Delirio di sangue (1988)

... aka: Blood Delirium
... aka: Delírio Sangrento
... aka: Delirium aimatos

Directed by:
Sergio Bergonzelli

Parisian concert pianist Sybille LeClercq (Brigitte Christensen) comes home and does what most women do after a long day's work: whips off her top and starts straightening up around the house while topless. While setting the table, a message comes over her answering machine from a woman claiming to be her sister, though she doesn't actually have a sister. The voice tells her "I'm speaking to you from the future as if I'm already dead." and tries to reassure her that no matter what she has her back. The voice instructs her to put two candles together so she can see that two small flames combined make one large one. Lights flash from outside the window, chairs and tables move, wind blows stuff around, the piano plays by itself and Christine is left understandably confused and rattled. Her annoying boyfriend, Gerard Dufraisse (Marco Di Stefano), then shows up to save the day. Gerard, who wears an ascot and has a braided ponytail and is thus just begging to be punched in the face, proves to have a personality to match his douchey looks when he laughs at his terrified girlfriend, immediately asks "Hey, what have you been smoking?" and demands his dinner. Elsewhere, the fatally ill Christine (also played by Christensen) tells her distraught husband Charles Saint-Simon (John Phillip Law), a famous painter, that they'll never be apart before she passes away.

Now feeling "emptiness... overflowing emptiness..." and unable to work on his art, Charles begins to lose his mind. Already one step ahead of him is his loyal butler Hermann (Gordon Mitchell), who's also in love with Christine... so much so that he can't help but to mount her corpse while it's in the casket at the church (!!) A year passes, and a frustrated Charles decides that he can't live without his muse, so he and Hermann go to the cemetery, remove the (now skeletal and maggoty) body from its tomb, bring it home and dress it up with a latex face mask. Even this does nothing to inspire the tortured painter. Meanwhile, at Sybille's flat, a gust of wind blows open a window and an invitation for one of Charles' exhibits flies in. She decides to go, meets Charles, notices the similarity between her and the late Christine (who also had a talent for playing the piano) and then decides to go visit Charles at his home; a large, crumbling, ancestral castle located deep in the country. Charles has a deep belief in reincarnation. In fact, he believes himself to be the reincarnation of Vincent Van Gogh. He also believes that one soul can be split into two bodies, which is what he believes has happened between Sybille and Christine.

Upon arrival, things start getting weird and horrifying. Charles is temperamental, angry, bitter and nothing Sybille does, whether it be playing Charles' favorite piece ("Delirium") on the piano or posing for his paintings, seems to inspire him. Sybille catches Hermann trying to dry hump and then sexually assault busty village girl Yvonne (Lucia Prato), but doesn't think much of it. Hermann later drags Yvonne to the grounds, tries to rape her in the horse stables, stabs her to death and then tries to molest the corpse. Charles stumbles upon the scene and finds himself drawn to the blood. Next thing you know, Yvonne's hanging upside and having her blood drained out. Charles starts painting with it Color Me Blood Red -style, while Hermann dismembers the body with a circular saw and feeds the scraps to their Doberman pinschers. Sybille discovers what's going on, tries to escape but is captured and dragged back to the castle, where Hermann drugs and rapes her while she has visions of lizards and maggots swarming over her face. Needing more blood, Charles sends Hermann to Paris to kidnap Sybille's friend Corinne (French porn actress Olinka Hardiman), but then Gerard gets suspicious and comes to the castle.

I wasn't expecting this one to be as sick as it actually is, and it's all the better for it really. Law's eyes get a workout as he bugs them out of his skull; going way over the top in his role as the deranged painter. Mitchell, though, has the most memorable part as the extremely horny and degenerate servant. He has his own little morbid museum of skulls, body parts and animals in the basement and toward the end even gets to give our heroine sedative shots directly into her vagina (!) to keep her in check. There's plenty of female nudity (though the scrawny lead actress looks like she could use a few protein bars) and some gore, and the ending gets pretty crazy with the castle being visited by bright ghost orbs which end up tearing the place down. Bergonzelli also made the extremely odd In the Folds of the Flesh (1970).

Blood Delirium was never released in the United States, though it was English dubbed. The only VHS I'm aware of was released in Greece under the title Delirium aimatos.

