"Excellent Presentation of Four Great Italian Gothic Obscurities"
Arrow are releasing a Blu-ray box set of lesser known (to me, anyway) black and white Italian gothics from the 1960s, a decade when that country's horror cinema was informed as much by its own pioneers, including Mario Bava and Riccardo Freda, as it was by the movies being made by Hammer in the UK and Roger Corman in the US. Four films are presented here over four discs, each one packed with fascinating extras, so let's dive and see what each has to offer:
Disc One: Lady Morgan's Vengeance (1965)
We kick off with this cracking, fast-paced, event-filled gothic from Massimo Pupillo, who was also responsible for the same year's BLOODY PIT OF HORROR and TERROR CREATURES FROM THE GRAVE before he decided he didn't want to be typecast and sadly (very sadly on the basis of this) didn't make any more.
LADY MORGAN'S VENGEANCE welds together two familiar gothic tropes: 'Let's drive a young woman mad to inherit her fortune' and 'Ghost gets revenge on its murderers.' Barbara Nelli plays the title character and Erika Blanc (THE DEVIL'S NIGHTMARE and THE NIGHT EVELYN CAME OUT OF THE GRAVE amongst others) and Paul Muller (LADY FRANKENSTEIN and some of Jess Franco's best work) are the two doing the driving mad, with the help of the servants. The acting is vigorous, the photography is atmospheric and the location is the same one used in Fernando Di Leo's ASYLUM EROTICA (or whatever of its myriad titles you prefer to call it). It also has an ending that's not at all typical for the time. Lovely.
Extras on Arrow's disc include Vengeance From Beyond which is a short four minute introduction to the movie by Mark Thompson Ashworth that's best watched before the film and sets up what you're about to watch succinctly and enthusiastically. Alexandra Heller-Nicholas provides commentary duties with an academic approach to the film's themes, including gaslighting and domestic violence.
The Grudge is a 21 minute video essay by Kat Ellinger that discusses 1960s Italian horror's focus on female lead characters, drawing fascinating parallels with Japanese and South Korean cinema of the period. When We Were Vampires is 24 minutes with Erika Blanc who at 79 still has an amazing memory for detail, talking about the movie and DEVIL'S NIGHTMARE a bit as well. The Blanc interview is new, whereas Paul Muller's interview, Born to be a Villain, is from 2014. He remembers very little about the film but has plenty of stories about his life and career (and his meeting Bette Davis) that keeps this 20 minutes piece interesting. The Pupillo Tapes is a 20 minute audio interview with the director from 1993 recorded for Italian radio where the director talks about his career and clears up who 'Ralph Zucker' (credited director on one of his movies) actually was.
You also get the 1971 Cineromanzo of the film - basically a photonovel in 59 pages, and an image gallery of eight stills and posters.
Disc Two: The Blancheville Monster aka Horror (1963)
There's a heavy Poe influence to this Italian-Spanish co-production, in which Ombretta Coli (billed as 'Joan Hills') returns to her crumbling ancestral home to both mourn the death of her father and celebrate her 21st birthday. The fact her older brother is called Roderick (Gerard Tichy) suggests there's a family curse at work here and the presence of Helga Liné as a stern-looking housekeeper suggests other shenanigans might be at work as well, which they most certainly are.
Alberto De Martino's THE BLANCHEVILLE MONSTER (US title - I actually prefer the less specific HORROR as it was known in Italy) boasts some fabulous locations, including a crumbling Spanish abbey where you'd swear the Blind Dead are about to pop out of the ground. There's also a model castle and some matte paintings, all rendered more effective by the black and white photography. Carlo Franci's score provides some splendidly manic harpsichord. The film was directly influenced by Roger Corman's movies and there's a dream sequence present and correct here, as well as a premature burial.
The extra you should watch before the film starts is Mark Thompson Ashworth's seven minute Castle of Blood where he again talks a little about the production of the movie & sets the scene for what you are about to see. Film historian and film-maker Paul Anthony Nelson provides scene-specific commentary duties on this one.
