Lady Frankenstein (1971)

You’re making a Frankenstein movie in 1971 but you want to add something different, to make your film look less like a rip-off of Hammer’s Frankenstein movies. So what do you do? You give Baron Frankenstein a beautiful sexy daughter who is also a mad scientist. And you make her the focus of the story. That’s the basis for Lady Frankenstein.

Of course you’ll need the right actress. How about Rosalba Neri? She’s sexy, glamorous, classy, she can act and she has the ability to be equally convincing as a heroine or a villainess. She turned out to be an inspired choice.

Joseph Cotten gets top billing but he actually has only a supporting role. This is totally a star vehicle for Rosalba Neri. She has to carry the film. And she does so with ease.

The setting is supposed to be England but it looks more like the Central Europe of Hammer’s gothic horror movies. In fact the whole visual style of this movie owes quite a lot to Hammer.

Lady Frankenstein adds some sleaze and some hints of sexual perversity. That was very much the trend in European horror at the time and Hammer were moving, a bit tentatively, in that direction. Lady Frankenstein goes a bit further than Hammer would dare to go.

Baron Frankenstein (Joseph Cotten) and his assistant Dr Charles Marshall (Paul Muller) are on the verge of the final successful breakthrough in their attempts to create a living man out of dead tissue.

The problem is that the brain they are using comes from a hanged murderer and this brain has a few malfunctions. They create a man-monster and bring him to life but they can’t control him and Baron Frankenstein pays the price for his error of judgment.

In the 1931 Frankenstein there is of course a famous scene involving the monster, a child and a pond. In Lady Frankenstein this scene is a little different - the monster hurls a naked young woman into a lake, having surprised her having sex on the lakeshore with her young man. This is the monster’s first killing but there will be plenty more.

Baron Frankenstein’s daughter Tania (Rosalba Neri) vows to continue her father’s work, which Dr Marshall’s assistance. This is where the movie gets interesting. Tania Frankenstein is not a mere simplistic evil mad scientist. She has a number of simultaneous motivations. Ambition is one motivation but she is also driven by both lust and love. Tania has a woman’s emotional needs and a woman’s physical needs. Dr Marshall can satisfy the former and she is attracted by his mind but his weedy middle-ged body does not set her pulses racing. Maybe Tommy, her servant, can satisfy her sexual needs? He has a strong masculine body. Unfortunately he is a halfwit. Tania needs a man with both an exciting mind and an exciting body. If only the dumb-as-a-rock but hunky Tommy had Dr Marshall’s brain!

It’s always difficult to judge acting performances when they’re dubbed, but Rosalba Neri smoulders when she needs to smoulder and she’s convincingly depraved. Joseph Cotten is very good - he did quite a few exploitation movies in Italy around this time but in this instance at least he is not just phoning it in.

Mel Welles directs. He doesn’t have much of a reputation as a director but here he is at least competent. It’s visually reasonably impressive with a fairly cool mad scientist’s laboratory (which was re-used in several other movies) and manages not to look cheap.

The big problem is the very lame monster. It’s not a fatal flaw because the focus is very much on Tania Frankenstein and her romantic and erotic entanglements that lead her to become a fully-fledged evil mad scientist. But the monster is seriously lame.

Lady Frankenstein doesn’t push things very far on the gore front. There is however a fair bit of nudity and sex. The movie’s selling point was clearly going to be the sexy lady mad scientist.

The movie was shot in Italy and partly financed by Roger Corman’s New World Pictures. The version released in the States was cut, apparently not so much to remove sex and violence as to get the running time down to the length Corman wanted. With the cut scenes restored the plot makes a lot more sense and the motivations of the characters are a lot clearer.

Lady Frankenstein isn’t one of the gothic horror greats but it offers plenty of enjoyment. Highly recommended.

This movie is included in Severin’s Danza Macabra Volume 1 Blu-Ray boxed set and it gets a lovely transfer. There’s an audio commentary by Alan Jones and Kim Newman which, as you would expect from those two, is both illuminating and entertaining. And there’s a second audio commentary and other extras as well.

The Other Side of the Mirror (1973)

The Other Side of the Mirror (Al otro lado del espejo) is an odd Jess Franco movie. What’s odd about it is the lack of weird crazy elements. It’s very low-key and very restrained. This is one of those cases when it’s almost impossible not to use the very clichéd term slowburn. This one burns very slowly indeed.