★★★

Terror! Il castello delle donne maledette (1974)

... aka: Dr. Frankenstein's Castle of Freaks
... aka: Frankenstein's Castle
... aka: Frankenstein's Castle of Freaks
... aka: House of Freaks, The
... aka: Monsters of Frankenstein, The

... aka: Terror Castle

Directed by:
"Robert H. Oliver" (Dick Randall)

Some people may like this cheap / silly / trashy exploitation monster mash more than I did. Sure it's mildly amusing at times and has a cast full of familiar faces, but I found it mostly dreary and dull. It was the directorial debut of Dick Randall (using the alias "Robert H. Oliver"), a man best known for producing a large number of sleazy horror and exploitation movies spanning three decades (early 60s until the early 90s). Count Frankenstein (Rossano Brazzi, star of the screen version of South Pacific) is busy at work at the lab in his castle home, sending out his greasy gravediggers to get corpses for his experiments, and tinkering around with a tied-up, unibrow-sporting cave man named Goliath (Loren Ewing). The doc's beautiful, straight-laced young daughter Maria (played by "Simone Blondell"... any relation to Joan?) shows up with her fiance Eric (Eric Mann) and her best friend Krista (Christiane "Royce" / Rucker, from that great West German Gothic horror film THE TORTURE CHAMBER OF DR. SADISM). Dr. Frankenstein takes a liking to Krista, but will his wicked ways spoil their blossoming romance? One of the count's assistants is the dwarf Genz (3'4" Michael Dunn, who had received an Oscar nod for Ship of Fools in 1965), a real sick-o type who fondles dead bodies, spies on the women bathing and having sex, and is eventually kicked out on the castle for being a little pervert.

Genz teams up with Ook ("Boris Lugosi" aka Salvatore Baccaro aka the hairy missing link rapist in THE BEAST IN HEAT), yet another cave-dwelling Neanderthal man outcast, and the two plot to get back at the doctor. In one scene the duo kidnap a girl from town, tie her up and rape and kill her (which takes place off-screen). Genz tells Ook, "I'm going to teach you the pleasures of life!" Goliath escapes and starts killing everyone he can get his paws on and townspeople with torches show up for the finale. Frankenstein's army of "freaks" also includes muscular henchman Igor (Gordon Mitchell, the star of many Italian peplum flicks apparently looking for work now that his genre dried up), hunchback Kreegin (Xiro Papas - who played the titular creature in a similar Euro-sleaze effort called Frankenstein '80) and butler Hans ("Alan Collins" / Luciano Pigozzi). Edmund Purdom also shows up as the local prefect (police chief).

The absolute funniest thing about this dreary, seedy sleazefest is that it was rated PG! Yessir, I have the old Magnun VHS (nudity and sick content intact) which clearly has the rating printed on the cover. Was Helen Keller chairman of the rating's board that year or something? The best quality DVD prints are the ones released from Raro and Something Weird. Other budget labels seems to be video transfers, while Raro and SW's use the 35mm and 16mm prints, respectively.

★1/2

Croce dalle sette pietre, La (1987)

...aka: Cross of the Seven Jewels

...aka: Talisman

Directed by:

Marco Antonio Andolfi

So bad... I don't even know where to begin. What an overly-complicated mess! Undoubtedly one of the worst werewolf films of all time. It may also be one of the worst romances, one of the worst crime flicks, one of the worst action movies and one of the worst occult thrillers ever created. Why? Because it tries to be all these things at once and fails miserably at all of them! Director Mario Antonio Andolfi, who also edited the picture and did the "special" effects, takes on more jobs than he should have since he obviously has little talent in any of the above areas. He also decided it was a good idea to cast himself (using the name "Eddy Endolf") in the lead role. In addition, he also provided the screenplay, so it's no surprise that the females in the cast keep fawning over how "good looking" and "cute" he is. One of the ladies even says "I've always dreamed of meeting a man like you." A-hem. Now Andolfi really isn't a terrible looking guy and he obviously likes to keep in shape, but it's hard to watch a film as lame and cheap as this one without rolling your eyes over how ridiculously narcissistic the whole thing is. As has been pointed out elsewhere, it's basically a silly vanity production and one of those movies that was conceived by someone wanting to showcase how multi-talented and appealing they assume they are. When these things don't work out, there's a certain smugness to them that's pretty irritating. Technical incompetence and horn tooting aside, what really turns this movie into a headache-inducing bore is how overly-complicated, unfocused and talky it is.

