Il medaglione insanguinato (1975)

... aka: Bloody Medallion, The

... aka: Cursed Medallion, The

... aka: Émilie, l'enfant des ténèbres (Emily, the Child of Darkness)

... aka: Night Child, The

... aka: Perché?! (Why?!)

... aka: Possédée (Possessed)

... aka: Together Forever

Directed by:

Max (Massimo) Dallamano

Innocent little girl possessed by an unseen, evil force? I bet we've all seen that a time or two or twenty already, but that's the price we all must pay when a film becomes as big of a cultural phenomenon as The Exorcist was in the 1970s. Afterward, the gates were open for tons of imitators to start flooding the market. While some of these copied Friedkin's film pretty blatantly, others (like this one) actually had next to nothing to do with the film and simply played up the child possession angle for marketing purposes. Most were cheap, low grade, instantly forgettable exploitation films made by minimally-talented directors. The fact this one wasn't and has plenty of talented people, in front of and behind the camera, involved made me set my hopes a little bit higher than usual for this one.

Director Dallamano was a very good cinematographer who'd previously shot the classic Sergio Leone spaghetti westerns A Fistful of Dollars (1964) and A Few Dollars More (1965) starring Clint Eastwood. He'd also directed the campy but surprisingly progressive and entertaining Oscar Wilde adaptation DORIAN GRAY (1970) as well as WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO SOLANGE? (1972), one of the better Italian giallos from that time. In addition to that, this is headlined by a much better cast than usual.

BBC filmmaker / host Michael Williams (Richard Johnson) is busy working on a project called "Diabolical Art," a documentary about sinister old paintings. After tragically losing his wife, Lisa (Dana Ghia), in a fire, he's been left to care for their young daughter, Emily (Nicoletta Elmi). He's hired young and pretty, but depressive governess Jill Perkins ("Evelyn Stuart" / Ida Galli) to help and she's grown attached to both Michael (who she's secretly fallen in love with) and Emily. Despite the fact the mother died awhile back, as of yet Emily has been unable to get over it and is plagued by horrifying nightmares of her untimely demise. Michael takes her to a psychiatrist (Edmund Purdom), who notes that she has an unhealthy attachment to him (not surprising since mom is no longer in the picture), and recommends he allow her to stay by his side as much as possible until she starts improving. That means Michael will need three plane tickets instead of one since he's set to travel to Spoleto, Italy to research his project.

Upon arrival in Italy, Michael meets up with his production manager Joanna Morgan and is instantly smitten with the American beauty, which is understandable since she's played by a young and vibrant Joanna Cassidy. Naturally, that doesn't sit too well with Little Miss Electra Complex, who wants ALL of daddy's attention and obnoxiously interrupts their flirty conversations whenever possible.

Michael goes to visit occult expert and psychic Contessa Cappelli (Lila Kedrova), who's been advising him on his project and sending him information about some of the artwork he's planning on featuring. Well, aside from one enigmatic piece. There is no documentation for its origins or who the artist was who created it. Rumor has it that 200 years ago the painting miraculously appeared one day after a little girl vanished, never to be seen again. The Contessa pleads with Michael not to use the painting in his program, but he insists upon it. The fact it depicts a burning woman, and his wife also met a fiery end, may have something to with that. The first attempt to film the painting is ruined by some kind of green shadowy figure that shows up on the negative, which the developer says is not a smudge nor a defect in the film.

Michael and Joanna go back to the abandoned home where the painting is housed, only to be almost crushed when a statue falls over. At the same time the statue busts on the floor, Emily wakes up screaming. Jill attempts to comfort her, but Emily bites her, spits in her face, throws vases at her and tries to jump out of several windows until she's finally restrained. The incident is blamed on a bad nightmare. Several things are found to have been hidden inside the statue, perhaps dating back hundreds of years, including an old piece of cloth, a double-bladed sword and a silver medallion, which looks identical to one Michael's late wife used to own that he's since given to Emily. Several deaths follow as the mystery behind the painting, the medallion and Emily's strange, erratic behavior are uncovered.

Unlike most of the other films this is usually categorized with, Il medaglione insanguinato ("The Bloody Medallion") is professionally made and performed, and clearly put together with more skill and care than is the norm. This is not an exploitation horror film, but instead an attempt at a mature adult ghost / possession story. It's measured, atmospheric and elegant in its approach, sometimes quite haunting yet also very slow-moving and downgraded by its thin, vague and often uninvolving plot. 

