So Sweet, So Dead (1972)

So Sweet, So Dead is a 1972 giallo directed and co-written by Roberto Bianchi Montero. The original Italian title was Rivelazioni di un maniaco sessuale al capo della squadra mobile which translates as Revelations from a sex maniac to the head of the flying squad. It was also released as The Slasher is the Sex Maniac and there was a U.S. version with hardcore inserts entitled Penetration.

It begins with a very dead naked girl. Her throat has been slashed. The killer has left a clue. It’s a photograph of the dead woman having sex with her lover but the lover’s face has been obliterated from the photograph. So it’s a clue that can lead nowhere, and of course there is no reason to assume that the lover was the killer.

Inspector Capuana (Farley Granger) knows how he should proceed. He should start by questioning the woman’s husband, their friends, her parents. And of these people might provide a lead. But there’s a problem. The dead woman was married to a general. Their friends and her parents are all very important very powerful people. They are therefore above suspicion. It would be unthinkable to subject such people to the inconvenience and indignity of being questioned by the police. And there must not be a scandal.

Inspector Capuana is a good cop. He wants to find the murderer. He is not a fool however. He knows that if he doesn’t proceed with the most extreme caution he will simply have the case taken away from him and he will have his career destroyed. He intends to proceed very cautiously indeed.

Lots of murders follow. The victims are all unfaithful wives and they all belong to the rich powerful elite. This is a world in which all the wives have lovers and all the husbands have mistresses and nobody minds as long as it’s done discreetly and scandal is avoided.

In every case photographs are left behind, all showing the victims having sex with their lovers. Apart from that the killer leaves no clues.

The killer might see himself as a moral avenger but there’s an obvious hint of voyeurism as well. In fact voyeurism figures quite prominently throughout the movie, in various intriguing ways.

There is one witness but she saw the murder from a distance, he was masked and she is unlikely to be able to provide much useful evidence. She is also not inclined to come forward.

The audience knows no more about the killer’s identity than Inspector Capuana.

Capuana is a straight down the line kind of guy. He likes being a cop. He’s good at his job. He’s happily married. He’s neither rich nor powerful and has no desire to have a mistress and his wife appears to have no desire to have a lover.

In a giallo we expect a black-gloved killer but in this movie we get a killer with black gloves, a black overcoat, a black hat and a black mask.

There are giallo fans who are connoisseurs of spectacular murder set-pieces. Those fans may be disappointed by this movie. There are no spectacular visual set-pieces. The murders are straightforward and all follow the exact same pattern. They’re brutal enough but the level of gore is quite low.

There are however plenty of very beautiful women taking their clothes off. There are numerous sex scenes but they’re not overly explicit. This is a very sleazy movie, even in its original version, but it’s well-executed sleaze.

Roberto Bianchi Montero is a technically competent director but he’s no great visual stylist. He had a long career as a director and worked in the usual assortment of popular genres. He made spaghetti westerns, he made at least one peplum and he made quite a few sex comedies. The impression one gets from his filmography, and from this particular movie, is that he was more comfortable with erotic rather than violent subject matter. He does an uneven job here.

Interestingly, given that this movie is set among the decadent rich, there is (thankfully) no political messaging.

There’s moral corruption in this movie but it’s not limited to the rich and the male and female characters are equally morally compromised. I’d describe this as a movie that is cynical about people rather than cynical about women. The actresses don’t do much more than get undressed and get murdered but to be fair the only character with any depth is Inspector Capuana. He’s the real focus of the movie. Farley Granger does a good job although sadly his voice is dubbed by another actor on the English-language version.

It’s the ending that elevates this movie from a routine giallo to a must-see giallo. It packs a real punch. It makes use of a plot device that I generally dislike but in this case it’s used in a genuinely interesting way with some clever and nasty twists. So Sweet, So Dead is highly recommended.

The Code Red Blu-Ray offers a lovely transfer with no extras. The English dubbed version is the only language option.

Angel Cop (1989-94)

Angel Cop is a 1989-94 Japanese anime OVA. It comprises six 30-minute segments.

There is some slight cyberpunk flavouring but this does not have the feel of fully-fledged cyberpunk.

It has a near-future setting. Terrorists are trying to destroy the Japanese economy. An elite anti-terrorist unit, the Special Security Force (SSF), has been set up. They have a licence to kill. In fact they have a licence to do anything at all they consider to be necessary. They’re a law unto themselves.

