New Cult Movie Releases from Germany's Anolis Entertainment

The German Blu-ray label Anolis Entertainment GMBH recently released a very nice, uncut and English-friendly disc of Viktor Trivas' Die Nackte und der Satan (1959), better known abroad as THE HEAD. In addition to the familiar English dub, it includes the original German soundtrack with English subtitles, which makes it possible for the rest of us to appreciate the talented cast's performances on an entirely new level. I was honored to be asked to provide an audio commentary for the set, which is presented with optional German subtitles, and there is a German commentary as well by Anolis' resident cult film experts Into Strecker and Mirko Rekittke. The disc has been released in a choice of different covers, including two standard covers and a keep case edition. Best news of all: unlike some of the other Anolis titles, it is region-free.

When the kind folks at Anolis recently sent my contributor's copies of the HEAD disc, they also included some of their other new titles. What first attracted my attention in my Anolis care package were two other releases: KATAKOMBEN DES GRAUENS ("Catacombs of Terror") and DER TURM DER SCHREIENDEN FRAUEN ("The Tower of Screaming Women"), which we know respectively as Bernard L. Kowalski's ATTACK OF THE GIANT LEECHES (1959) and Bert I. Gordon's TORMENTED (1960), neither of which I believe has enjoyed an HD release in the US to date.

Produced by Gene Corman and executive produced by Roger Corman, ATTACK OF THE GIANT LEECHES is presented by Anolis as a two-disc media book with the B-picture pressed on Blu-ray (where it runs 63m) and on DVD (where it plays at 25 f.p.s. ad runs only 60m). Obviously, it's a B-picture but Kowalski—whose previous AIP features were HOT CAR GIRL and NIGHT OF THE BLOOD BEAST (both 1958)—does an extremely capable job of filling that length with earnest actors, memorable characters, an appreciably early ecological message, and some of the most lurid, unforgettably gruesome and perversely erotic imagery of the 1950s.

Ken Clark (SOUTH PACIFIC, who later starred in Mario Bava's THE ROAD TO FORT ALAMO) has the lead role as Steve Benton, the warden of a Florida everglades preserve, whose swamplands become the site of various disappearances. When local grocer Dave Walker (Bruno ve Sota) pursues his two-timing wife Liz (ATTACK OF THE 50-FOOT WOMAN's Yvette Vickers) and her lover Cal (Michael Emmet) out there with a shotgun, he sees them attacked by giant monsters with human-like arms lined with suckers. The police don't believe Dave's story, charging him with murdering the couple, who have in fact been dragged down to an underwater cave where they and others become the centerpieces of an ongoing feast. Steve has a vocational commitment to preserve the wildlife at the location, so others take the problem into their own hands.

Scripted by actor Leo Gordon and scored by Alexander Laszlo with the same grating electric keyboard he brought to NIGHT OF THE BLOOD BEAST, ATTACK OF THE GIANT LEECHES is notable for Clark's eloquent leadership and manly central presence; those who appreciate such things would probably favor his bare chest over William Holden's in PICNIC any day. However, it's really the eerie atmosphere and the solid character performances of ve Sota, Gene Roth (as a smug and boastful sheriff), Jan Shepard (KING CREOLE, as Clark's fiancée), and especially Vickers (never more sultry than when modeling her nylons or submitting to the monsters' voracious sucking) that rivet the viewer. Doing much of the heavy lifting behind that atmosphere is art director Daniel Haller, who at this point had been working with Roger Corman since 1958's WAR OF THE SATELLITES. His creepy underwater cave may have been high school play-level stuff in its actual substance, but DP John M. Nickolaus (who later shot Corman's THE TERROR and several of the most memorable OUTER LIMITS episodes, including "The Zanti Misfits") lights it like gangbusters, turning it into its own panoramic level of Hell.

Here in America, GIANT LEECHES is a public domain title, which has consigned its fate to a series of ignoble DVD releases and enrollment in MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATRE 3000's Hall of Shame. This anamorphic 1.66:1 presentation isn't likely to knock anyone's socks off, but when we see how sharp the main titles are (long with a handful of later individual shots, possibly post-production inserts), it becomes evident that whatever visual shortcomings we notice are the fault of the original film stock and inadequate location lighting. Suffice to say, if this is a title that matters to you, you won't find better elsewhere. The optional German soundtrack is vintage. The extras include a German commentary by Ingo Strecker and Alexander Iffländer (no subtitles), a US trailer, a poster gallery, and a colorful illustrated booklet (including UK and Mexican posters and lobby cards) with German text by Strecker.

Bert I. Gordon's TORMENTED, based on an original script by George Worthing Yates and Gordon, was Mr. B.I.G.'s first venture outside the giant monster territory he'd carved out for himself at Allied Artists and then AIP. Set on an unnamed beach with a disused lighthouse poorly matted into the scenery, it stars 1950s science fiction stalwart Richard Carlson as Tom Stewart, "the world's greatest jazz pianist," who sounds like your run-of-the-mill cocktail piano player and has somehow attracted the romantic interest of two statuesque blondes, the self-described "second rate songstress" Vi Mason (Amazonian cover girl Juli Reding) and the born-into-money Meg Hubbard (Lugene Sanders) to whom he's newly engaged. The blonde getting the largest share of screen time is actually little Susan Gordon, the filmmaker's daughter, who plays Meg's nine year-old sister Sandy, who's got a crush on Tom and discovers that he had something to do with Vi's death when she threatened to tell Meg of their love affair. As the day of the wedding approaches, Tom is beset by a series of hauntings by Vi, which take the form of footprints in the sand, voices on the breeze, a severed taunting head, and even a disembodied hand that ambulates across the rug like a tarantula to claim the ring he intends for his bride.                