Thanks to the picturesque locations, Franco Delli Colli's photography and all of the production design people, everything looks really fantastic here, though. There's plenty of beautiful outdoor scenery in nice autumn colors and crumbling old villas with lush overgrown gardens, which somehow look even more beautiful on the inside. The director obviously knows how great everything looks because he spends a lot of time lingering on it all. Perhaps a little too much time actually. There's also a lovely, albeit repetitive, score from Stelvio Cipriani.

By this point, child actress Elmi already had a filmography that actors fifty years her senior would be envious of, having worked with Mario Bava (twice), Dario Argento, Luchino Visconti and other prominent Italian filmmakers before she even hit puberty. She's been given her best role ever here and puts on a pretty good show scowling, screaming, crying and getting to go bonkers in several scenes. The rest of the actors are likewise fine and it's especially nice that Kedrova has been given a prominent role. Usually veteran actors are brought on board to exploit their name and are then wasted in a couple of scenes, but Kedrova is given a lot to do here in an important supporting role that's not some glorified cameo. The cast also includes roles for Riccardo Garrone and an uncredited Tom Felleghy who, like Purdom, are both in just one scene.

Released theatrically to little fanfare in the U.S. in 1976 under the title Night Child, this came and went and was forgotten for decades. Despite possession movies being popular and the presence of several notable stars (Cassidy even appears topless in two scenes), which you'd think would have at least ensured some interest on rental store shelves, this somehow managed to bypass a VHS release altogether here in the United States. It was however given an English-language video release in Canada on the Cocktail Video label. Some of those tapes probably ended up in U.S. video stores.

In 2008, Sinister Cinema offered a two disc release that featured both a raggedy English-dubbed print (from the theatrical release) as well as a restored, widescreen Italian version with English subtitles. Two years later, a better quality dubbed version was released by Code Red, which came with an interview with Johnson carted over from their release of BEYOND THE DOOR (1974), an actual Exorcist rip-off, unlike this one. That was followed by a 2015 Blu-ray release from the same company, which has a brief interview with Cassidy. Arrow Video handled the UK Blu-ray release. Extras on all of these releases have been pretty disappointing.

★★1/2

La mansión de la niebla (1972)

... aka: Das Haus im Nebel (House in the Fog)

... aka: El grito (The Scream)

... aka: Exorcism Mansion

... aka: Mansion of Mist, The

... aka: Murder Mansion, The

... aka: Quando Marta urlò dalla tomba (When Marta Screamed from the Grave)

Directed by:

F. (Francisco) Lara Polop

Various people are traveling through the country. There's motorcyclist Fred (Andrés Resino), who gets into a dick swinging contest with sports car driver Mr. Foster (Franco Fantasia), which starts out with a race and is followed by a game of "Who gets the sexy hitchhiker?" when they spot the miniskirt-clad redhead Laura (the gorgeous Lisa Leonardi) standing by the road. With his cool and less sex predator-y approach, Fred ends up with the girl on the back of his bike. Then there's Mr. Tremont (Eduardo Fajardo), a calculating and thoroughly amoral lawyer who married his former partner's wife (Yelena Samarina) to get full control of their business. The obscenely wealthy and business-focused, yet mentally fragile, Elsa (Analía Gadé) has yet to fully get over the death of her beloved father and is stuck with a two-timing husband who's only with her for her money. Most of the above end up having problems while venturing down an old country road late at night. Due to an extremely thick fog bank and confusing roadways, they lose their bearings, vehicles are wrecked and they all end up at a spooky, seemingly-abandoned old mansion for the night.

Everyone is greeted by the mysterious Martha Clinton ("Evelyn Stewart" / Ida Galli), who had been bicycling through the area when the impenetrable fog rolled in. Instead of a warm welcome, Martha, who claims to own the home, fills everyone's heads with spooky stories about the area they're currently stranded in. According to legend, years earlier a mysterious epidemic killed off most of the people in the now abandoned village. Victims were found with neck wounds and drained of blood, which fueled rumors that there were vampires on the loose. Martha then adds her eccentric late aunt Julie, whose looming portrait still hangs above the fireplace, was a witch and that she had her head crushed in a car accident that also claimed the life of her hulking chauffeur.

