Blue Eyes of the Broken Doll (1974)

Blue Eyes of the Broken Doll is a 1974 Spanish giallo starring Paul Naschy. 

Early on there is perhaps some doubt about its genre categorisation but it does get more and more giallo-esque as it goes.

Naschy is Gilles, a drifter looking for a job. The suggestion is made that the three sisters who live in a big house on the outskirts of the village might employ him, although the way the suggestion is put could lead one to suspect that working for the sisters might not be the best of ideas. 

He gets the job anyway and it’s a live-in job.

The eldest sister Claude (Diana Lorys) has a badly disfigured arm as the result of an accident. She is convinced that men now find her repulsive. Her sister Ivette (Maria Perschy) is wheelchair-bound, presumably as the result of the same accident. And then there’s the man-hungry Nicole (Eva León).

The sisters all take note of Gilles’ manly physique when they see stripped to the waist chopping firewood. They like what they see. So now we have Gilles living in a house with three women. They all seek potentially dangerous. All three seem crazy. And, for very different reasons, Claude and Nicole are so sexually frustrated that they’re climbing the walls.

Gilles is by no means immune to their feminine charms.

Then the nurse arrives and there’s something about her that makes us wonder if she’s everything that she seems to be.

A guy suddenly turns up and tries to kill Gilles.

Three cute teenage backpackers arrive in the village. They’re looking for fun. These girls spell fun M-E-N.

Gilles has disturbing dreams, or perhaps they’re flashbacks.

There’s plenty of potential now for mayhem, and there’s a brutal murder. It won’t be the last murder.

There are at least half a dozen very plausible suspects. All of these people are either twisted in some way, or we suspect that they may be twisted in some way. Their motives might be rational or totally irrational.

As usual with his movies Paul Naschy wrote the screenplay and for the most part he plays fair with us. The resolution gets a bit wild and outrageous but it works. For me a successful mystery story is one in which I find the ending believable because the clues pointing in the right direction were there and it feels psychological plausible. That’s the case here. There’s a respect for the conventions of the mystery genre, and that’s not always the case with a giallo.

There is some gore and there are some disturbing moments.

There’s not much in the way of nudity and sex but there is an all-pervasive atmosphere of unhealthy eroticism, and that applies to both the male and the female characters.

Naschy’s performance is very good. He is able to convince us that GiIles is a decent good-natured guy and he’s also able to convince us that there’s at least the possibility of some inner darkness. All of the performances are solid with Diana Lorys and Maria Perschy being particularly good. And Eva León as Nicole oozes sex is a delightfully over-the-top way.

Carlos Aured was the director and co-writer and he worked with Naschy several times. He does a fine stylish imaginative job here. The house in which the three sisters live is a perfect setting for a giallo and Aured takes every advantage of it.

Blue Eyes of the Broken Doll is a top-tier giallo. Highly recommended.

The transfer (in Shout! Factory’s Paul Naschy Collection Blu-Ray set) is in the 1.37 aspect ratio which is possibly incorrect but it looks OK.

I’ve reviewed Naschy’s other foray into the giallo genre, A Dragonfly for Each Corpse (1975), and it’s very much worth seeing.

Murder in a Blue World (1973)

Murder in a Blue World (AKA Una gota de sangre para morir amando AKA A Drop of Blood To Die Loving AKA A Clockwork Terror) is a 1973 Franco-Spanish co-production which is a mishmash of genres. It’s also a bit of a mess.

When it was released Spanish critics accused it of heavily plagiarising Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange. Director Eloy de la Iglesia reacted with outrage to the accusations but those critics had a point. Large chunks of this movie are lifted directly from Kubrick’s movie. This is not an homage, this is grand larceny. Interestingly the scenes copied from A Clockwork Orange are copied badly. It’s like a backward pupil copying the homework of the smartest kid in the class but still getting the answers wrong.

It has the same kind of not-too-distant future setting as Kubrick’s movie. There is a juvenile delinquency problem. We see a home invasion, carried out by a gang of four juvenile delinquents (just as in Kubrick’s film). We see the gang driving along a quiet country road at high speed (just as in Kubrick’s film). The gang members brutalise the husband and rape the wife (just as in Kubrick’s film). But while the scene in Kubrick’s movie is genuinely disturbing because it’s filmed with so much skill and style the equivalent scene here is dull and obvious and crude.