It starts out giving the appearance of being a straightforward domestic melodrama. Not a psycho-sexual melodrama, but just a very ordinary story about a young woman dealing with rather ordinary problems. Even when something fairly startling happens there’s nothing bizarre about it.

Ana (Emma Cohen) lives on the island of Madeira with her father, a very respectable archaeologist (played by Howard Vernon). He’s a widower. Ana is his only child. They seem quite close, but not in a weird way. When Ana announces that she is getting married her father seems a bit upset but that’s normal and understandable. It will obviously be rather lonely living in a big house alone after his daughter moves out.

The first very subtle sign of oddness is her father’s reaction to her impending marriage. He hangs himself. It’s a shocking to do but there’s nothing inherently bizarre about it. A man in his position might well feel that without his daughter his life will be empty and meaningless. He has built his life around her. Which may not be healthy if taken to excess but again it’s the sort of thing that does happen.

We have already had indications that even before Ana’s marriage announcement her father was bored by life. Boredom is a key theme that runs throughout this movie.

Ana leaves Madeira, moves to a big city and builds a new life as a jazz singer. There’s a burgeoning love affair between Ana and jazz musician Bill (Robert Woods). Ana seems to be reluctant to let things move too quickly.

Everything about this movie is very subtle. We just get tiny clues that something might be amiss. Ana has dreams. We assume they’re just dreams. Things that happen in her dreams happen in real life. Whether her dreams predict the future or whether something stranger is going on remains ambiguous.

She begins another love affair, with theatrical producer Miguel (Ramiro Oliveros).

She ends up back on Madeira. She hangs out with a circle of idle rich people.

Carla (Françoise Brion) and Pipo (Philippe Lemaire) have an open marriage. Maybe it’s becoming a bit too open for Carla’s liking. Maybe the middle-aged Pipo is a bit too interested in Ana. This little circle also includes Tina (Alice Arno).

Several murders occur. This is starting to feel like a giallo. There’s certainly an atmosphere of decadence.

There are however hints that there is something else happening. Perhaps Ana is psychologically haunted by her past. Or perhaps she is being literally haunted. Perhaps her father is reaching out for her from the grave. At the end we find out if there is really a supernatural element at work.

What’s really interesting is the very low level of erotic content and the almost total absence of any kind of sexual perversity. There is no indication of any incestuous relationship between Ana and her father. There is not even any indication of incestuous desires on the part of either father or daughter.

At this point we need to address the question of the multiple versions of this movie. The Other Side of the Mirror was a Franco-Spanish co-production. There were three different versions released - The Spanish, French and Italian versions. What’s really fascinating is that the French version was an entirely different cut with a lot of extra material, with one of the main characters eliminated and an additional main character (played by Lina Romay) added, although utilising about three-quarters of the original Spanish film. This French version, Le miroir obscène, was apparently so different that it was in effect a totally different movie dealing with totally different themes. But the extra material was apparently all shot by Franco.

And apparently the Italian release is yet another rather different cut.

Censorship was still fairly strict in Spain and the Mondo Macabro Blu-Ray offers only the Spanish cut. One might suspect that, given the much looser censorship in France, the French version might develop a theme of father-daughter incest that Franco could not address in the Spanish version. But apparently the French version switches the focus entirely away from the father and onto Ana’s relationship with her sister (in the Spanish version she has no sister).

So my suspicion is that Franco did not see the father-daughter relationship as incestuous at all. The real link between Ana and her father is boredom, and a mutual fear of abandonment. They both feel lonely and disconnected from other people, and adrift.

It’s also possible that this movie is one of Franco’s occasional attempts to do something more mainstream. It got rave reviews from Spanish critics.

Given Franco’s obsessive love for jazz it’s likely that the idea of doing a totally different arrangement of the same basic material to create a kind of improvised variation would have appealed to him immensely.

The Other Side of the Mirror is an oddity in Franco’s filmography but it is an interesting oddity. Recommended.

It’s perhaps worth noting than in 1970 Alain Robbe-Grillet had done more or less the same thing, using mostly the same footage edited in a different way to create two totally different movies, Eden and After (1970) and N. Took the Dice (1971).

