The gothic mode in Italian horror was effectively launched, and reached its early apotheosis, with the release of Mario Bava’s Black Sunday in 1960. An ensuing tidal wave of likeminded films flooded the market throughout the ’60s, before starting to dry up in the early ’70s, as the more modernist-inclined (and frequently more graphic) giallo came into prominence. Now Severin Films has gathered together four vintage examples of the Italian gothic trend in their new box set Danza Macabra Volume One. When it comes to sex and violence, those two requisite mainstays of the genre, the films run the gamut from almost timidly titillating to unabashedly lurid.
Renato Polselli’s The Monster of the Opera, from 1964, opens with arguably its strongest set piece, which is revealed to have been a dream sequence. This allows Polselli to openly embrace a surrealist aesthetic through oneiric slow motion, tilted cameras, disorienting high- and low-angle shots, and bizarre developments like the unexpected appearance of an invisible barrier that corners prima ballerina Giulia (Barbara Hawards in her only screen credit) just as a pursuing vampire, Stefano (Giuseppe Addobbati), catches up with her.
If only the rest of the film—whose cozily familiar plot involves a theatrical troupe that takes over a spooky old theater replete with resident vampire—had been equally unconventional. Instead we get a series of discordant tonal shifts that will be familiar to anyone who’s seen other Polselli titles like 1973’s Black Magic Rites, some rather chaste suggestions of Sapphic love (including intimations of a frolicky threesome), and several protracted dance numbers in their entirety. Amusingly, The Monster of the Opera even manages to make the dancing integral to its plot as a way to ward off the vampire’s unwanted advances: “Just keep moving!”
The Seventh Grave, from 1965, represents the sole outing for director and co-writer Garibaldi Serra Caracciolo. The storyline is an unapologetic mashup of Paul Leni’s The Cat and the Canary and the sort of Agatha Christie whodunit where it’s ultimately revealed that several murders were committed to hide the killer’s motivation for one of the crimes. A group of strangers gather in a remote mansion to hear the reading of a will. Before the deceased’s intentions can be revealed, though, there will be several murders, rumors of an escaped leper, flights along hidden passageways, and enough cobwebs to choke a horse.
The film’s true strengths are Aldo Graci’s moody monochrome cinematography and the atmospheric locations, though none actually resemble “Old Scotland,” which is where a title card informs us the story is set. The Seventh Grave’s one legitimately astounding sequence involves a séance, which is staged as a series of off-kilter geometric patterns: circles of disembodied hands and faces, shot from below, and illuminated against an inky black void. It’s a tour de force that may leave you wondering what Caracciolo might’ve come up with if he had made more films. So it’s doubly ironic that The Seventh Grave’s stridently warned against precisely the sort of supernaturalism that provided the film with its most memorable scene.
José Luis Merino’s 1970 Italian-Spanish coproduction Scream of the Demon Lover centers on lovely young biochemist, Ivanna Rakowski (Erna Schurer), who arrives at the foreboding castle of Baron Janos Dalmar (Charles Quiney), ostensibly to assist him in some experiments concerning the (possibly eternal) prolongation of human existence. Meanwhile, a series of grisly murders have taken place in the vicinity, the victims all nubile young women mutilated almost beyond recognition. Merino’s film, incidentally, is far more explicit in its lashings of sex and violence than earlier titles in this set. Then, too, the bloodshed seems all the more disturbing for being shot by Emanuele Di Cola in garish hues of Eastmancolor.
Scream of the Demon Lover proves progressively inclined, given that it features a plucky, headstrong protagonist who’s more than capable of holding her own against the overbearing master of the house, at least until the incendiary finale. The bristly dynamic between the two leads, as well as several of the incidental plot points, reveal the unmistakable influence of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre on the production. On the other hand, several of the film’s lubricious acts of perverse sadomasochism wouldn’t seem out of place in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights, particularly the scene where Janos’s disfigured brother, Igor (Enzo Fisichella), frenziedly whips Janos’s hounds as an expression of defiantly repressed sexuality.