Then there’s a fight as the gang leader tries to reassert his dominance over the gang (just as in Kubrick’s film).

This ends with David (Christopher Mitchum) being cast out of the gang. Later he will be beaten up up by his former gang-mates (just as in Kubrick’s film).

Dr Sender (Jean Sorel) is working on a new technique of behaviour modification to cure violent offenders (just as in Kubrick’s film). David ends up in custody and is chosen to be one of the experimental subjects (just like Alex in Kubrick’s film).

But Murder in a Blue World is actually more like three or four movies jumbled together without rhyme or reason. There are two main plot strands. The first is the one stolen (sorry, homaged) from A Clockwork Orange.

The second is much more interesting. It’s a serial killer story with some genuinely intriguing and unsettling elements. A number of young men have been murdered. We know that the killer is Ana Vernia (Sue Lyon), a nurse at Dr Sender’s clinic. I’m not revealing a spoiler here - we know she is the killer pretty much from the beginning.

Ana is one crazy chick. She thinks the world is entirely inhabited by dead people who think they are alive. It’s OK to kill them because they’re already dead. In fact she’s doing them a favour, freeing them from their nightmare existence. She is an angel of mercy. Killing them is an at of love. She always has sex with them first - for her the killing is just an extension of the love-making. This is all truly creepy and Sue Lyon is great - she makes this strange confused twisted character oddly believable.

This part of the movie is excellent and it should have been the focus of the whole movie.

Director Eloy de la Iglesia was gay and he adds lots of gay elements that feel like they’ve been shoehorned into the story. There’s a scene in which Ana masquerades as a butch lesbian. Why? I have no idea. There’s also a gay rape which I assume was included to shock the bourgeoisie.

Eloy de la Iglesia was also a communist so there’s political content that is also shoehorned into the story, stuff about the evils of capitalism and consumerism. It’s heavy-handed and embarrassing.

While Sue Lyon is terrific the other main cast members present problems. Christopher Mitchum is very good but he makes David much too sympathetic. A Clockwork Orange works because the viewer feels so conflicted about Alex - he’s so likeable but he’s also a vicious little thug. We are conflicted about the things that are done to him - are they justified or not? David is just likeable. He’s just a slightly naughty little boy. David needed to be given much more of a nasty edge for the Clockwork Orange Rip-Off plot strand to work. I’m not sure if the fault is Mitchum’s or the director’s.


Jean Sorel was a superb subtle actor with an extraordinary knack for playing super-nice charming guys whom we do not trust one little bit. He’s entirely wasted here in a nothing part.

The few really striking images are mostly lifted (sorry, homaged) from Kubrick’s movie.

There’s an attempt to link the two major plot strands but it just doesn’t work. The two stories just don’t mesh. The final scene is just so absurd that it pretty much makes a mockery of the whole movie.


There’s an extraordinary lack of erotic heat, perhaps not surprising given that the director presumably had no interest in male-female eroticism.

Murder in a Blue World is two movies in one, one of them really interesting and one of them a total failure. The Clockwork Orange stuff ends up going nowhere, although maybe the director thought it was some kind of critique of capitalism.

Almost worth seeing for Sue Lyon’s performance and the interesting twists on the serial killer theme but overall it’s a bit of a trainwreck. Hard to recommend this one.

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 Killer Is One of Thirteen (1973)

Javier Aguirre’s The Killer Is One of Thirteen is a 1973 Spanish giallo although that genre labelling will have to be qualified.

The basic setup is lifted from Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None - take a group of people, have them totally cut off from the rest of the world and one of them is a murderer. The others can expect to be killed off one by one.

In this case a rich young widow, Lisa Mandel (Patty Shepard), has invited twelve other people (making up a total of thirteen) to her very isolated villa. She is convinced that one of these people murdered her husband Carlos. Certainly they all have secrets which they would like to keep hidden, and most of them do seem to have had possible motives to kill Carlos. They are crooks, forgers, blackmailers, adulterers and other assorted not-very-respectable people.

For the first two-thirds of the movie nothing happens. Nothing happens at all. Except talk Lots of talk. Lots and lots of talk. Various scandals are brought to light. The main problem here is that there are way too many characters. It’s not just Lisa and her twelve guests. There are three servants who play major roles in the story. So there are sixteen major characters. Keeping track of them all is hard work. Inevitably many of these characters are so totally undeveloped that it would have been better to dispense with them.