For all its novelty in Gordon's early catalogue, this is basically the umpteenth retread of the Poe idea of a man haunted by a guilt that manifests tailor-made torments only he can perceive. For some reason, the script doesn't entirely blame Vi's death on Tom, who simply hesitates too long on a scary precipice and fails to rescue her from a fall he had no part in. The filmmakers probably thought this would help to make Carlson a more sympathetic protagonist, but there's nothing likable about him; it's hard to imagine him being any less likable had he actually pushed Vi to her doom and cackled about it. Carlson was probably the costliest item on the budget, but his performance offers little than some melodramatic eye-darting when others catch him in lies, and overplayed reactions to his hauntings which always involve him hiding his face behind both hands. We hear a lot about "jazz" in the dialogue but the only real jazz is in the dialogue of actor Joe Turkel (PATHS OF GLORY) who plays a jive-speaking incidental who sets out to blackmail Tom. The storyline is further padded with Mrs. Ellis (Lillian Adams), a blind housekeeper who is last shown at the end of the picture gawking like everyone else at the surprise washed up on the beach. The movie's primary source of interest, without exaggeration, is Juli Reding as the first character to be done away with; she's an absorbing sight in her sheer voluptuousness and hardly someone a story should be quick to disembody. The scene where Tom recovers her body from the sea only to watch her breathless abundance as it turns into a heap of seaweed is a scrap of fetishism at its finest. While Susan Gordon earns every bit of her screen time with a performance more competent than those of many of her more experienced elders, the character of Sandy feels shamelessly written to order for her and is anything but to the film's ultimate advantage. As the film goes on, it begins to end sections of the film with fades to black which give the film the feel of a failed TV pilot or early TV movie. Even Sandy's accidental witnessing to one of Tom's murders, which should add to the film's dramatic tension, fails to generate any real suspense because it's all-too-obvious that the film is playing everything too safe to venture into actual child endangerment. It's worth noting that the performance of Harry Fleer as Meg's father Frank (who disapproves of Tom, as well he might) is rather obviously dubbed by Paul Frees. It's hard to imagine how bad his line readings must have been to make such glaring voice-over work seem preferable.  

Anolis' 1.66:1 presentation of the B&W film utilizes an archival German print with a different title sequence than appears on the Allied Artists prints we're used to seeing. It's not a 2K or 4K restoration but the gain of pictorial detail over other available sources is noticeable and the audio quality is fine. The German audio option is sourced from the print seen and is, once again, vintage. The 75m feature is accompanied by an audio commentary by Ing Strecker and Mirko Rekittke, a nice 6m interview with Susan Gordon (who died in 2011), German and American trailers, a Mick Garris TRAILERS FROM HELL commentary, and various galleries.    

I've saved the best news of all for last. Also on Anolis' roster of recent releases is BESTIEN LAUERN VOR CARACAS ("Beasts Lurk in Caracas"), better known to us as Hammer's THE LOST CONTINENT (1968). While a very nice Blu-ray of this title was recently issued in the States by Shout! Factory, including an excellent audio commentary by LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS editor Richard Klemenson, Anolis's release—available in a choice of no less than four different cover designs (see below)—represents an outstanding and utterly unexpected restoration of the film, extending the picture from its US theatrical running time of 87m 4s and its extended UK length of 97m 3s to an international composite running time of 99m 52s!

The additions—nearly all of which involve some form of mayhem, eroticism or sexual suggestion—were reportedly found in a surviving 35mm German print and carefully inserted into the HD master. There is a slight but noticeable degradation of quality in that this footage was derived from an archival print instead of the original camera negative, but it's nice to be able to readily identify what has been restored and from where; there are some shots added to the scene of the crew moving the explosive PhosB canisters out of wet storage that were evidently only used in the German release print. In these bits, the dialogue is subtitled in English as no English soundtrack exists for these moments. Anolis has done an outstanding job of including this material without disrupting the musical soundtrack, and their composite version is the most fun I've ever had with THE LOST CONTINENT, a beloved Hammer title since my first viewing of it in August 1969. 

The balance of the BESTIEN LAUERN VOR CARACAS set is just as welcome, including two German-language commentaries (no subtitles), and roughly an hour's worth of James McCabe-directed featurettes interviews with virtually every last surviving member of the film's cast and crew: actors Dana Gillespie, Norman Eshley, and Sylvana Henriques (who was badly injured on-set during her first day, leading her to be written out of the movie!); music arranger Carlo Martell and uncredited love theme composer Howard Blake (who gives us an exclusive piano performance of the piece you'll want to applaud), and special effects technicians John Richardson and Peter Hutchinson. These interviews, which are both very informative and amusing, check all the boxes of things we might be left wanting to know after viewing the film. Also included are the UK trailer (in 1.37:1 and 1.85:1–which surprisingly credits star Hildegard Knef as "Neff" and includes some of the long-missing shots restored to this release), a very entertaining German trailer (which, among other things, misidentifies actor Tony Beckley), and US TV spots, as well as German and Belgian press books and a really nice photo gallery. The MB cover editions also include a second disc containing more than two hours of German film trailers in standard definition.

Needless to say, this German disc release (like all other Anolis releases) is Region B, unplayable on Region A players—in fact, I've found myself unable to provide my usual frame grabs for any of these titles with my present set-up. If you're an ardent fan of THE LOST CONTINENT, as I am, you can consider BESTIEN LAURERN VOR CARACAS an essential double (or triple) dip and—since it goes beyond mere cosmetology to include more than 12m of footage never before shown on US theater screens—one of 2022's most important film restorations.

(c) 2022 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.