It’s Nothing Mama, Just a Game (1974)

It’s Nothing Mama, Just a Game (AKA Beyond Erotica AKA Lola) is a Spanish-Venezuelan co-production and it’s crazy twisted eurosleaze. This is definitely not a giallo. It’s not supernatural horror but I would still class it as gothic horror.

Juan’s family owns a sugar plantation in Venezuela. To say that Juan (David Hemmings) is odd would be putting it mildly. He lives there with his mother (played by Alida Valli). She is every bit as crazy as he is, but in a different way. The plantation has been slowly going broke since the death of Juan’s father. Now they’re reliant on financial support from Juan’s uncle. The uncle despises Juan’s mother but he despises Juan even more. He is concerned that Juan may be not just useless but dangerously crazy.

We already know Juan is crazy after the opening scene in which he watches a pretty young woman named Lucia mauled to death by his dogs. Lucia had been the maid. Now she will have to be replaced. Lola (Andrea Rau) is the lucky girl.

Lola isn’t completely stupid or completely innocent. A man trying to get into her pants is something she can deal with. She is probably no naïve virgin. Her problem is that she has no idea at first that Juan is playing a much crazier game than that.

She is also over-confident.

Juan is not primarily motivated by sex but I don’t think he’s motivated by power either. He seems to be a man still stuck in his childhood, playing games of make-believe. The games do not seem to have a specific objective. The game is an end in itself. When he’s playing his games he can forget that the estate is failing and that he has contributed to the decline through his incompetence and childishness. He can feel that he is in control of his life, when in reality his life has been spiralling more and more out of control.

Lola does not want to play the game, but she ends up doing so. She even learns to enjoy doing so. Perhaps, even in a perverse way, it makes her feel more in control. On the surface she might be the submissive partner but in fact she has the real power. She starts to realise that she can end up calling the shots. She might now be a better game-player than Juan.

Juan’s uncle arrives. His aim is to sort things out and if Juan really does prove to be insane he intends to pull the financial plug on Juan and his mother. Juan is outmatched by his uncle but the uncle is outmatched by Lola.

Lola has something that gives her the whip hand over both men - the sexual power of women. She can make them dance to her tune. But if power always corrupts it corrupts Lola as well.

There’s some powerhouse acting here. David Hemmings is superb. He’s incredibly creepy and scary and evil but Hemmings also makes us realise that Juan is more of a deranged child than anything else. He makes the character chillingly believable.

Andrea Rau (from Daughters of Darkness) is equally good as Lola, a young woman who finds herself both repelled and fascinated by Juan. She is drawn into the game, and develops a bit of a taste for sexual kinkiness.

The bizarre relationship between Juan and Lola is something you probably wouldn’t get away with today. It would almost certainly be seen as dated and offensive and problematic, but in the 70s it was assumed that audiences for grown-up movies were in fact grown-ups and could deal with subject matter that was a bit confronting. One Spanish critic at the time compared this film to The Night Porter, and there is a certain affinity between the two films.

Alida Valli is excellent as well. The mother is possibly more evil than Juan since she has more awareness of the evil she is covering up.

It would be tempting to see this as yet another film attacking the decadence of the bourgeoisie but that’s a tedious and simplistic interpretation. This movie is more in the gothic mould of Poe - a story of familial decay and degeneracy. The flashbacks scattered throughout the story suggest that the decay and degeneracy were already well and truly evident in Juan’s father’s day. The decay and degeneracy are now blossoming in a truly unhealthy way.

I’m always dubious about attempts to over-explain character motivations by relating them to traumas in the past. That can lead so easily to half-baked Freudianism. This movie seems like it’s going to succumb to that temptation but it doesn’t really. The flashbacks just let us know that things have been getting crazy in this family for a very long time.

This is a very unwholesome family and their evil infects everybody with whom they come in contact. We know just enough about Lucia to assume that she had been drawn into Juan’s twisted games. Lola is certainly drawn into those games.

The men and women are equally twisted. To try to see this movie in feminist terms is to miss the point. Every member of the family and everybody who comes in contact with them is tainted by madness. Whether they’re male or female is irrelevant.

There’s a moderate amount of sex and nudity. There’s lots of kinkiness.

Mondo Macabro’s Blu-Ray looks terrific and there are plenty of extras.