Partly financed and released in the U.S. in 1971 by Roger Corman’s New World Pictures, and directed by Mel Welles (Gravis Mushnick from Corman’s Little Shop of Horrors), Lady Frankenstein looks like what would happen if a crackerjack crew of Italian technicians made a Hammer film. The period production design is faultless; Riccardo Pallottini’s Eastmancolor photography, with its recurrent splashes of Bava-inflected reds and greens, looks ravishing; and the makeup effects from Carlo Rambaldi, though a bit scrappy with regard to the design of the Monster (Riccardo Pizzuti), for the most part come across as quite effectively ghoulish.
Like Scream of the Demon Lover, Welles’s film gets a lot of mileage out of its scientifically inclined female lead, played here by the sultry Rosalba Neri. Unlike Ivanna, who remains steadfast throughout, Neri’s Tania Frankenstein develops (or is it devolves?) from the buttoned-down acolyte of her famous father (Joseph Cotten) into a smoldering seductress who lures Baron Frankenstein’s brainy colleague, Dr. Charles Marshall (Paul Muller), into performing illicit medical experiments, and eventually committing murder. While it partly seems like a progressive nod to female emancipation, Lady Frankenstein is mostly nihilistic, embracing as it does the virtually apocalyptic merger of sex and death in its fiery, resolutely downbeat finale.
The dance macabre, or dance of death, is a morbid bit of iconography from the late Middle Ages, showing differing levels of society from king to beggar being led hand-in-hand by the skeletonized figure of death itself. One is famously depicted at the end of The Seventh Seal, Ingmar Bergman’s fantasia of medieval miserabilism. The four films collected in Severin’s Danza Macabra Volume One box set supply a tantalizing array of ghastly delights, even if only one of them elects to treat the titular death-dance metaphor in a quite literal fashion.
Image/Sound
Severin provides the four films in this set with sparkling new restorations. Scream of the Demon Lover comes from a 16mm single strand negative, so it looks a trifle soft at times, and grain is pretty thick throughout, but the rich color palette comes across quite nicely. The other films were all sourced from 35mm negatives, and their images look gorgeous, whether they’re made in moody monochrome or deeply saturated color. The four films all come with a Master Audio mono mix, and Scream of the Demon Lover and Lady Frankenstein also include an English dub. The tracks are clean and clear, with their respective scores (geared, of course, toward the eerie and otherworldly) sounding delightfully full-bodied.
Extras
Each film comes with an informative commentary (Lady Frankenstein boasts two) that thoroughly outlines its production history, delves deeply into its themes and visual strategies, and provides a lot of insight into its particular handling of the gothic mode. Contributors include film writer and editor Kat Ellinger, film critic Rachel Nisbet, podcaster Rod Barnett and editor Robert Monell, authors Alan Jones and Kim Newman, and film scholar Rose Malamet.
Elsewhere, on-camera and audio interview subjects include director Renato Polselli, screenwriter Ernesto Gastaldi, and actresses Erna Schurer and Rosalba Neri, who reminisce about their involvement with their respective films. Also included is a slate of video essays that touch on various aspects of the films, created by Italian film devotee Mark Thompson-Ashworth, film historian Fabio Melelli, gothic scholar Rachel Knightley, and author Stephen Thrower.
Not surprisingly, given its status as a cult film, Lady Frankenstein receives the lion’s share of the supplements, including a 2007 German making-of documentary, a short piece on director Mel Welles, a video appreciation from author Julian Grainger, and lots of entertaining ephemera: alternate opening titles, clothed insert scenes, a photo novel, and so on.
Overall
Severin cherry-picks four enjoyably atmospheric films in the Italian gothic mode, all of them sporting sparkling new restorations, as well as a cornucopia of insightful bonus materials.
Since 2001, we've brought you uncompromising, candid takes on the world of film, music, television, video games, theater, and more. Independently owned and operated publications like Slant have been hit hard in recent years, but we’re committed to keeping our content free and accessible—meaning no paywalls or fees.
If you like what we do, please consider subscribing to our Patreon or making a donation.
One wonders why Severine chose to use a 16mm version of Scream of the Demon Lover. The image is obviously bad. It’s very disappointing and prompts us to be wary when buying editions from this company.