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Kino Lorber's FRENCH NOIR COLLECTION Reviewed

FRENCH NOIR COLLECTION

1957-59, Kino Lorber BD

Includes:

SPEAKING OF MURDER (Le rouge est mis, "The Red Light is On," 1957, 1.37:1, 85:41)

BACK TO THE WALL (Le dos au mur, 1958, 1.37:1, 94:25) WITNESS IN THE CITY (Un témoin dans la ville, 1959, 1.66:1, 89:36)

Kino Lorber’s often tempting FILM NOIR: THE DARK SIDE OF CINEMA series (now eleven volumes strong) has collected more than 30 B&W crime and suspense films from the Gold and Silver ages of Hollywood. While the genuine film noir classics tend to score individual releases, these compendiums have cast a wider and deeper net, gathering up under-appreciated gems and taking care to pair them with expert contextualizing commentaries. Now Kino Lorber has extended their reach into international terrain with the release of FRENCH NOIR COLLECTION, which collects three outstanding (if lesser-known) Gaumont releases in what I can only hope will become a parallel continuing series. This is the sort of release I'm used to having to order from Amazon.fr, often without English subtitles, and brother, are we lucky to have it. 

While the films included all date from the late 1950s, by which time American film noir was somewhat past the grand climax proposed by such pictures as KISS ME DEADLY (1955) and SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS (1956), French noir was plainly at its peak. As good as it often was, the earliest examples of international noir were often imitative of American examples; for instance, Luchino Visconti’s OBSESSION (Ossessione, 1943) or Bernard Borderie’s initial Lemmy Caution adventure POISON IVY (Le môme vert-di-gris, 1953). However, when French noir in particular began looking away from the Hollywood model and focused on telling hard-bitten stories of struggling people forced into lives of crime, prostitution, and betrayal, they couldn’t be beat in terms of hard-bitten authenticity. Anyone expecting to find parallels to late 1950s American noir in this collection will be startled by the unflinching brutality, frank adult language, sexual candor and acknowledgment of marginal gay characters in their storytelling, which is actually more evocative of 1970s American cinema. Even admirers of a noir classic such as Orson Welles' TOUCH OF EVIL (1958) must admit that its dense, nightmarish, borderland atmosphere is unnatural, something as calculated for dramatic effect as the Crazy House sequence in Welles' THE LADY FROM SHANGHAI (1947); however, the world proposed by the three Gaumont titles gathered in this set is virtually documentarian, showing us a Paris that 1) no longer exists and 2) which is strangely alien to American eyes because it’s not the traditional tourist’s view of Europe's greatest city, but rather the Paris once known to its working-class locals. These films slap your face and remind you that the French didn’t have to invent noir, it was always part of their language and landscape. It also speaks well of these films that all three were scripted, or based on writings by outstanding authors of French crime and suspense fiction.

The set not only starts out impressively well but ascends in quality and impact as one advances from film to film. SPEAKING OF MURDER, presented as the lone title on Disc 1, presents the indomitable Jean Gabin in a story based on a novel by Auguste le Breton, the author responsible for his prior hit, RIFIFI (1955). Gabin takes the lead as Louis, the boss of modest but lethal crime ring headquartered behind the façade of his service station garage. It’s after hours, when “the red light is on” (the translation of the original French title), that their illegal business is conducted. Opening with an everyday scene that suddenly erupts in a brazen and violent daylight theft, the film maintains a steady simmer as it builds to a major extended heist sequence. When Louis’ gang (which includes the great Lino Ventura as the tommy-gunner Pepito) ends up killing two men and injuring two pursuant police cyclists, he is soon after betrayed to the authorities, with Louis’ younger brother Pierre (Marcel Bozzuffi, who has eluded, even been protected from becoming directly involvement with the gang) being wrongly perceived as the most likely snitch. As push comes to shove, Louis must decide whether his fealty is stronger to his own flesh and blood or the men who loyally follow his orders.

Directed by Gilles Grangier (who, two years later, would direct Gabin in his Silver Bear-winning Best Actor Performance in Archimede le clochard, 1959), the film also marks the screen debut of Annie Girardot "de la Comédie Française" (THE APE WOMAN, SHOCK TREATMENT), introduced wearing only a pajama top as Pierre's girlfriend. She, like virtually everyone else in the story, is forced into duplicity and corruption of character by economic considerations. Future director Jean-Pierre Mocky is also featured in a supporting role. 

Of all the pictures in the set, SPEAKING OF MURDER is the most obviously constructed around the central performance of a vividly written character. While its dramatic goals are entirely within the traditional guidelines of noir, it's not as overtly stylized as its generic definition might suggest. On the contrary, this is a realistically presented story in which everyone is caught in a more or less inescapable trap. As in Martin Scorsese's most memorable films, the film casually yet effectively charts the schism between the mob's warm family ties and cold professional ethos. While the bulk of the film maintains a stimulating simmer, it builds to a chillingly tense and well-staged showdown between Louis, his brother, and an unhinged Pepito. Denis Kieffer's main theme, with its trumpet solo by Georges Jouvin, strongly recalls the later Jackie Gleason theme, "Melancholy Serenade." Also included on the disc are trailers for the main feature (including alternate takes of scenes), and other related KL releases PORT OF SHADOWS, TOUCHEZ PAS AU GRISBI, RAZZIA SUR LA CHNOUF, MAIGRET SETS A TRAP, MAIGRET AND THE ST. FIACRE CASE and THE SICILIAN CLAN - all of which KL has released separately. These should have been given a "Play All" option.

 

As good as SPEAKING OF MURDER is, the two films on Disc 2 are arguably even better. Both are directed by Édouard Molinaro, perhaps best-known for directing the original LA CAGE AUX FOLLES (1978) and, among my readers particularly, DRACULA AND SON (with Christopher Lee, 1976). BACK TO THE WALL—based on the novel DÉLIVEREZ-NOUS DU MAL ("Deliver Us from Evil") by Frédéric Dard (whose voluminous work was most popularly filmed by director Robert Hossein in THE WICKED GO TO HELL, 1955, and BLONDE IN A WHITE CAR, 1958) and adapted by Jean Redon (EYES WITHOUT A FACE) was Molinaro’s feature film debut and it’s a corker. 