The Blancheville Monster (1963)

The Blancheville Monster is a 1963 Spanish-Italian gothic horror movie made mostly in Italy but with some location shooting in Spain. It was one of the first films directed by the young Alberto De Martino and was his first foray into horror. He was rather dismissive of this early effort but it’s actually very enjoyable.

It was also released under the title Horror with Edgar Allan Poe’s name prominent on the posters. In the 60s lots of movies made use of Poe’s name despite having no connection to any of his works. In this case however this really is a very Poe-like movie. It’s not an adaptation of a particular Poe story but the Poe flavour of aristocratic decay and decadence and doom and old families descending into madness is very very strong. It uses elements from The Fall of the House of Usher and from another Poe story which I won’t name since that would reveal a spoiler.

This movie was also clearly influenced by the success of Roger Corman’s Poe films, especially his 1960 The House of Usher. The Blancheville Monster is therefore Poe with a Corman flavouring and with an Italian sensibility.

The names of the characters can be confusing since there are huge differences between the Italian-language version and the English-dubbed version. The English version indicates the setting as Brittany but the Italian version makes it clear that this is Scotland in 1884. The decaying aristocratic Blackford family in the Italian version becomes the de Blancheville family in the English version.

It’s obvious from the start that De Martino is going to throw at us every gothic trapping and cliché he can get his hands on. That’s part of the reason this movie works. If you’re going down the gothic road you might as well go all the way. Gothic horror cannot be too excessive.

We start in the forest and then we get a glimpse of a decaying gothic castle. The film was clearly shot in autumn. There’s not a single leaf on any of the trees. There’s a feeling of desolation and death.

A carriage arrives at the castle. Emily Blackford (Ombretta Colli) is fresh from school and is to be reunited with her brother Roderick (Gérard Tichy). She is accompanied by her friend Alice Taylor (Irán Eory) and Alice’s brother John (Vanni Materassi).

It’s not entirely a joyful homecoming since old Lord Blackford (the father of Emily and Roderick) was burnt to death in an accident a year earlier.

Emily discovers that old of the old familiar servants are gone, and when she asks what happened to them she gets evasive answers. This immediately offers a hint that something is not quite right at Blackford Castle.

And then Emily is introduced to the new housekeeper, Eleonore (Helga Liné). Eleonore is much too beautiful and much too glamorous and the two women distrust each other on sight. Eleonore is dressed in black and looks like a young sexy version of Mrs Danvers. We know there has to be something sinister about her.

De Martino immediately has the viewer feeling uneasy about all of the inhabitants of this crumbing castle. Roderick has taken to brooding. Eleonore is obviously sinister. The family doctor, Doctor Atwell (Leo Anchóriz), is shifty. The new butler, Alastair, is evasive.

And De Martino keeps us guessing about these people. Is Roderick haunted by the past, is he crazy, is he evil or is he just gloomy and moody? Is Emily going crazy? Is it some hereditary madness, is her mind being poisoned, is she being actually poisoned or deliberately driven insane or is she just unable to cope with the atmosphere of gloom in this castle? Is the doctor involved in some mysterious plot? Is Eleonore involved in a sinister conspiracy? De Martino offers us some hints and some red herrings as well.

The screenplay by Giovanni Grimaldi and Bruno Corbucci takes Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher as a jumping-off point but it’s not even vaguely a faithful adaptation. It’s more of a Poe-esque gothic horror mystery romance.

The Spanish locations (in a spectacular ruined abbey) are used with considerable skill. The location shooting, the matte paintings and the miniatures effects do not combine to achieve anything approaching realism, but this is gothic horror. It’s not supposed to feel realistic. This is the gothic world, a world where dream and reality intersect, where the past and present co-exist, and it’s a world of unconscious fears, drives and longings. This movie has exactly the right gothic feel. And it does look great. The black-and-white cinematography is very impressive.

There’s a rather nicely done dream sequence.

It was a very strict rule at the time that a gothic horror movie had to include a scene with the pretty heroine wandering down a mysterious sinister castle corridor in a filmy nightdress and carrying a candelabra. And preferably descending or ascending a spooky stairway. Since this movie includes every known gothic trope it naturally has such a scene.

De Martino may have been inexperienced but he was already very competent.

