Spaghetti Western veteran Antonio De Teffe
(aka Anthony Steffen) stars in this delightfully tacky supernatural
giallo from Italian filmmaker Emilio P. Miraglia.
De Teffe plays Alan Cunningham, a titled nobleman who has
just been released from a mental institution after a breakdown
brought about by the death of his beautiful red-haired wife,
Evelyn.
Alan isn't quite right, and despite loads of helpful advice
from his doctor and money-hungry cousin, can't stop picking
up red-haired women and dragging them back to his castle dungeon,
where his desire to punish his late wife's infidelity leads
to some hallucinatory S & M murders.
Eventually he meets the beautiful Gladys (Marina Malfatti)
and quickly marries her, generating a good deal of anger among
his greedy relatives.
That's when members of his family start disappearing and the
obligatory inheritance plot tightens around the deranged lord,
raising the question of whether Evelyn is really dead after
all.
Miraglia directs with a somewhat plodding style atypical for
the normally lively genre, but the film's cheese value is
enhanced by a wonderfully schizophrenic score by Bruno Nicolai;
an amusingly dotty production design;
and enough sex, kinkiness, and violence to satisfy any giallo
fan.
Erika Blanc (aka Enrica Bianchi Colombatto) makes an impression
as one of the strippers Alan brings to his dungeon, Alan's
dead aunt (Joan C. Davies) is devoured by a cageful of hungry
foxes, and the cast also includes familiar genre faces Umberto
Raho and Giacomo Rossi-Stuart.
Cast:
Joan C. Davies, Roberto Maldera, Vito de Taranto, Marina Malfatti,
Rod Murdock, Umberto Raho, Giacomo Rossi-Stuart, Anthony Steffen,
Erica Blanc
Director:
Emilio Miraglia |