BACK TO THE WALL was Molinaro's first feature film and it's hard to think of a more audacious, fully realized debut. The film's first 17m is a tour-de-force, unfolding with almost no dialogue; the only sound we get is incidental and does not pertain to the events unfolding in the foreground. The film opens with gripping music as a snap-brimmed, trench-coated man (Gérard Oury) exits a palatial villa and heads out for a night ride, whose spectral glide through the city streets quietly underpins the main titles. He goes into the city, dons dark gloves and enters a stranger's apartment, where he either murders the male tenant or discovers his corpse. (The scene cuts away briefly to a comic counterpoint in the building's lobby at the critical moment.) Either way, our intruder then proceeds to meticulously dispose of the corpse, and we are almost 20m into the film before he takes us into his confidence with some furtive, savory narration.

Jeanne Moreau (in the same year she made THE LOVERS and ELEVATOR TO THE GALLOWS) stars as Gloria, the wife of wealthy industrialist Jacques Decrey (Oury) who learns she is having a romantic affair with a young actor Yves Normand (Philippe Nicaud). Decrey, having the confidence of wealth and position, decides to make his duplicitous mate suffer by blackmailing the actor and then the pair of them, forcing them into a situation of mental cruelty that turns worse as his wife has to begin taking money from her husband to pay her supposed blackmailer. The supporting cast includes fine performances by Claire Maurier (as Ghislaine, an overlooked barmaid who also loves Yves) and the difficult-to-identify actors who play the quirky private detective hired by Decrey and his wife, who flaunts her infidelities in his face. Gorgeously photographed with impressively deep blacks by Robert Lefebvre (whose career ranged from CASQUE D’OR to GIRL’S DORMITORY and several José Benazeraf films including I AM FRIGID… WHY?), BACK TO THE WALL is a Hitchcockian noir masterpiece whose reputation stands to soar in light of this new release.

Remarkably, this praise is (if anything) truer of WITNESS IN THE CITY, which came along a couple of films later in Molinaro’s career. A star vehicle for Lino Ventura, here playing a wounded man on the run, this is an atmospheric suspense piece to beat most others, scripted by the famous crime-writing team of Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac (LES DIABOLIQUES, VERTIGO, EYES WITHOUT A FACE), photographed by Henri Decäe and drenched in voluptuous jazz by Barney Wilen, a tenor saxophonist who had previously worked with Miles Davis on the soundtrack for Louis Malle’s ELEVATOR TO THE GALLOWS. (The Barney Wilen Quintet features Kenny Clarke, Kenny Dorham, Paul Rovere and Duke Jordan.) Again, the film opens with a stunning set-piece as yet another scheming industrialist (Jacques Berthier) commits a murder by forcing a woman (an early, brief appearance by Françoise Brion) to her death from a speeding train car. When the suave, contemptible killer is declared innocent of this crime in a court of law, the dead woman’s husband Ancelin (Ventura)—in another magnificently sustained, mostly silent sequence—enacts his revenge and meticulously stages the murder scene as a suicide by hanging. (The sudden introduction of heavy percussion during this scene anticipates the murder-jazz vibe of Quincy Jones' score for IN COLD BLOOD, 1968.) On his way out of the house, Ancelin is surprised by a taxi driver summoned to the house by a prior call. The driver narrowly escapes being hushed by a bullet, and the remainder of the film documents Ancelin’s attempts to hail the right taxi and silence the only witness to his act of justice. 

The film proceeds virtually without a traditional hero for its first half-hour, long enough for us to invest our conflicted concerns in Ancelin's’s fate for the remainder of the film. This early part of the film is also the more traditionally stylized. Then, with the introduction of taxi driver Lambert (Franco Fabrizi) and his switchboard operator girlfriend Liliane (JULIET OF THE SPIRITS’ Sandra Milo), the film takes a more documentarian turn to authentic locations and our traditional hero turns out to be just one charismatic face among many, all of them night drivers for Radio-Taxi of Paris. (This was an actual company employing some 400 drivers, who are thanked in the credits for their production assistance.) It’s unusual for a noir film to use night scenes to generate such a warm and prevalent sense of bonhomie and brotherhood, and when one of their own is injured in the line of duty, the other drivers (led by veteran actor Robert Dalban) band together to track down and apprehend Ancelin, some of them not emerging from their mission unscathed. The idea of an entire taxi squad mobilizing to stop someone who has harmed one of their own puts a surprisingly upbeat spin on a reel-long climax that recalls the resolution of Fritz Lang’s M (1930), and the film is thrilling in the way it captures an automobile's careening, almost three-dimensional prowling of the city by night. This is one of the very best films to carry the Boileau-Narcejac brand. 

The second disc also includes trailers for BACK TO THE WALL, LES LIASONS DANGEREUSES '60, VIVA MARIA!, THE VALACHI PAPERS, A PAIN IN THE ASS and ILLUSTRIOUS CORPSES, which generally feature Moreau, Ventura or Molinaro. I'd be derelict in my duty if I didn't mention that this release's QC shows some carelessness, with occasional typos in its subtitling and some notably inaccurate accounting of the films' running times, which are actually more generous than they read. But these are minor quibbles considering that the set presents us with beautiful presentations of three major discoveries in this genre, each of which whets the appetite for more of the same.  

If you're drawn to films of human conflict, style and emotion, consider FRENCH NOIR COLLECTION an essential purchase.   

(c) 2022 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.

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Arrow's GOTHIC FANTASTICO Part 4: THE WITCH aka THE WITCH IN LOVE (1966)

Damiano Damiani’s THE WITCH aka THE WITCH IN LOVE (La stregha in amore, 1966) is the ringer of the GOTHIC FANTASTICO set, being a contemporary story and, ironically, the only truly supernatural film in this particular grouping. LADY MORGAN’S VENGEANCE and THE BLANCHEVILLE MONSTER foreground gaslighting situations which masquerade as supernatural events (the former eventually becoming truly supernatural to square things), and THE THIRD EYE is a modern-day psychological horror scenario about a titled family living in an oppressive ancestral villa.