The film opens with Gordon Mitchell presiding over a red-lit black mass ceremony where he keeps chanting about Aborin while people in silly S&M attire and black harnesses roll around on the floor, a topless woman is whipped and some fat old guy in a thong keeps rubbing up against a woman. Meanwhile, successful banker Marco Sartori (guess who?) has just arrived at a train station in Naples on an invite from his cousin Carmella, who he's never met. As she starts showing him around the city, Mitchell's character appears on a beach where a heroin deal is taking place. He gets those junkies to steal Marco's precious silver cross necklace with multi-colored jewels. Marco flips out. He needs to get back the necklace because it prevents him from transforming into a werewolf. Marco discovers that the woman who claimed to be his cousin actually was an impostor who set him up. He follows clues back to a nightclub. There he meets a prostitute/drug dealer named Maria (HOUSE ON THE EDGE OF THE PARK's Annie Belle), who became trapped in a life of crime after her parents were killed but now wants out. Marco ends up tied to a chair where a bunch of thugs rough him up because they want him to give him the names of all his millionaire customers. After escaping that situation, Marco ends up confronting a black market dealer, whose head ends up melting after he's pushed against a wall (?) Marco and Maria naturally fall in love, and she accompanies him around to different Italian cities in his frantic search for the necklace. On occasion, the beast comes out and he has no control over his actions. And what a beast it is! More of that to come...

The plot line gets insanely overstuffed before long. Marco ends up smack in the middle of this huge Italian crime ring that specializes in drug trafficking and various other crimes. There's talk of Camorra bosses, Moroccon coke connections, political corruption, truth serums, terrorism and all kinds of other stuff that isn't the least bit interesting. Even more time is wasted with a clichéd, boring police investigation that serves no purpose whatsoever. And if that's not enough, there's a long nightmare sequence that shows repeat footage of stuff we've already seen cut in with flash-forwards of stuff we haven't seen yet but are about to. One scene is a flashback to how Marco acquired the necklace as a toddler. Apparently, his mother gave it to him before a Chewbacca-look ape monster made her stomach explode before disappearing into thin air (!?) The same oversexed demon ape creature thing also makes an appearance at Mitchell's Satanic hoe-down, where it has sex with a topless blonde cultist. By the way, all of these black mass scenes seem completely disconnected from the rest of the film and have no relevance to the rest of the story. None of the characters appear together on screen at any time. It's as if they were tacked on a later date solely to provide additional nudity.

Ultimately, Marco learns that his necklace has fallen into the hands of medium and occult science expert Madame Amnesia. And when he shows up to get it, she starts her psychic session dressed in lingerie. This leads to a gratuitous rape sequence. Yep, werewolf psychic rape complete with foamy drool. Not as good as it sounds folks. And I haven't even mentioned that this has what could easily be the worst werewolf "costume" ever created. It consists of long hair that covers the top part of the head only, some furry gloves and a small codpiece so Marco doesn't show his junk. Otherwise, he basically runs around bare-assed clawing, biting and throwing people around. Again, not nearly as good as it sounds. The transformation scenes use time lapse photography. The dubbed dialogue is awkward as hell. When's the last time someone woke you up by saying, "End of sleeping period." And when's the last time a growling crime ring leader gritted his teeth to call you a "damned little fat head!" Fans of horrible, cheap, trashy, inept movies may like this one but I actually found it pretty boring overall.

★

La vendetta di Lady Morgan (1965)

... aka: Folterhaus Der Lady Morgan

... aka: Vendetta of Lady Morgan, The

Directed by:

Massimo Pupillo

As a fan of Gothic Euro horrors from the 60s and as a fan of several people in the cast, I really wanted to check out this extremely hard to find film, which for a long time was presumed to be lost. Unfortunately I had to settle for watching a washed-out looking, green-tinted, too-dark TV dupe from many years ago. I'm not sure if this has been released in other countries, but there's no R1 DVD, nor was it ever officially released to video. The print I saw was also only in Italian with no subs, and since I don't speak Italian, I had to try to make sense out of the plot the best I could. Thankfully, it's not too hard to follow along since this uses a similar old-dark-house horror template that was popular during this time. It's full of the expected lecherous, immortal men and women who populate Gothic horror of the time. It also has all of the plot and visual elements one may expect - backstabbing, adultery, false allegiances, creaking doors, fog, long dark hallways, thunderstorms and ultimately, revenge enacted on those who certainly have it coming. VENDETTA was one of three such horror-thrillers directed by Massimo Pupillo (under the name "Max Hunter") that same year. The other two were the exploitation favorite THE BLOODY PIT OF HORROR and 5 TOMBE PER UN MEDIUM (released as TERROR-CREATURES FROM THE GRAVE here in the U.S.) This one isn't the best of its type, but it's certainly not the worst I've seen either.