Finally we get a murder. Followed rapidly by other murders. Eventually the evidence seems to point to one obvious suspect but that suspect may be too obvious.

The murders are moderately bloody but by the standards of Italian giallos of the same period the violence and blood are quite muted.

This movie does not have the spectacular visual set-pieces most people associate with the giallo genre. It should however be noted that those spectacular visual set-pieces are characteristic of the second part of the giallo boom, the phase that began with Argento’s The Bird with the Crystal Plumage. The earlier giallos of the late 60s were quite different, being stylish decadent erotic thrillers rather than serial killer gorefests.

The Killer Is One of Thirteen can be seen as being more at home in the company of these early giallos.

There’s also much more emphasis on the murder mystery plot. This movie doesn’t just borrow its basic setup from Agatha Christie, it really does have the essential structure of a classic English puzzle-plot murder mystery. That makes it seem a bit old-fashioned but it also gives it a flavour that is interestingly different from most giallos.

There are just enough giallo tropes to qualify this as a giallo, but it’s quite different in tone and feel to Italian giallos.

It’s supposedly set in England but this is the least convincing attempt in cinema history at an English setting. Everything in this movie feels totally Spanish.

The cast is interesting. Jack Taylor, a huge favourite with eurocult fans, is there and he’s in fine form as an art forger. Paul Naschy has a small role as Lisa’s chauffeur. The cast members are all very competent. They should be. Most had very distinguished stage and screen careers in Spain.

It’s a slow-moving film but that seems to be a deliberate choice. A lot of time is spent elucidating the complex inter-relationships between the various characters.

There is no nudity at all. In a 1973 European genre film that is unusual to say the least. One would be tempted to assume that this movie, like so many other eurocult movies of that era, was shot in two versions - a clothed version for the Spanish market and a much racier version for export markets. That however does not seem to be the case here.

The Killer Is One of Thirteen is just a bit too slow. The multiplicity of characters lessens the suspense since we don’t get to know enough about most of these people to care about their fates. The visual style is too conventional, and while there are one or two hints of perversity this may be the least sexy giallo ever made. It all falls a bit too flat for me to recommend this one. It’s great that we can now get to see lesser-known Spanish giallos but this is not a great example.

Vinegar Syndrome have included this movie in the three-movie Forgotten Giallo volume 1 Blu-Ray set. The transfer is excellent. The one extra is a commentary track by Kat Ellinger. Her commentaries are always interesting and she gives us a vast amount of fascinating background on the distinctive nature of the Spanish giallo.

Count Dracula’s Great Love (1973)

Count Dracula’s Great Love is a 1973 Spanish gothic horror movie starring Paul Naschy. It starts off giving the impression that it’s going to be a by-the-numbers Dracula movie but then takes some very surprising turns. Javier Aguirre was the director and co-writer. The original idea seems to have been Naschy’s. Naschy co-wrote the screenplay. It’s now available in a superb Blu-Ray presentation from Vinegar Syndrome.

The setting is the late 19th century. It seems to be exactly the sort of setting and time period you’d expect in a stock-standard Dracula movie.

It begins with five young people, a man and four women, in a carriage near the Borgo Pass. The man, Imre, points out that they are near the spot where Jonathan Harker and Van Helsing had their final encounter with Dracula. Imre believes that Dracula was real.

You may be a little surprised that anyone in the late 19th century would allow four very pretty young unmarried girls to go traveling without a chaperone, accompanied only by a young man. Especially given the budding romance between Imre and one of the girls, Marlene.

The carriage meets with a minor accident, and the coachman meets with a fatal accident. Luckily the five young people are passing Dr Marlow’s sanatorium. Dr Marlow (Paul Naschy) insists that they take advantage of his hospitality until their carriage can be repaired.

One of the girls, Karen (Haydée Politoff), finds a book in Dr Marlow’s library. It is Van Helsing’s memoirs. Van Helsing tells of a legend that Dracula needs to find a true virgin. If he has normal (non-vampiric) sex with her his powers will be fully restored. Karen is horrified but excited.