THE WITCH is not only a contemporary tale, it boldly aspires to art rather than common entertainment, originating from a celebrated short novel by Mexican author Carlos Fuentes. Though the film doesn’t make a great show of being anything other than Italian, the witch it presents is of Spanish origin and closely attuned to the character created by Fuentes. Instead of the usual Italian villa found in this genre, the story takes place largely inside a spacious yet claustrophobic Italian apartment as bedecked in art nouveau as the Tanz Akademie in Dario Argento’s SUSPIRIA (1977). These attributes pose major contradictions to this genre yet THE WITCH clings to Italian Gothic through its assertions of morbid agoraphobia, aristocratic privilege, and the tenuous veil separating idle perversions from availability to supernatural intrusions. 

If we observe the history of Italian Gothic overall, into its silver and bronze ages, THE WITCH seems an obvious fork in the road that connects Antonio Margheriti & Sergio Corbucci’s CASTLE OF BLOOD (an earlier story of a live character’s interaction with others who are not quite alive nor real) with later examples such as Margheriti’s THE UNNATURALS (Contronatura, 1969), Mario Bava’s LISA AND THE DEVIL (1973), and Luigi Batzella’s NUDE FOR SATAN (Nuda per Satana, 1974). It's an obscure title not easy to accommodate yet it's a key ingredient of what would come along subsequently. 

Scripted by Ugo Liberatore (who had a hand in writing Giorgio Ferrani’s MILL OF THE STONE WOMEN, 1960), THE WITCH attends the journey of academic and serial womanizer Sergio Logan (Richard Johnson) as he is inexplicably tempted outside his relationship with Lorna (Margherita Guzzinati) by the curiously persistent presence of an older woman in his orbit. When this curious stranger has the brass to specifically require a man of his explicit description when placing a newspaper ad for a personal librarian, Logan takes the bait to find out more about this human enigma. She identifies herself as Consuelo Forente (Sarah Feratti, at age 55-56 embodying a much older, almost reptilian yet still sensual woman) and she seems to already know everything about Sergio, personally and professionally. She is looking for a man of his precise qualifications to impose order on the library of her late husband, a devotée of occult and erotic texts. As a serial womanizer who knows the fair sex well, he picks up on an unpleasant sexual vibe from the aging Signora, whose preservation under glass of the remains of her dead husband is only the first of her many surprises. Sergio is determined to walk out on his prospective employment… until Consuelo introduces him to her smoldering, smoky-gazed daughter, Aura (Rossana Schiaffino). To make a long and involving dance more perfunctory, Aura succeeds in baiting Sergio, even though he is exposed to a strobing warning sign embodied by fellow tenant Fabrizio (Gian Maria Volonté), a tragic, broken man who is obviously Sergio’s predecessor in this web of erotic intrigue.

THE WITCH is also notable in the context of GOTHIC FANTASTICO as the only film in which the actors were allowed to be credited under their actual professional names. Though Richard Johnson was British, all the other cast members were Italian and their honest billing points to the fact that this film was aiming higher than the exploitation market. All four of the film’s primary performances are first-rate, with Johnson’s gaining a certain resonance from his earlier casting as the rational core of Robert Wise’s THE HAUNTING (1961). It's tempting to declare that Volonté steals the film as he brings much more to his performance than would have been scripted, but the whole house of cards would have collapsed without the pas de deux portrayals of Ferrati and Schiaffino, each with a cobra-like fascination in its own right.

Made in the immediate wake of THE THIRD EYE, THE WITCH finds Damiani advancing beyond the lewd raciness that got Guerrini’s hand slapped, by patiently orchestrating a more erotic Italian Gothic cinema, which was forgiven in part by its art-house pretensions and also its imaginative and tasteful execution; at one point, Aura decides that she and Sergio should undress one another without using their hands - and in another scene, Fabrizio works out his mounting tensions with Aura by fencing with her. You may notice that the film is visually designed to lead the viewer, like Sergio, around by the nose through the sensuous choreography of its camera movement and the gestures and body language of its characters, particularly those played by Ferrati and Schiaffino, the story’s conjurors. In this way, DP Leonida Barboni (who would die only four years later, in 1970) shows the influence of the younger Gianna di Venanzo (EVA, 8 1/2, L’ECLISSE), who had died at the much younger age of only 45 as THE WITCH was being made in early 1966. The film is also notable for its interest in the sensual life of aging bodies, which later became a particular hallmark of the films of another Spanish master, José Ramón Larraz.

Mark Thompson Ashworth’s introduction admits that THE WITCH was the only film in this set that he felt challenged his confidence to properly discuss it. Indeed, while the film’s few extras acknowledge the picture’s ambition and ambiguity, and have much to say about its relationship to the other three movies, they fall somewhat short of engaging with the movie’s own bracing uniqueness - but this isn't to say they offer no food for thought. 

Kat Ellinger's commentary encompasses multitudes of cinematic/literary forebears and parallels; she relates the film not only to Italian Gothic traditions but also Damiani’s earlier work (such as THE EMPTY CANVAS/La noia, 1964) and the more morbid highlights of American noir cinema, particularly Billy Wilder’s SUNSET BOULEVARD (1950). She also discusses the Fuentes novella but only in brief, preferring to leave listeners to the experience of discovering for themselves the interesting ways it varies from the film. While she summons any number of other valid reference points, from Huysman’s AU REBOURS to Losey’s EVA (a very apt catch), the film’s own constantly morphing, mercurial nature doesn’t allow her the time to fully explore the many avenues of thought opened up by these connections. Consequently, there are times where we find ourselves being told about far more familiar films (for example, Don Siegel’s THE BEGUILED or Tony Scott's THE HUNGER) rather than THE WITCH itself. Ellinger also touches on the Damiani film’s curious distinction of being mistaken by many viewers (and cataloguers) as a straightforward drama rather than as the accomplished genre film it is, which may well be why such an accomplished film remains so little-known among the genre's fans. Also included are a 24m 25s video essay by author and academic Miranda Corcoran (which goes deeply into the history of Witchcraft before coming round to the topic at hand), and another vigorous on-camera dissection of the film by Antonio Tentori.