Their latest recruit is a sexy girl cop known as Angel. Even by SSF standards she’s ruthless. When asked if she would shoot a terrorist who was using a hostage as a human shield, even if it meant killing the hostage, she replies that she wouldn’t like doing it but she’d do it anyway. We’ve already seen her in action. We know she isn’t kidding.

The SSF has captured a terrorist leader and they need to keep him alive. There are lots of people from various groups who want him dead.

The SSF’s approach to anti-terrorist operations is ruthless to say the least. It soon becomes apparent there are other groups out to kill terrorists. There are the Hunters, and both their nature and motivations are obscure.

As the six linked episodes progress more and more conspiracies come to light, and each revelation has the effect of making the entire situation even murkier.

The Hunters are simply trying to exterminate all terrorists. There seems to be another group hunting the Hunters. There is infighting among the terrorists. There is infighting on the government side. The SSF is a government agency but there are other government agencies trying to destroy the SSF. And when I say destroy I mean they intend to kill every single member of the SSF. There’s also a possibly unstable scientist with access to very high technology who seems to have his own agenda.

These factions are all extremely well-funded with access to advanced weaponry. They have powerful shadowy backers. Some of these backers may be domestic, some may originate outside Japan. Some of these backers may be pro-Japanese while others are anti-Japanese. There are factions within the Japanese government. The motivations of all of these factions and groups might be ideological, they might simply be motivated by greed or they might be out for power for its own sake. There’s no way of knowing just how many conspiracies there are.

The paranoia levels are off the scale.

While this OVA can be considered as a kind of political thriller don’t let that put you off. It’s not obsessed with ideological preaching. Angel Cop is more focused on the nature of political power games considered purely as power games. The truth is that none of the players are actually motivated by ideals.

There’s also a considerable interest in the corrupting effects of power. The SSF routinely employs hideous methods of torture. There’s one chilling scene in which a suspect is being horrifically tortured while in the office next door the female SSF operatives calmly catch up on their paperwork, oblivious to the screaming.

Another theme of Angel Cop is loyalty. Angel is a loyal Japanese. She has always assumed that loyalty to the Japanese government and loyalty to Japan are perfectly compatible and indeed almost synonymous. Unfortunately that assumption might prove to be incorrect.

There are lots of other things going on in Angel Cop. The nature of the Hunters is mysterious. They have just be the products of ultra high technology. They might be supernatural entities. They might have psychic or paranormal powers and if so those powers might be enhanced by technology. Their powers look like magic but it would be a mistake to jump to conclusions.

Angel is an interesting heroine. She’s tough, brave and very competent but she’s no super-woman. She also has some serious character flaws. As far as she is concerned she’s a cop. A cop does her duty. Angel has never thought beyond this. She lacks empathy. She has repressed her emotions entirely. She is breathtakingly ruthless and callous. She will have to learn to be a human being as well as a cop. The question is whether she will be capable of doing this.

She has been partnered with Raiden. It’s an uneasy partnership. Raiden doesn’t trust her. You can’t blame him. Their relationship will evolve but not in the way you would expect in a non-Japanese story.

There’s an immense amount of carnage and it’s extremely graphic. There are epic battles involving both conventional and psychic weapons.

The tone is generally dark and often very dark. It gets steadily darker and more paranoid.

The ending has lost none of its power to shock. It is deeply Japanese, reflecting distinctly Japanese cultural attitudes such as bushido, the code of the samurai. To understand the ending I think you have to assume that Angel does indeed see herself as a samurai, and not in a superficial way. And that Raiden comes to see himself as a samurai as well. They have chosen the way of the samurai and they are prepared to accept everything that that entails. I don’t see any other way of making sense of the ending.

The Discotek Blu-Ray looks terrific. It includes the Japanese language version with uncensored English subtitles. For hyper-sensitive souls there’s also the option for censored subtitles or there’s the censored English dub. The censorship has nothing to do with bad language or sexual references. The original version would have been considered antisemitic and would have been totally unacceptable to American distributors. It’s unfortunate that many people have been so distracted by this element that they have overlooked two other far more interesting elements that reflect an uncompromisingly Japanese point of view that would have been deeply disorienting to American audiences.

Angel Cop is fast-moving and action-packed with an enormous amount of very graphic violence. It’s a bleak paranoid vision of the future. It’s not for the faint-hearted but I highly recommend it.

Inquisition (1977)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Whether anything supernatural actually occurs is also uncertain.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Robowar (1988)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Seven (1979)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Vampire Doll (1970)

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

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

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

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

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

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

Speaking to Yûko’s doctor increases their unease.

What does alarm them is seeing Yûko.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Monster of the Opera (1964)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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