The viewer is not going to be the least bit surprised that there are vampires wandering about the sanatorium. It doesn’t take long for the first of the girls to be recruited into the ranks of the Undead.

Dr Marlow is a dedicated scientist and physician and a kind charming man. The girls are reassured by his presence.

We get the kind of stuff we expect in a vampire movie, until we start to realise that there’s something else going on. When we find out why Dracula needs a virgin we realise just how radically this movie is going to depart from the conventions of the vampire movie.

These departures are so interesting that I’m not going to give any more hints about the way the plot will develop.

This was an incredibly interesting time for the vampire movie. Film-makers like Jess Franco (in Vampyros Lesbos in 1970), Jean Rollin (in movies like The Nude Vampire in 1970 and Requiem for a Vampire in 1971), Stephanie Rothman (in The Velvet Vampire in 1971) and José Larraz (in Vampyres in 1974) were taking the vampire film Ito all sorts of new directions. It’s clear that Naschy and Aguirre were part of that trend. Their approach was however a little different - they made a vampire film that looked totally conventional but was very different thematically.

What Naschy and Aguirre give us is not just a Dracula who is capable of love, but a Dracula for whom love becomes the primary motivation. On the audio commentary Naschy makes the point, quite correctly, that the ideas that excited people about Francis Ford Coppola’s 1992 Dracula were all present in Count Dracula’s Great Love nearly twenty years earlier. Those ideas are developed differently, but the basic concepts are the same.

Naschy of course is best-known for his many movies about a troubled sympathetic werewolf. Here he’s offering us a vampire with both moral and emotional complexity.

Naschy’s movies do tend to have very high trashiness and sleaze levels. Personally I like trashy sleazy movies so that doesn’t bother me. It’s fascinating here to see trashiness and sleaze combined with clever ideas and also combined with a deep respect for the traditional horror movie.

Aguirre and Naschy were very careful to include all of the traditional gothic horror visual elements. They were going to take the story in unexpected directions but they wanted it to be a gothic horror movie. Naschy believed very strongly in respecting the conventions of the genre.

Count Dracula’s Great Love manages to be intelligent, emotionally nuanced, clever, provocative, trashy and sleazy all at once. And it works on all those levels.

This movie has been available for years on DVD in truly wretched transfers. Vinegar Syndrome recently released it on Blu-Ray (the uncut “unclothed” version) and it now looks terrific. The Blu-Ray includes an excellent commentary track with Paul Naschy and Javier Aguirre.

The Vinegar Syndrome release provides a good opportunity to reassess a movie that has in the past been rather disparaged. It’s a fine movie that really does deserve a reassessment. Highly recommended.

Murder Mansion (1972)

The Murder Mansion (La mansion de la niebla) is a 1972 Italian-Spanish co-production directed by a Spaniard, Francisco Lara Polop. 

It’s included in one of Vinegar Syndrome’s Forgotten Gialli boxed sets but whether it will really turn out to be a true giallo remains to be seen.

It begins with a guy in a muscle car racing a guy on a motorcycle on the country road. They both spot a pretty female hitchhiker, both pull up at the same time but the girl chooses to accept a lift from muscle car guy. As soon as they drive off he starts fondling her thighs.

Shortly afterwards the motorcyclist (his name is Fred) stops at a roadside diner and there’s the girl hitchhiker again (her name is Laura). They start to fall for each other right away. They decide to press on to the next town even though it’s getting late. They have a choice between the highway and the old road. The old road is shorter, but fog can be a hazard at this time of year. They pick the old road anyway, which could turn out to be a big mistake.

Sure enough they get lost in the fog. By an old cemetery they encounter a woman whose E-Type Jag has broken down. This is Elsa, a successful business woman. Elsa claims that after her car broke down she was chased by a big hulking guy in a chauffeur’s uniform. The chauffeur was accompanied by an old lady. It was the horrible breathing noises that really scared Elsa.

The trio take refuge in an old house. It’s not an abandoned house. The owner, Martha Clinton, is there. Along with a bunch of other people all of whom managed to get lost in the fog. There’s muscle car guy, whose name turns out to be Porter. He greets them at the door with a gun but we soon conclude that he’s jumpy rather than hostile. There’s also Elsa’s lawyer and his wife. Martha Clinton is happy to put them all up for the night. By morning the fog will have cleared and they can all be on their way.