Rounding out this rewarding four-disc set are an 80-page illustrated book containing some sharp new writing by Roberto Curti, Rob Talbot, Jerome Reuter, Rod Barnett and Kimberly Lindbergs. So little has been written in-depth about these films in English that the booklet is a real treat, though it feels a trifle over-illustrated. Also included is a reversible folded mini-poster reproduction of the Italian poster art for HORROR and THE THIRD EYE.

The set and booklet were produced by Kat Ellinger and Michael Mackenzie and the restorations were supervised by James White and James Pearcey.

Amazon is presently offering GOTHIC FANTASTICO at 50% off here.

  

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Arrow's GOTHIC FANTASTICO #3: THE THIRD EYE (1965)

THE THIRD EYE is yet another important Italian Gothic that somehow eluded international release and recognition till the last 15-20 years, at which time unsubtitled copies from an Italian TV broadcast began to appear on the US trading circuit. Even in Italy, the Mirko Guerrini film ("diretto di James Warren") had experienced a somewhat delayed impact. It was actually shot in 1965 and represented the first lead performances by theretofore supporting players Franco Nero and Erika Blanc; however, it was an usually candid film for 1965, a true turning point in the genre, and was found objectionable by the Italian censors and suppressed until certain cuts were made. Though the film has never been fully restored to its pre-release form, it remains a shocking picture for its time. 

Produced by Luigi Carpentieri and Ermanno Donati (who financed the first Italian horror film, 1957’s I Vampiri aka THE DEVIL’S COMMANDMENT), and given a second-hand musical score by Francesco de Masi (lifted from the partnership’s other production THE GHOST, which adds to its dark obsessive undercurrent), the story concerns the domestic problems of Count Mino Alberti (Nero, acting as "Frank Nero"), a handsome taxidermy buff whose engagement to Laura (Blanc, acting as "Diana Sullivan") is overcast by his morbid Oedipal attachment to his mother (Olga Solbelli, acting as "Olga Sunbeauty"), who finds the beautiful blonde unworthy of a man of his station.

Station is also an all- consuming issue with the household maid Marta (Gioia Pascal) who is also biased against Laura as an obstacle to her dreams of marrying Mino herself and earning a place in the family she has served since childhood. Marta sabotages Laura’s sportscar (her cutting of the cables cleverly intercut with Mino’s tearing a large bird open manually) leading to the drowning death of Mino’s fiancee before his eyes, a trauma compounded in parallel by the death of his mother after a private showdown with Marta. Mino becomes unhinged and begins to act out his psychosis, which involves luring strippers and prostitutes back to the family villa to be seduced in a double bed whose veiled neighboring mattress holds the corpse of Laura, necessary to inspire him sexually. (His revelation of the corpse beside them is reserved for the right psychological moment, as with the mirror attachment of Karl Boehm's mirrored camera attachment in Michael Powell's PEEPING TOM, 1960). Marta assists his murders and their clean-up in exchange for the power of position, but Mino's promise to marry her is forgotten at once when Laura’s lookalike younger sister Daniella (also Blanc) arrives at the villa.

If the scenario (written by Carpentieri under the name of 15th century serial killer Gilles de Rey) sounds familiar, this is because Joe D’Amato later remade it as BEYOND THE DARKNESS (Buio omega, 1980), one of the most gruesome and flagrantly sexual Italian horror films of the 1980s. In this earlier incarnation, which omits any graphic representation of the acid baths awaiting Mino’s cold conquests, the black-and-white film is still startling for its violent and erotic candor; it would never have been considered by a US distributor at the time because it’s in no way suitable for children. It's also the most pronounced of the four features in this collection as an elegant segue from classic Italian Gothic into contemporary, bloodletting horror.

While Guerrini’s direction of suspense sequences is appropriately baiting and alluring, sometimes recalling the best of Hitchcock, he is less attentive to character development. If we watch the film in English, the characters (each of whom takes center stage as a protagonist at some point) parade their shallow make-up all the more. Laura, who should be the film’s heart, isn’t part of the film long enough for us to know her, nor is her replacement Daniella cultivated in any sort of personable way, which prevents us from feeling any empathy for them or for Mino’s trauma or psychosis. Nero’s performance has its moments and works best in Italian but in the third act, as he flees the villa with Daniella in tow, his rantings sail way over-the-top and become ludicrous, especially in English. In an interesting thwarting of expectation, cinematographer Alessandro D’Eva (working as "Sandy Deaves") strives to make the film terrifying in settings of broad daylight, without the usual emphasis on eerie shadows, and this too seems part of the film’s decisive move outside the traditional realm of Italian Gothic. In addition to a single startling split diopter shot, the climactic image of the police flashlights spilling over the hillside and tumbling down the beachfront like so many fireflies is particularly impressive.

 

When I first saw THE THIRD EYE many years ago, in Italian without subtitles, I was startled by how far it went, how much it prophesied Italian Gothic's future propensities for shock and eroticism, which became so much more pronounced in its silver and bronze ages. Alas, as time has passed, and as the film itself has acquired subtitles and revealed all its narrative meaning, I find that its initial shocks have dimmed slightly while its camp value has become much more obvious. This aspect resides mostly in Nero's performance which, while silly and laughably demented at times, also has a few boldly iconic moments—such as his bold advance toward nightclub dancer Marina Morgan, whose eyes are as accentuated by makeup as his are naturally. His character has obvious antecedents in Mark Lewis (PEEPING TOM), Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins, PSYCHO) and Charles Campbell (Grant Williams, THE COUCH), but if we look at the similar characters that would follow in Italian and especially the Spanish Gothic for the next 20-30 years, like John Harrington (Stephen Forsyth, HATCHET FOR THE HONEYMOON) or Juan (Renaud Varley, A BELL FROM HELL), it is Nero's performance the later roles most seem to invoke. 