Other extras include Are You Sure It Wasn't Just Your Imagination?, a video essay by Keith Allison that covers the 1960s Poe cinema bases without adding anything new, and I cannot agree with him that 'there's nothing much to say about' the style of director Alberto De Martino, who I think gives us a number of memorable shots and set-ups in this one. In fact I enjoyed BLANCHEVILLE MONSTER more than his later HOLOCAUST 2000.
Welcome to the Manor is film historian Antonio Tentori talking about the film, its influences (including Riccardo Freda's HORRIBLE DR HICHCOCK). You also get a trailer, an image gallery that consists of two posters, and the US opening titles from a rather scratchy print.
Disc 3: The Third Eye (1966)
Franco Nero in a film that apparently inspired Joe D'Amato's BEYOND THE DARKNESS? Count me in! And yes, Franco does indeed play a rich, taxidermy-obsessed young man. When his fiance (Erika Blanc) dies in a car accident he hits on the perfect way to preserve her memory and, well, her body as well. Of course that's not enough and so off he goes to pick up strippers and prostitutes to take home. After he's finished with them Marta his evil sexy housekeeper (Gioia Pascal) disposes of them in acid. Gleefully perverse and unashamedly lurid it's a great shame director Mino Guerrini didn't make more films like this.
You know the drill by now. Start with The Cold Kiss of Death which is Mark Thompson Ashworth's introduction. Rachael Nisbet's commentary track provides plenty of detail about the production, the cast and crew and the movie's influences. All Eyes on Erika is another 15 minutes with Erika Blanc who again demonstrates her amazing memory for movies made nearly 60 years ago. Nostalgia Becomes Necrophilia is a 12 minute video essay in which Lindsay Hallam essentially describes the onscreen action in selected scenes and then compares some of them to sequences in Alfred Hitchcock's PSYCHO. There's also an image gallery with a couple of posters and stills.
Disc 4: The Witch (1966)
As Mark Thompson Ashworth asserts in his introduction to this one, THE WITCH isn't like the other films in this box set. Instead of gloomy castles, Poe, Hammer and similar influences what we get here is a very modern gothic (for 1966, anyway) indeed, suffused with influences from contemporary 'mainstream' cinema of the period.
Richard Johnson plays a character who could easily be a John Osborne-type Angry Young Man who has by happenstance found himself living La Dolce Vita, picking up and dropping women to suit his needs. He gets a job working in the library of elderly Consuela (Sarah Ferrati) and is soon finds himself under the spell of her beautiful daughter Aura (Rosanna Schiaffino at her most bewitching). His rival for her affections is the current librarian (Gian Maria Volonte) with whom she seems to have already established a relationship. But nothing is quite what it seems.
THE WITCH aka STRANGE OBSESSION is by far the most 'modern' of the films presented in this set. Even though most of the (dialogue heavy) action takes place in a huge old house, some of the scenes (especially between Johnson and Volonte) are reminiscent of British kitchen sink dramas. It all goes pleasingly gothically mad at the end, though.
The commentary track for this one is from Kat Ellinger who provides plenty of insight and opinion on this one, and plenty of enthusiasm, too. You need to watch Miranda Corcoran's 25 minute video essay on the history of witches in myth and folklore after the film because it's got plenty of spoilers - you have been warned. Antonio Tentori's piece is another 18 minutes about the film and its makers. His comment that director Damiano Damiani is best known for his social commentary movies might raise a smile amongst those who know him mainly for directing the best Amityville movie (not exactly difficult) AMITYVILLE II: THE POSSESSION. Finally you get an image gallery that concentrates on Rosanna Schiaffino and why not?
The bottom line: Arrow's box sets are far more often hit than miss but Gothico Fantastico really is something extra special, preserving and restoring four lesser known Italian classics that many fans will be surprised to learn exist and delighted to experience. That plus a wealth of extras makes this one of the releases of the year. A must buy.
Gothico Fantastico: Four Italian Tales of Terror is out in a four disc Blu-ray box set from Arrow Films on Monday 17th October 2022, in plenty of time for Halloween
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