The Blancheville Monster may not be groundbreaking and it may not be top-tier gothic horror but it has all the right ingredients nicely combined and the result is fine entertainment. Highly recommended.

This is part of Arrow’s Gothic Fantastico Blu-Ray boxed set which also includes Lady Morgan’s Vengeance (1965), The Third Eye (1966) and the excellent The Witch (La strega in amore, 1966). The Blancheville Monster gets a lovely transfer and there’s an audio commentary.

Viy (1967)

Viy is a 1967 Soviet gothic horror film. There was in fact a long tradition of Russian films about the supernatural. One thing I can say for certain, there has never been another movie quite like Viy.

It is based on an 1835 short novel by Nikolai Gogol. The movie has three credited directors, Konstantin Ershov, Georgiy Kropachyov and Aleksandr Ptushko and they are also credited as screenwriters.

I think it’s safe to say that the filmmakers had no interest in telling us anything profound about the human condition, or in giving us a serious story about the heroic struggles of the proletariat. This movie is pure entertainment. Insane entertainment, but still pure entertainment.

Brother Khoma (Leonid Kuravlyov) is a student at a seminary. He’s a decent enough chap, good-natured and totally lacking in malice, but he’s not exactly one of the seminary’s shining lights. He’s an indifferent scholar, he’s rather lazy and he lacks any really serious vocation.

On a brief holiday Khoma and two friends become lost. They eventually find an isolated farmhouse. An old woman grudgingly puts them up for the night. During the night the old woman takes him for a fly. She is of course a witch. Flying throigh the air with a witch on his back spooks Khoma quite a bit, and he’s even more spooked when the old witch turns into a beautiful young woman. Khoma however survives the experience.

Shortly afterwards a local boyar sends word to the seminary that his daughter is dying. She has asked for a seminarian to read prayers over her for three days. She asks for Khoma by name, which puzzles her father.

By the time Khoma arrives the girl has died but her father insists that Khoma read the prayers over her corpse for three nights. The corpse is lying in the local church. Khoma is not looking forward to this. He is not very brave. Luckily there are hundreds of candles in the church and once Khoma has all of them alight he feels better. He makes it through the night but he would have been a lot happier had the dead girl stayed in her coffin. Dead girls wandering about can be a bit disconcerting.

The next night is worse. Now it’s not just the dead girl who won’t stay put, the coffin won’t stay put either. And there’s still the third night to come.

Gogol claimed that this story was based on an authentic folk tale. The movie certainly tries to evoke the feel of a fairy tale or a folk legend. You could imagine travelling through the remoter parts of central Europe in the 19th century and being regaled with a story such as this in an inn. You would assume the story was part folk tale and part tall story. That’s the feel the film seems to be aiming for - to give its audience a few chills and a few laughs. There’s quite a bit of humour here. We’re expected to enjoy the story without taking it over-seriously.

This is not a movie that makes any effort to look realistic. There are obvious matte paintings and obvious process shots. On the other hand the special effects are impressive - they’re so wild and crazy and imaginative that you’re too flabbergasted to worry about whether they’re convincing or not. Honestly, how many other movies can you name that feature a dead girl surfing on a flying coffin?

The directors also come up with some very bold and ambitious camera moves. The rotating camera stuff is superbly done. That kind of thing is expensive because it’s time-consuming to set up. The same goes for some of the effects shots. The climax of the film, the third night in the church, involves some truly extraordinary special effects sequences. There was clearly some serious money spent on this film.

Viy does get described as a vampire film but this really is stretching it. Gogol’s novella was certainly tapping into the 19th century obsession with the supernatural and the occult but there’s nothing in it or the film that bears any real resemblance to a vampire. It would be more accurate to describe it as a movie about witches and demons.

Viy feels quite different to British, American and Italian gothic horror films of its era. It has its own distinct flavour with its mix of terror and offbeat whimsicality.

The acting is very good with Leonid Kuravlyov being the standout.

This is a wildly imaginative crazy movie that captures the feel of folk legends and fairy tales as effectively as any movie I can think of. It’s creepy and spooky and filled with inspired fantastic imagery. Highly recommended.

Severin’s Blu-Ray presentation is impressive. Extras include a superb mini-documentary on the history of Soviet science fiction and supernatural movies.