Rachael Nisbet has recorded a very useful commentary for the film, which puts all the contributors into their proper context and speaks persuasively about the film's qualities while acknowledging its few detriments - which include its title, Mino's subjective description of his own experience of his ritual murder sprees, which she admits is poorly developed. (The film would have done well to stick with its original title, THE COLD KISS OF DEATH.) Lindsay Hallam provides the film's visual essay, "Necrophilia Becomes Nostalgia" (12m), which focuses on the film's narrative, its several debts to PSYCHO, and how the rise of all forms of Gothic cinema took place in historic parallel to the social anxieties surrounding changing gender roles in the 1960s. There is also a 15:14 second interview with Erika Blanc, who recalls her involvement in the film with strong and amused memory, noting for example that she was required to wear purple lipstick to make her lips look more luscious in monochrome. She explains the story behind her "Diana Sullivan" alias (which she chose herself), her good rapport with her fellow players and co-workers, and Franco Nero's solitary nature on the set as he studied English between scenes because he wanted to go to America ("Mamma mia! He did what he set out to do"). There is also an image gallery, though this is a rather grandiose way of describing one German still and one Italian locandina. 

Taken as a whole, these extras form an effective bouquet that enhances the main feature—an arresting, if ultimately imperfect distillation of the Italian Gothic's most passionate excesses.

(c) 2022 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.

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Arrow's GOTHIC FANTASTICO Part 2: HORROR aka THE BLANCHEVILLE MONSTER (1963)

The second film collected by GOTHIC FANTASTICO  was (like LADY MORGAN'S VENGEANCE) denied a US theatrical release, albeit for different reasons. Alberto de Martino’s derivative but beautifully-made THE BLANCHEVILLE MONSTER (which was first given a modest UK theatrical release under its original title, HORROR) alleged that it had a narrative basis in the works of Edgar Allan Poe; this led American International Pictures—as they did with other Poe pictures made in other countries during this period—to acquire and then downplay (if not suppress) the title, either by shelving it or sending it directly to television, in order to preserve and protect Roger Corman’s and AIP’s reputations as the contemporary cine-stewards of Poe’s good name.

Newspaper records show that THE BLANCHEVILLE MONSTER (which includes elements from “The Premature Burial” and Poe’s hypnosis tract “A Tale of the Ragged Mountains”) made its first US TV appearance, courtesy of AIP-TV syndication, on Monday, October 26, 1964 in the New York-New Jersey region, at which time Corman had just completed THE TOMB OF LIGEIA and announced his intention to retire from the Poe series. This release marks the first time it has ever been accessible in the US from 35mm elements. On a visual level alone, it is a revelation with powerfully dimensional deep focus photography by Alejandro Ulloa (THE MONSTER OF THE OPERA, THE VIRGIN OF NUREMBERG, THE DIABOLICAL DR Z).

Something that distinguishes THE BLANCHEVILLE MONSTER from its companions in this set is that, despite sharing the same screenwriter as LADY MORGAN’S VENGEANCE (Giovanni Grimaldi, again writing as "Jean Grimaud" and aassisted by Bruno Corbucci as “Gordon Wilson, Jr.”), it was actually an early Spanish-Italian co-production. Though unmistakably an Italian Gothic, it leans heavily on its Spanish side due to its familiar Spanish locations (including the Monasterio de Santa Maria la Real de Valdeiglesias in Madrid, later featured in FRANKENSTEIN’S BLOODY TERROR, TOMBS OF THE BLIND DEAD, and THE LORELEY’S GRASP) and sets (I noticed a familiar staircase and room from THE AWFUL DR. ORLOF, 1961). It also features a predominantly Spanish cast: Gerard Tichy (a Spanish actor of German descent who was later featured in Bava’s Spanish thriller HATCHET FOR THE HONEYMOON), Leo Anchoriz, Paco Moran and, in her first of many memorable horror film appearances, the marvelously elegant and imperious Helga Liné. At the same time, some of its interiors appear to have been filmed in the same twin-staircased villa previously used as the setting for Bava’s THE WHIP AND THE BODY (La frusta e il corpo, 1963). 

The setting of the story differs, depending on whether you're watching the film in Italian or English; a Spanish option is not included. In Italian (HORROR), the story is set in England, 1884, according to the opening caption, and the family name is Blackford—“one of the oldest and noblest families in Scotland.” In English (THE BLANCHEVILLE MONSTER), the family name is de Blancheville and the villa and its grounds are somewhere in northern France, or Brittany. This is the only instance known to me when a name was altered in the English dubbing to make it sound less English. Curiously, in the titles of both versions, the Spanish actors are credited by their real names while the Italian artists languish under Anglo-Saxon aliases.

As the film opens, the blonde and vivacious Emelie (Ombretta Colli acting as “Joan Hills”), newly graduated from college, is traveling by coach in the company of two friends, the siblings Alice (Iran Eory, a Spanish and Iranian-born actress) and John Taylor (Vanni Materassi acting as “Richard Davis”), who have given up their plans to return to Dublin to accompany Emelie to her ancestral castle in Scotland. There, they are warmly greeted by Emelie’s older brother Rodéric (Tichy, who is given to ponderous solitary poundings of his harpsichord) whom she has not seen since childhood. Emelie will turn 21 in one week, thus inheriting the castle and its surrounding properties, which pretty much telegraphs any and all explanation needed of the unusual events attending her return. Home is not quite as Emelie remembers it; her father has died, the avuncular family butler she remembers has retired, and her beloved maid Dorothy has been gone to reside with relatives, and been replaced by the younger, colder, darkly beautiful Eleonore (Line). As if the new gangster-faced butler Alistair (Moran) wasn’t enough, a mysterious Dr. Atwell (Anchoriz, a Spanish Vincent Price if you will, paying nominal homage to actor Lionel Atwill) puts in a first-night appearance and engages Miss Eleonore in hushed conversations they don’t wish anyone, including Rodéric, to overhear. 