Martha Clinton tells her unexpected house guests that there used to be a town here but it was abandoned years ago because of the vampire. There were rumours of witchcraft as well. She also tells them about her aunt who used to live in the house. The aunt had a big hulking chauffeur but he was killed in an accident thirty years earlier. The aunt is long dead as well.

What with being lost in the fog and the tales of vampires and the creepy atmosphere of the house everybody is a bit on edge. Elsa is on the verge of a nervous breakdown, something that has happened to her frequently since her father’s death in rather unsavoury circumstances. Elsa starts having flashbacks to her past.

Those sinister breathing noises are heard again. The chauffeur is seen again. Fred and Laura find some strange things in the basement. And then the first corpse is discovered. Everybody is frightened and Elsa is becoming very disturbed and unstable. She’s not the only one.

It’s a classic setup with a small group of people effectively cut off. The fog is so thick that there is no way of leaving the house. Whatever kind of monster they’re dealing with can pick them off one by one.

There’s a touch of the Old Dark House genre here.

This was Francisco Lara Polop’s first feature, and it was a promising debut. He went on to make quite a few movies and was still active as late as 1990 but I suspect that his other movies might be quite difficult to track down.

The creepy scary atmosphere is created very effectively and the fog makes things really unsettling. Guglielmo Mancori’s cinematography is extremely good.

The acting is fine, with Ida Galli (credited as Evelyn Stewart) being particularly impressive as Martha Clinton. I also liked Franco Fantasia as Porter. Analía Gadé has some great moments as Elsa.

The big question is, what kind of movie is this? It certainly seems more like gothic horror than giallo but to answer that question you’ll have to watch the movie.

Vinegar Syndrome’s Blu-Ray (from their Forgotten Gialli Volume 3 boxed set) provides an excellent 16:9 enhanced transfer. The only extra is an interview with Ida Galli who is rather proud of the film. Spanish, English and Italian audio options are included. Miss Galli remembers the movie as having been originally shot in English.

No matter what genre you decide it belongs to The Murder Mansion is crazy oddball and fun and looks good. Highly recommended.

The Corruption of Chris Miller (1973)

The Corruption of Chris Miller is a 1973 Spanish giallo directed by Juan Antonio Bardem. It opens, fittingly, with a kind of prologue murder. We assume the woman is murdered by her lover whom she’s about to discard. We don’t see the murderer’s face.

Then we go to the main action which takes place in the rather palatial home of Ruth Miller (Jean Seberg), somewhere in the Spanish countryside. She lives with a young woman, her step-daughter Chris (Marisol). We soon find out that Chris is mad. She’s been under psychiatric care and she’s still very unstable.

Ruth doesn’t like men. She thinks they’re beasts. She does like women. We get the impression that she likes women as something other than just friends. Maybe she even likes Chris that way.

Then hitchhiker Barney Webster turns up while Chris is out riding. Barney thinks of himself as a bit of a stud. Ruth decides that maybe men can have their uses after all, at least in the bedroom. She makes it clear to him that she expects him to be gone before Chris gets home. But of course that doesn’t happen.

Barney doesn’t leave. He shares Ruth’s bed but he’s obviously pretty interested in Chris as well. The stage is clearly set for some emotional and sexual games.

Of course if you’re going to play such games it helps if you know the rules. It helps even more if you know who is making the rules. It’s particularly important if it’s the sort of game that has a designated victim and you don’t know you’ve been assigned to that rôle.

The answers to those questions are not at all clear. There are hints that could point to any one of the three being the designated victim. There are also hints that none of the three is entirely psychologically stable.

There’s Chris’s obsession with her father, and with rain. There’s Ruth’s obsession with locks. There’s Barney’s obsession with money and women but even more especially Barney’s obsession with Barney.

Much of the running time is taken up by the sexual game-playing. When the violence really erupts it does so in a fairly spectacular way.

Jean Seberg is terrific in this film. It’s a wonderfully ambiguous performance. In fact all three of the key performances are nicely and effectively ambiguous and the inter-relationships between the three characters are skilfully played out. All three characters have both sympathetic and unsympathetic moments. Perhaps the viewer won’t like any of them but we do want to figure out what motivates them. Actually we do, to some extent, know some of their motivations but we know just enough to make us even more uncertain how they’re going to react to those motivations.