Web of the Spider (1971)

Antonio Margheriti’s Web of the Spider (the original Italian title is Nella stretta morsa del ragno) is a colour remake of his excellent 1964 gothic horror film Castle of Blood which had starred Barbara Steele. I love the fact that the German title was Dracula im Schloß des Schreckens even though it has nothing to do with Dracula or vampires.

It begins with Edgar Allan Poe (played by Klaus Kinski!) in London which is cool because Poe certainly never visited England. Poe is being interviewed by an American reporter, Alan Foster (Anthony Franciosa). Poe claims that his stories of the strange and the supernatural are all in fact quite true. There really is life beyond the grave. Of a sort. Perhaps the dead are dead in some ways but not in others.

At this point it should be noted that the movie has no connection with any of Poe’s stories, but it’s a gothic horror movie so why not include Poe as a character?

Foster is introduced to Lord Thomas Blackwood. Blackwood owns a famous haunted castle. Foster accepts a wager, that he will not be able to survive a night in the castle. No-one who has ever tried it has returned to tell the tale. Foster is a rationalist. He doesn’t believe in ghosts. He has no doubt that he will have no problem spending a night at Blackwood Castle.

The castle is uninhabited but that doesn’t worry Foster.

To his surprise the castle isn’t deserted after all as he discovers when he meets the beautiful young woman who lives there. She is Lord Blackwood’s sister, Elisabeth Blackwood (Michèle Mercier). There’s another gorgeous babe as well, Julia (Karin Field). As far as Forster is concerned things are looking up.

In fact the castle is full of people. Maybe they’re alive and maybe they aren’t. Maybe this is the present and maybe it’s the past.

There are certainly some romantic and sexual dramas being played out. Perhaps they just go on being played out over and over again.

Foster has of course fallen in love with Elisabeth. She is in love with him, or so he assumes.

Elisabeth has a husband and she has a lover, Herbert (Raf Baldassarre). Or at least she did once have a husband and a lover.

The mysterious Dr Carmus (Peter Carsten) has tried to explain things to Foster. Carmus’ theories are similar to Poe’s. The point at which life ends depends upon what you mean by life.

Foster isn’t sure if he is really involved in these dramas from the past or not. He’s a pretty confused guy. He just knows that he wants Elisabeth.

While this was an attempt to update Castle of Blood by remaking it in colour Web of the Spider doesn’t really feel like a 1970s gothic horror movie. It has a bit of a retro feel. In fact visually it’s reminiscent in some ways of Roger Corman’s Poe movies, but done with a European sensibility. That’s actually no bad thing. It’s also fairly tame by 1971 standards, with nothing more than brief topless nudity.

This is obviously a ghost story, but then again it isn’t. It doesn’t fit neatly into a particular gothic horror sub-genre (which is true of so many Italian gothic horror movies of that era). It deals with what might be described as ghosts but they’re not the kinds of ghosts you find in most ghost stories. They’re not vampires but maybe in a sense they are undead. Whether or not they’re dead or undead depends on your definition of such terms. Of course they might be illusions. Italian gothic horror movies tended to ignore strict genre conventions and also to deal in a certain amount of ambiguity. Web of the Spider revels in ambiguity.

I liked the ending a great deal.

To enjoy this movie you have to take it on its own terms without constantly comparing it to Castle of Blood. It’s a remake but it has a different feel. Being in colour it obviously has a very different aesthetic. I personally like the aesthetic of Web of the Spider. I do have one minor aesthetic quibble - Anthony Franciosa looks too much like he’s just stepped out of the 1970s.

Apparently Margheriti was disappointed by this film but directors are often poor judges of their own work. He was obviously proud of Castle of Blood (and rightly so) and presumably was therefore inclined to judge Web of the Spider harshly.

All of Margheriti’s movies were made on very limited budgets. He was used to that. Like all Italian genre directors of that era he knew how to get good results with very little money.

Of course Michèle Mercier was no Barbara Steele. She can’t match Steele’s magnetism, charisma and sense of dangerous exotic eroticism. No-one could. Mlle Mercier does a pretty effective job. Klaus Kinski is, it goes without saying, delightfully deranged as Poe. Poe was obviously added as a character because his name was a major box-office draw but the framing story involving Poe works quite well.

Web of the Spider is enjoyable slightly offbeat gothic horror. Highly recommended.