For Emelie and John, the next days lend themselves to courtship. Meanwhile, dark and stormy nights, corridor creepings à la candelabra, clocks tolling the midnight hour (twice!), and unexplained cries ensue as Alice, in a billowing see-through nightie, somewhat eclipsing Emelie as our most essential heroine, seeks her brother’s room in the depths and heights of the castle - where the breaths of the actors is frequently visible. She accidentally stumbles upon the shocking sight of Eleonora administering a sedative to a horribly disfigured monster. Fainting into Rodéric’s arms, Alice is later persuaded that she saw no such thing, though the lord of the manor soon makes the admission that his and Emelie’s (supposedly dead) father still lives, maddened and burnt beyond recognition from a house fire, and has now escaped somewhere into the woods enveloping the castle. Emelie determines to find him, to bring him home, till Rodéric breaks the news that she is the one he most wants to kill. Evidently, it’s an old Blackford legend that the family is foretold it will perish in its tenth generation when the last female descendant turns 21. The only way to perpetuate the family bloodline is to do away with the only Blackford capable of giving birth—how’s that for a Catch-22?

In a magnificent sequence, truly the atmospheric and poetic equal of anything in Bava’s BLACK SUNDAY (La maschera del demonio, 1960), Emelie is awakened by her monstrous father and led to the family’s astounding crypt (the previously noted Monasterio, nicely anticipating the abbey ruins of Corman's THE TOMB OF LIGEIA, 1965) where she's told to entomb herself for the good of the family. She reads the legend carved into the crypt wall and faints, whereupon she’s found by Dr. Atwell and Alistair, who carry her back to the castle. When John and Alice later discover Emelie walking in her sleep toward the crypt and snap her out of it, John begins to suspect Dr. Atwell of controlling the lady of the house through Mesmer's newfound practice of hypnosis, despite his being in the clear when attempts on Emelie’s life are made. This causes a rift between John and his sister, who has begun to feel romantically inclined toward the doctor. Emelie’s troubles culminate in her being discovered dead, to all appearances, despite her inner voice beseeching the guests at her funeral to realize that she’s still alive. The film's climactic sequence recalls Dreyer’s VAMPYR by way of Corman’s THE HOUSE OF USHER and PREMATURE BURIAL but it has its own sense of melodramatic grandeur, paid off with a special demise for its unmasked villain.

While HORROR/THE BLANCHEVILLE MONSTER can’t be called one of the best Italian Gothics, it’s directed, played, and also edited with appreciable style and sensitivity, and will be filed away by many as a special comfort food. In the world of Italian Gothic, presence is often equal—if not more important—to performance. Though this film is very well cast and acted with sincerity, even with some delicacy (particularly in the Italian version), Helga Liné dominates this one in a way she would few other films. She’s mostly familiar to fantastic cinema buffs for her work with Paul Naschy and Amando de Ossorio in the 1970s, but she's almost a different actress when filmed in black-and-white—a purer, higher creature of cinema. The Italian version works better than the English one with more clearly crafted dialogue that dissolves all the little confusions which sometimes arise when meaning is less important than matching lip movements. The score by Carlo Franci (Freda’s THE WITCH’S CURSE, HERCULES AGAINST THE MOON MEN), reportedly augmented with cues by Giuseppe Piccillo) is notably lacking in the usual obsessive melodic motifs found in such films, but it does its job in its own low-profile way. 

HORROR was produced by Italo Zingarelli, one of Mario Bava’s oldest friends in the film business and one of the very few who attended his very private funeral. While the film’s special effects are credited to Emilio Ruiz del Ruiz, Bava was rumored to have been responsible for the film’s miniature and matte effects of Castle Blackford, filmed in post-production back in Rome. The daylight long shot of the carriage rolling onto the grounds of the castle early in the film, reprised as the coach leaves at the end, is a beautifully rendered matte shot lent additional verisimilitude by a foregrounded veil of tangled birch wood. Other trick shots based nearer the castle are well designed and sold with a careful alignment of visual elements, though their bonding with double exposures of simulated rainfall falls short of being convincing in the same ways as similar shots in Bava’s DR. GOLDFOOT AND THE GIRL BOMBS (I due mafiosi dell’ FBI, 1966).

The extras are led by a relaxed and sometimes humorous audio commentary by Australian filmmaker (producer, director, editor, cinematographer) Paul Anthony Nelson, who establishes a comfortable familiarity with Italian Gothic, its many classics and practitioners. His talk offers welcome career details about the various principals (a few of whom passed away at fairly young ages) and likens the film not only to Corman’s Poe pictures but also earlier works by Bava and Freda, and to JANE EYRE and some novels of Jane Austen. There’s also a 20m visual essay on the film by pop culture historian Keith Allison, well-scripted and spoken, that explores the feature’s relationship to Corman’s reinvigorated approach to Poe and explores how other films in the early 1960s fostered more psychological, even experimental approaches to macabre storytelling. Author and filmmaker Antonio Tentori holds court with a nearly 14m discussion of Alberto de Martino’s work, HORROR in particular, and additionally perceives a strong connection to the work of Riccardo Freda. Also included are an eyesore representation of the film’s AIP-TV US credits, only moderately changed from the original, as well as an Italian trailer and an image gallery consisting of only two poster images.

NEXT UP: THE THIRD EYE!

(c) 2022 by Tim Lucas. All rights reserved.

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