This seems to have been Juan Antonio Bardem’s only foray into the giallo genre. He seems to have dabbled in most genres. He does a pretty assured job here. The pacing is perhaps a bit leisurely in the middle stages but that’s clearly a deliberate choice. He gives us some memorable visual moments. There’s that bizarre Charlie Chaplin-esque (yes really) opening murder, the truy operatic blood-drenched finale. And there are some oddly poignant moments.

Santiago Moncada’s screenplay is pleasingly twisted.

Vinegar Syndrome have done a fine job with this release. We get the movie on both DVD and Blu-Ray. There’s a tiny amount of print damage in the opening credits sequence but once the film gets going the Blu-Ray transfer is impeccable.

The language options present the sort of quandary that so many European genre films of this era present. Particularly with Italian films (and I assume it applies to many Spanish films as well) there’s often no original soundtrack as such - even the “original” language versions were post-dubbed. Vinegar Syndrome claim that the English language version is the original but they offer us the choice of the Spanish version as well. I watched the English language version and it’s quite satisfactory with none of the cringe-inducing qualities one sometimes encounters in English dubbed versions of European films.

They have also included an hour-long documentary on director Juan Antonio Bardem, a brief documentary on the tragic life and very up-and-down career of Jean Seberg plus they’ve given us the alternative ending of the Spanish version. Which raises other intriguing questions. In the case of most European genre films of this era there were different cuts for different markets and it’s often impossible to say which of them is the definitive cut. So you can choose the ending you prefer. I suspect most people will prefer the alternate ending. This is actually a movie that doesn’t end when you expect it to - it throws in some extra twists (how many depends on which ending you prefer).

The Corruption of Chris Miller has plenty of subtly creepy atmosphere. It has a clever literate script, three fascinatingly odd and complex central characters, psycho-sexual weirdness, fine acting and (for those who enjoy such things) plenty of blood. If Bardem was trying to prove he could do this sort of thing with as much style as the Italians then he succeeded. It really is a top-notch giallo. Highly recommended.

The Sadistic Baron von Klaus (1962) revisited

The Sadistic Baron von Klaus is a very early Jess Franco horror film, shot in black-and-white in northern Spain, and it’s one of his most straighforward gothic horror movies. This 1962 release is the sort of movie that demonstrates that Franco was perfectly capable of making conventional tightly-constructed films, and making them extremely well, if he chose to do so.

It’s also, for various reasons, a key entry in Franco’s filmography.

A young girl has been murdered in the village of Holfen, and another has disappeared. There are rumours among the villagers that the Baron von Klaus has been up to his old tricks. But which Baron von Klaus? Is it the notorious 17th century baron, who tortured a killed a number of girls, or one of his currently living descendants? The original baron was cursed by the father of one of his victims and supposedly his spirit still haunts the district. There are those who claim to have seen him.

The von Klaus family lives, fittingly, in a gothic pile surrounded by swamp land. There’s the heir to the tile, Ludwig, and his financée. There’s his mother, who is dying. And there is his uncle, Max von Klaus (Howard Vernon). The mother wants her son to get away from Holfen before the curse catches up to him, one way or another.

Inspector Borowski (Georges Rollin) is on the case and he’s brimming with confidence. He doesn’t intend to pay any attention to nonsense like ghosts and curses. He doesn’t want any help but a reporter named Karl (from Maidens and Murderers magazine) is determined to help him anyway. He might also be able to get some help from a couple of wood-cutters who seem to know a lot about the von Klaus legend.

More murders follow. There are quite a few women who might be in line to be among the next victim. There’s Ludwig’s fiancée Karine (Paula Martel), there’s Max’s mistress Lida (Ana Castor), and there’s the sexy Margaret who works at the hotel that seems to have a link with the killings. So the audience has three women in danger to worry about. And the inspector has not ruled out the possibility that the murderer is a woman. He has ruled out the possibility that the murderer is a ghost, but whether his confidence on that point is justified remains to be seen.

While this is a conventionally made movie without the stylistic excesses of later Franco it is a bit unusual (for 1962) in its overt blending of horror and eroticism. It’s also in some ways a precursor of the giallo genre. It even features a sinister black-gloved figure who may be the killer! Whether this movie will turn out to be more gothic horror or more giallo is something you’ll have to watch it to find out.