Susan Elaine Blackhouse (Barbara Nelli) and her lover Pierre Brissac (Michel Forain) plan to be married but a shadowy figure in a cape knocks out Pierre and pushes his unconscious body off the side of a boat, where it's presumed he drowned. Heartbroken, Susan reluctantly agrees to an arranged marriage to Sir Harold Morgan (Paul Muller) and goes to live in his mansion home with him and several servants. She goes away with her father on a trip and when she returns she discovers her favorite servant Josef is missing but in his place is a mysterious and sinister new housekeeper named Lilian (Erika Blanc). Also staying in the home are Roger (top-billed Gordon Mitchell), a butler and Harold's right-hand-man, and Terry (Edith MacGoven), an obedient maid. Strange things begin happening soon after Susan arrives. She starts hearing Lilian's voice calling to her at night. She's awoken from her sleep and when she tries to leave her room discovers the door is locked and she can't get out. Freshly poured wine disappears from a glass. A snake appears in her bed. She hears a man's screams in the night. She also walks down to the cellar and thinks she sees Roger whipping the chained up missing servant Josef. Is Susan cracking up or are some of the characters conspiring against her?

As is customary with this type of film, it turns out to be the latter. Harold and Lilian are actually lovers and are plotting to do away with young, innocent Susan. Since I couldn't make out the dialogue I have to assume it was for money since that's usually the case. Anyway, the voices Susan hears are indeed coming from Lilian, who uses a hidden intercom device to send her sinister voice into Susan's bedroom to manipulate her actions and thoughts. Lilian is also adept at hypnosis and manages to get a sleepwalking Susan to follow her through a stairwell up to the rooftop, where she plunges to her death. All the while, Susan's former lover Pierre turns out to be alive in a hospital suffering from amnesia. The minute Susan hits the ground he snaps out of his condition and starts remembering his former life and former love. He goes to the home to try to locate Susan and comes into contact with her ghost. Then comes the revenge portion...

Back at the Morgan Manor, Harold, Lilian, Roger and Terry start getting the ghost haunting treatment as candles blow out or light themselves, doors creak open and shut, wine turns to water, water turns to blood, furniture tips over, the urn holding Susan's ashes smolders and explodes and clouds of smoke puff out of the floorboards. The four evil-doers then start panicking and turn on each other. When Roger thinks he's stabbing a ghost behind a curtain, he's actually stabbing and killing Terry. Susan's ghost leaves a pair of Roger's shoes by Lilian's bedside to let Harold in on the fact Lilian and Roger are secretly lovers. Angered, Harold snaps and strangles Lilian to death. Harold and Roger then promptly get into a fight that leads up to the roof, where Harold falls to his death. When Roger goes to leave he's trampled to death by a white horse controlled by Susan that kicks his face until it's a bloody mess. And then things get even stranger as the ghosts of all four evildoers appear as blood-sucking phantoms, who at one point start lapping blood up off the floor. Can Pierre manage to get out of this sticky situation?

It's a decent film of its genre, even though it's slow moving and gets rather ridiculous and overblown at the end. Primarily set-bound, there are a few decent atmospheric shots of horses galloping through fog, close-ups of glistening water, Blanc holding a candle and leading Nelli up a long staircase and some other touches Gothic horror lovers will appreciate, though they'd no doubt look much better on a restored print (if we ever get one). There's a romantic, if sometimes overbearing, music score provided by Peter O'Milian (if that's not an alias). The major plus here it he casting. Nelli is fairly good (and lovely) as the lady-in-peril, Muller (playing a role somewhat similar to his part in NIGHTMARE CASTLE) does his sleazy character justice as he always does and Mitchell is also good, if a little over-the-top. The standout here though it really Blanc, who's perfect as the nasty seductress Lilian. She frequently gets to chastises the staff ("Stupida!"... "Idiota!") and gives off some wonderfully sinister facial expressions throughout.

★★1/2