The German DVD release, with the title Dracula im Schloß des Schreckens, includes the English dubbed version. That’s the release I have. The transfer is very good. Lots of scenes had been cut from the English dubbed version (which probably explains the movie’s poor reputation). They’re restored here, but in Italian (or sometimes German) with English subtitles and from an inferior source. On the whole the DVD is excellent. There is a German Blu-Ray release as well but I am not sure that it is English-friendly. There’s also a hard-to-find Garagehouse Pictures Blu-Ray.

Lady Morgan’s Vengeance (1965)

Lady Morgan’s Vengeance is a 1965 Italian gothic horror movie directed by Massimo Pupillo.

The setting is Scotland. The young Susan Blackhouse (Barbara Nelli) is an heiress who is expected to marry Sir Harold Morgan (Paul Muller). That’s what Harold believes and that’s what Susan’s uncle and guardian Sir Neville Blackhouse (Carlo Kechler) believes. Susan however has fallen hopelessly in love with architect Pierre Brissac (Michel Forain). Susan explains her predicament to Harold and to her uncle. They are understanding and they are willing for her to marry Pierre. Everything has worked out for the best.

Fate however intervenes and Susan ends up marrying Harold. Susan is sent off on a trip to give her time to reconcile herself to these changed circumstance. When she arrives home she is disturbed to discover that all her trusted household servants have been dismissed. She is also disturbed by the presence of the beautiful young Lillian (Erika Blanc) in the household. The two women are immediately at daggers drawn. There’s mutual suspicion and jealousy.

Odd things seem to happen. Susan imagines she sees things and hears voices. She is increasingly unsettled and nervous. She fears she might be going mad. A doctor is called in. He is puzzled and becomes increasingly concerned. He wonders if perhaps Susan would be better off in a rest home.

The audience will have no doubts whatever about what is going on. We know some things that Susan doesn’t know. In fact what is going on is very very obvious indeed.

For much of its running time the viewer will wonder whether this is really a gothic horror movie. It has much more of the feel of an overheated gothic melodrama or a Victorian sensation novel. Whether it will in fact become a true gothic horror film remains to be seen.

I’m being very vague about the way the story unfolds although every other online review and the IMDb synopsis reveal every single detail of the plot. Which is unfortunate since the second half of the movie is clearly expected to come as a surprise.

The audience will certainly suspect that some gaslighting is going on. Interestingly it’s a woman taking the lead in doing the gaslighting. This is a movie featuring women as both victims and villainesses. And it features men as both heroes and villains. It’s an equal opportunity movie.

The title makes it clear that there’s going to be a revenge plot and that does turn out to be the case.

The movie relies heavily on the performances of Barbara Nelli as Susan and Erika Blanc as Lillian and they’re both terrific. Nelli is convincing as a confused frightened young woman and she conveys the necessary sense of vulnerability which puts the audience on her side. Erika Blanc is nicely but subtly menacing. We feel that Lillian is probably up to no good and may turn out to be very sinister indeed even though she appears to be sympathetic towards Susan.

Paul Muller is solid as Harold and Gordon Mitchell is excellent as the rather intimidating butler Roger.

Of course in order to qualify as gothic a movie has to include scenes of young women wandering about the grounds of a forbidding castle in a diaphanous nightgown and more importantly must include scenes of that young woman descending spooky staircases carrying a candle and wearing the essential filmy nightgown. Happily this movie includes fine examples of such scenes.

Dungeon scenes are equally necessary and they’re here as well. Along with other beloved gothic clichés. Lots of dark and stormy nights.

This film was nicely shot in black-and-white. The special effects are a problem. They’re very crude indeed, and very uninteresting.

Lady Morgan’s Vengeance is typically Italian in its unwillingness to box itself into a single genre and its unwillingness to conform to any genre rules at all. It also employs a slightly odd indirect narrative technique in its second half. It’s an enjoyable enough movie but this is definitely not a neglected gem. It’s worth a look.

This film is part of Arrow’s Gothic Fantastico Blu-Ray boxed set which also includes the excellent The Witch (La strega in amore, 1966). Lady Morgan’s Vengeance gets a lovely transfer and there are bountiful extras. Unfortunately the extras are not worth bothering with unless you really enjoy tedious political ranting.

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.

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.