Spectral figures matching the exact descriptions provided by Martha had already been seen prior to the guest's arrival. While trying to flag down help, Fred was almost run over by a Rolls Royce (just like one the aunt owned) and Elsa had spotted what looked like an old woman and a mangled chauffeur in the cemetery. That, along with Satanic artwork hanging all over the walls and Martha curiously forbidding anyone from going into the cellar (where loud noises that she claims are rats are heard), puts everyone on edge as they settle into their bedrooms for the night.

We learn a little more about a few of the characters. Fred and Laura aren't sticklers for waiting for that second date, while Mr. Porter is a drunken criminal with a weak heart. Mostly, however, it's all about the neurotic Elsa and her endless flashbacks.

Elsa's father (George Rigaud) was a womanizing, rich old codger who liked boning Elsa's college-aged peers. She even insinuates her father would be more than willing to go even younger than that if given the chance! Apparently suffering from some kind of weird, incestuous psychosexual disorder that would confuse Freud, the jealous Elsa decided to get back at daddy (after catching him screwing one of her friends in a car) by giving her virginity to the no good Ernest (Alberto Dalbés). That led to her current unhappy marriage; a passionless, sexless union that has driven Ernest into the arms of busty blonde Ellen (Ingrid Garbo). As for her father's passing, well, rumor has it he died of a heart attack WHILE having sex with one of her friends, which lead to a huge scandal around town. Because of all that, Elsa is extremely frigid. It's even hinted that she may actually be a closet lesbian, something Martha, who slips into her bed and makes a thinly-veiled pass at her, is interested in finding out.

The ghosts of both the elderly aunt and her chauffeur show up to terrorize the cast and start killing them off. Someone is literally scared to death, a dangling body is found in the cellar with a hook piercing the skull, a levitating severed head flies out of a closet and there are other spooky shenanigans. However, there's more to the story than meets the eye and not all is what it appears to be, with a number of twists and turns delivered in the final act.

This Italian / Spanish co-production has unfortunately been frequently (and wrongly) categorized as a giallo in recent years, which has resulted in some unfortunate, though not too surprising, backlash. (See also: CHRISTMAS EVIL). Just like slasher movie fans, many giallo fans have certain expectations for their beloved genre and this Gothic old dark house mystery won't be checking all of those boxes. For starters, exploitation elements are at a minimum here. There's a bit of blood but not a whole lot and this doesn't feature a stitch of nudity (the director seems content with bare female backs); something quite surprising for a European genre film from this time. That said, one's dashed expectations aren't a slight on the film itself, which isn't bad at all if taken for what it was intended to be.

The acting is pretty solid across the board, with Galli (well-used for a change) and Gadé in the showiest and most emotionally-charged role (the 40+ year old is even forced to unconvincingly play the teen version of her character in a bad bobbed wig!) being the standouts. The plot may be silly at times but it's really no more preposterous than many other mystery films. The best aspect is undoubtedly the great horror atmosphere achieved here. We get cemeteries and forests filled with thick fog, a series of dark catacombs extending from a cellar to underneath a graveyard and some great art direction inside the old mansion. The outdoor scenes in the cemetery and around the home were obviously filmed on sets, but it works really here as a throwback to those classic black-and-white "old dark house" studio films this appears to intentionally be trying to emulate. Marcello Giombini contributes a very good score (especially the opening theme) and the photography from Guglielmo Mancori is also excellent.

Being light on gore and sex even in its uncut, 86-minute form, this was the ideal chiller to run on late night American television in the 70s. It was sold as part of a TV syndication package by AVCO-Embassy, which is where most older viewers first saw it. That same scraggly-looking, too dark and slightly trimmed 16mm TV version (which runs about 83 minutes) was later used as the source print for most of the subsequent home video releases. This title (considered public domain, though I don't know if that was technically true or not) was well-serviced on VHS over the years by companies like Charter, Unicorn, Sinister Cinema and Something Weird, followed by its inclusion in a zillion different budget DVD box sets distributed by companies like Brentwood and Mill Creek.

One of those budget sets (I think it was called "50 Chilling Classics") is where I first saw this many years ago and, let me tell you, the restored Blu-ray release from Vinegar Syndrome (released in 2021) will be a visual revelation to those who are only accustomed to that overexposed public domain print. Vinegar Syndrome have included it in the box set "Forgotten Gialli Volume 3," which also includes Autopsy (1975) and Crazy Desires of a Murderer (1977). Their release comes with a 20-minute interview with Galli titled Lady of the Mansion.

★★★