Franco favourite Howard Vernon gives a fine performance as Max, a character who isn’t quite sinister but you get the feeling that maybe he could be. Ludwig von Klaus is just as ambiguous and Hugo Blanco does a fine job with the rôle. The acting in general is very decent.

By the halfway stage you might be thinking that this movie is incredibly restrained for a Franco movie but the director’s trademark interests in perverse sex with strong sadomasochistic overtones gradually become more apparent and in the later stages we get a couple of scenes including a dungeon sequence that must have really shocked audiences in 1962. And while there’s not much nudity by later Franco standards, there’s a lot by the standards of 1962. Even at this early stage of his career Franco was pushing the boundaries.

This movie was shot in black-and-white in the 2.35:1 aspect ratio. If you associate the name Jess Franco with a technically slapdash approach you may be quite surprised by this one. It’s technically very proficient and very professional. And there are no zooms. There’s some nice moody location shooting.

The biggest problem with The Sadistic Baron von Klaus is that it’s a bit too slow and a bit too long. Once it gets going it does deliver the goods however. What’s most significant about it is that for the first time we see the overt influence of de Sade. It also features the first really full-blown Franco erotic visual set-piece. If you’re a serious Francophile that makes it essential viewing. Highly recommended.

The Return of the Evil Dead (1973)

The Return of the Evil Dead was the first of three sequels to Spanish director Amando de Ossorio’s very successful 1971 Tombs of the Blind Dead. Together these four movies make up his celebrated Blind Dead series, widely regarded as among the classics of Spanish horror movie-making.

The Return of the Evil Dead (the Spanish title is El Ataque de los Muertos Sin Ojos which literally means The Attack of the Blind Dead), made in 1973, functions perfectly well as a standalone film. It explains the origins of the Blind Dead, although from memory their origin is explained differently in the first film.

In the town of Bouzano in Portugal during the Middle Ages (presumably the early fourteenth century) the townspeople have grown tired of the excesses and wickedness of the Knights Templar. They sack the order’s abbey and burn the knights. When one of the knights vows that they will return from the dead to raze the town the villagers decide to blind the knights first so that even if they fulfil their threat they will be unable to find the town. They then burn the knights.

We then move forward to the present day. Each year the town celebrates a festival in remembrance of their victory over the Templars. The legend that one year the knights will return has by his time been consigned to folklore. Nobody believes such stories any more.

Nobody except the hunchbacked village idiot, Murdo. Murdo has his own reasons for hating the people of Bouzano, having been ceaselessly mocked by all and sundry. He decides the bring back the Templars by performing a human sacrifice, an operation that proves all too successful (and an operation that the movie suggests was used by the Templars themselves in order to gain a kind of immortality). Pretty soon the blind dead Templars are slaughtering the good folk of Bouzano. Only one man seems inclined to put up a fight against them - Jack Marlowe (Tony Kendall), an outsider who is organising the fireworks display for the festival.

The mistress of the corrupt mayor of the town happens to be an old flame of Marlowe’s, a circumstance which earns Marlowe a beating. Such matters are soon put on hold however as news starts to filter in from the countryside about rampaging dead knights riding dead horses. The movie then follows a familiar horror movie pattern, with a small group of survivors hiding out in the village church. They turn out to be as much of a threat to each as the Templars are.

The basic plot is hardly anything startlingly original but what makes the Blind Dead series so exceptional is the Templars themselves. The makeup effects are gruesome and genuinely horrifying. It’s the idea itself that is de Ossorio’s masterstroke. The dead blind knights are among the most original and effective of horror movie monsters. They are not exactly zombies, and not exactly ghosts or revenants.

Amando de Ossorio (who wrote the screenplay as well as directing) has based his idea to a large extent on the evil reputation of the Templars themselves. Interestingly enough they are not actually referred to as Templars but as knights from the east. The Templars were one of many medieval orders of warrior monks and their eastern origin may indicate that they were based not just on the Templars but also on other military orders such as the Teutonic Knights, who had a fairly bloodthirsty reputation as well. But it is the legend of the Templars’ gradual drift into heresy and sorcery that forms the core of de Ossorio’s idea. The Templars were in fact suppressed by the Pope in 1312 and many of the knights did in fact end their days being burned at the stake or meeting similar grisly fates.

