bit further. Not surprisingly it did not get a U.S. theatrical release.

Tinto Brass himself has never made any secret of his voyeuristic obsession with the female form so this is a voyeuristic movie about voyeurism made by a voyeur and watching the movie is an exercise in voyeurism, all of which is exactly what Brass intended it to be.

Brass’s later movies tended to be shunned by critics who refused to consider the possibility that such very sexually explicit movies might be intelligent and emotionally nuanced. They also failed to understand that Brass was deliberately provoking them. In addition they could not possibly grasp the idea that erotica might be done with humour.

The Voyeur is a genuine attempt to grapple with subject matter that other directors with his early art-house credentials would never dare to confront. It’s intriguing and it’s highly recommended.

This is one of three films included in the UK Fifty Shades of Tinto Brass DVD set. The Voyeur has since been released on Blu-Ray by Cult Epics.

I’ve also reviewed Brass’s excellent Monella (1998) as well as Tra(sgre)dire (2000).

Curse of the Voodoo (1965)

Curse of the Voodoo is an obscure 1965 British horror film that turns out to be not at all what you might expect. There is certainly voodoo here but it’s more a psychological thriller than a horror film.

Mike Stacey (Bryant Haliday) is a big game hunter in Africa. He is employed by safari operator Major Lomas (Dennis Price). His troubles begin when he shoots a lion. In the process of doing so he gets mauled. Not severely, but it’s still upsetting. 

He shoots the lion within the territory of a tribe, the Simbazi, who regard lions as gods. They believe that anyone who kills a lion will pay a terrible price. They will make sure of that.

You might expect the tribesmen to come after Mike to kill him but what actually happens is a lot more interesting. He returns to London where he is haunted by dreams, and he sees African tribesmen stalking him. They appear to be merely visions of a mind that is becoming disturbed but there’s quite a bit of ambiguity in this movie. The lines between sanity and madness and between reality and illusion do become somewhat blurred.

There is definitely voodoo in this movie, although since we’re dealing with Africa it’s probably obeah rather than voodoo (but having voodoo in the title was obviously a much sounder commercial move).

Mike already had a few problems. Drinking too much, plus marital problems. His wife Janet has left him. He wants her back.

Mike’s wound is healing very slowly. His doctor is worried. Naturally he assumes that the signs of mental instability Mike is displaying are caused by a combination of an infected wound and too much alcohol. He’s a London doctor so he certainly doesn’t consider voodoo when making a diagnosis.

Mike’s dreams and visions (if they are just dreams and visions) become more and more vivid. He sees a face peering around his doorway and opens fire with his revolver but there was nobody there. Fortunately no-one was hurt and the police are not too worried.

Mike is quite an interesting character. He’s not an overly loveable guy but he’s not really unsympathetic. He’s a fairly decent man and he really does love his wife. He has tried to be a good husband. Maybe he’s not the husband she wanted and needed but he has done his best.

Bryant Haliday’s performance is a bit detached but that works in his favour since he is playing a man who is haunted but unwilling to reveal his emotions openly. I ended up being quite impressed by his performance.

Lisa Daniely as his wife Janet is pretty good. And Dennis Price is always watchable.

Look out for Dennis Alaba Peters who went on to play Sir Curtis Seretse in the wonderful ITC TV series Department S.

One could see this as a movie about the clash between the world of magic and the world of reason, between two radically different worldviews.

This movie is an example of the need to approach movies with an open mind. It would be a mistake to approach this film assuming it’s going to be a cheap shoddy Z-grade movie. If you do have an open mind you may find yourself being drawn into what really is a quite nicely executed slightly offbeat movie. And it does have that fascinating ambiguity that it never makes the mistake of trying to resolve too neatly.

It’s all very low-budget of course, but I don’t think that’s a problem here.

And it does have a screenplay by Brian Clemens, and quite a neatly done screenplay too.

Lindsay Shonteff directed. He was a minor director but made a few interesting movies including The Million Eyes of Sumuru (1967) and Permissive (1970), the bleakest most pessimistic most depressing sexploitation movie ever made (although it is intriguing). Having watched Curse of the Voodoo ii’m inclined to think I’ve been guilty of underestimating Shonteff. This is a movie made by a director who knows what he’s trying to achieve and knows how to achieve it. He pulls off some quite effective visual set-pieces which were clearly done with very little money. They rely purely on the skill of the director. This guy might not be a great director but he’s certainly an interesting one.

Curse of the Voodoo does not deserve to languish in obscurity. It’s a nice little movie that teases us with the possibility that it’s either supernatural horror or psychological horror. Highly recommended.

The Screenbound all-region DVD offers a perfectly adequate transfer.