The use of slow motion photography whenever the dead knights are on the move, especially on horseback, is a simple technique that works remarkably well. The director creates an extraordinary mood of implacable and mindless malevolence. The knights are capable of executing effective military tactics, so they are perhaps not entirely mindless so much as entirely and terrifyingly single-minded and obsessed. They are certainly more than mere zombies and this makes these movies vastly superior to the average zombie movie, both in terms of horror and in terms of atmosphere.

Blue Underground have done a fine job with their DVD release and have included both the sub-titled Spanish version and the English dubbed version. I watched the sub-titled version so I can’t say if there are any differences between the two versions.

The one major weakness of this movie is the excessive use of gore. This is unfortunate since the movie has more than enough atmosphere to make the gore unnecessary and it actually has the effect of deadening the senses and lessening the horror. But in a 1973 European horror movie gore had become a commercial necessity, and despite this minor criticism The Return of the Evil Dead is a well-paced and very effective piece of horror film-making and is highly recommended.

The Night of the Sorcerers (1973)

Amando de Ossorio is known among horror fans mostly for his Blind Dead cycle. Which is a pity, since he made some other ridiculously entertaining movies such as The Loreley’s Grasp and this one, The Night of the Sorcerers (La noche de los brujos).

This Spanish production dates from 1973, right slap bang in the golden age of Spanish horror.

The pre-credits sequence takes us back to 1910, in Bumbasa, deep in Darkest Africa. A missionary’s is about to be sacrificed to the voodoo gods. We then jump forward to the 1970s when a small expedition arrives in Bumbasa. They are there to collect material for an article on disappearing African wildlife.

They meet a European trader who warns them that this is a dangerous locality. Voodoo is still practised, and nearby is the spot where the sorcerers used to make their sacrifices to the voodoo gods. But when do characters in a horror movie ever listen to warnings?

The expedition comprises two men, big game hunter Rod Carter and Professor Grant, an expert in African wildlife, plus three women. One of the women is Rod’s girlfriend, one is a photographer and the third is the daughter of the man who financed the expedition. Pretty soon they start hearing drums in the night. The photographer figures this would be a good opportunity to get some photos. Since they’ve been warned about the dangers in the area she naturally decides the wisest thing to do is to wander off into the jungle on her own. She will soon pay the price for her rashness. She won’t be the last victim of the zombie sorcerers!

The long-dead sorcerers are still making their regular sacrifices. The sacrifice is a woman, who after her death becomes an immortal leopard woman.

Early on one of the characters talks about voodoo, zombies and magic. And yes, this movie has all three! It also has sex, sleaze and sadism. And leopard-print bikinis (with rather fetching matching leopard-print capes). And who’s that driving the first Land-Rover of the expedition in the movie’s first post-credits sequence? It’s Jack Taylor! With Jack Taylor’s presence this movie leaves not a single eurosleaze box unticked.

Amando de Ossorio has a knack for coming up with impressive visual set-pieces on limited budgets. That’s really what low-budget film-making is all about - finding ways to express your visual flair whilst spending very little money. This movie has several such sequences.

Of course by the standards of conventional film criticism this is a bad movie, albeit one with plenty of camp appeal. But it has to be judged by what it sets out to achieve - a mix of sleaze and horror done with a certain amount of style. Judged by those standards, it’s a complete success.

It’s also vastly entertaining. It has all the right ingredients and de Ossorio combines them with considerable skill. We’re not meant to take any of it very seriously. It’s a thoroughly enjoyable exploitation movie and it has all the exploitation elements in very large quantities. There’s quite a bit of gore, there’s plenty of nudity, and it’s very sleazy in a lightweight but fun way.

Writer-director de Ossorio keeps the action moving along at a brisk pace. He creates a suitable sinister atmosphere, and as with the visual set-pieces he does it cheaply and economically with drums and fog effects and simple makeup effects. Everything is done on the cheap but the results are impressive enough. The acting is basic but it gets the job done.

What it all adds up is non-stop entertainment. While it’s not quite as good as The Loreley’s Grasp it’s just as much fun. If you take your horror movies very seriously give this one a miss. If you’re content to just sit back and wallow in gloriously trashy eurosleaze then this one is a must-see. I recommend it very highly.