Il mostro dell'opera (1964) [f/1961]

... aka: Il vampiro dell'opera (The Vampire of the Opera)

... aka: L'orgie des vampires (The Vampire Orgy)

... aka: Monster of the Opera, The

Directed by:

Renato Polselli

Though predated a few years by I VAMPIRI (1957), the international hit BLACK SUNDAY (1960), itself prompted into existence by recent period-set, costume horror successes from UK's Hammer, is usually given credit for kick starting the gothic horror revival in Italy. Soon after, dozens of similar films were produced there over the next five or so years, many quite beautifully and atmospherically shot in black-and-white, though some were in color (and no less beautifully or atmospherically shot when in the hands of someone like Mario Bava). While most of these suffered from pacing, story and dialogue issues, often due to the horrendous dubbing they received and hack-job re-edits, others suffered more because they barely received much of a release at all. 

Case in point is The Monster of the Opera. This was shot all the way back in 1961 but not released until three years later. It never even made it over here to the U.S., nor to any other English-speaking country, and thus never received an English-friendly release until over half a century after the fact. That means the movie not only didn't play in theaters, but it also didn't turn up on late night TV nor in video rental shops and was never able to build up any kind of reputation whatsoever. I'm only aware of Italian and French theatrical releases and wasn't even able to find an old video release in either of those countries. Once you actually sit through the movie itself, it all starts making sense.

 

We're hit in the face with the film's true intentions right at the start, as a beautiful young woman in a see-through negligee (though wearing bra and panties - this was still the early 60s, after all!) is pursued through an abandoned theater and then outside by a vampire brandishing a HUGE pitchfork. That gives way to a bunch of voluptuous starlets stretching, gossiping, giggling and dancing around in their leotards. One gets the immediate impression that much more screen time is going to be dedicated to showcasing the charms of the female cast as it will be to the horror elements, and that's exactly what happens here. Something mildly refreshing starts taking shape after a few minutes, though. In a subgenre known for evil, duplicitous and / or depressive characters in dreary period settings, we're introduced to a bunch of bouncy and vibrant young folks who laugh, flirt, make jokes, play pranks and run around happily spouting witty dialogue in a modern day setting.

"Marc Maryan" / Marco Mariani (TOMB OF TORTURE) stars as aspiring theater director Sandro, who's filled with good spirits and enthusiasm after having purchased an old, run-down theater called Aquarius. OK, so the place is rumored to be haunted, former performers claim to have been trapped inside by "invisible walls," a handful of previous actresses who'd performed there vanished without a trace and were never seen again, psychics who tried to investigate were driven away by a "sinister presence" and the building's grumpy caretaker, Achille ("Albert Archet" / Alberto Archetti), tries in vain to steer him away from the purchase, but it's just too good of a deal to pass up! It's also the perfect place for Sandro to stage his new play, which has been rejected by all of the other theaters. Now he won't have to worry about any of that since he'll be calling all of the shots. Soon, the theater is overrun with high energy cast and crew; guys in skeleton costumes and girls in undies, babydoll nighties and short, short togas (part of the play seems to be set in Roman times).

Giulia (Barbara Hawards), the production's lead actress, and also Sandro's leading lady off stage, has a strange feeling she's been there before. She also has a strange feeling she's met Achille before. That's because both have been prominently featured in a recurring nightmare she's been having about a vampire. Said vampire, Stefano ("John McDouglas" / Giuseppe Addobbati), eventually shows up in the flesh (at the midway point!) and (nearly an hour into this 80-minute film) attempts to put the bite to dancer Rossana (Vittoria Prada) but she manages to get away, Who he really wants is Giulia, the reincarnation of Laura, a (married) lover from hundreds of years ago who betrayed him. 

One of the lone good ideas here is that lying in the vampire's coffin and closing the lid allows one to enter into the bloodsucker's fogbound hidden lair, which appears to be in some kind of alternate dimension. There, he keeps a half dozen vampire brides, who've all gone mad, chained to the walls.

From a strictly visual standpoint, this is decent. There's good-looking black-and-white photography, a wonderful shooting location inside the old theater, nice art direction, lighting and use of shadow and fog, and some surprisingly good camerawork. The premise holds promise, the general atmosphere is quite good and things start out fun, but that fun soon gives way to tedium. Things move at a snail's pace, the plot is virtually nonexistent, the vampire is treated almost as an afterthought and most of the time is spent alternating between showing the girls running around shrieking and doing either their choreographed dances or impromptu frantic ones. While cleaning up, the cast randomly break into the Charleston and this hilariously even has the cast forced into a dance-for-your-life situation to ward off the evil at the end, as if this didn't already have too many filler dance scenes! The large cast also ensures that no one is really given much of a personality.

In addition to being a leg and undies fest, this puts a lot of focus on PG lesbianism, with the girls longingly staring into each other's eyes, caressing each other's shoulders, rubbing each other's legs, embracing, getting right in each other's faces as if they're about to kiss and, after a few are turned into vamps, nibbling on each other's necks. "Don't you feel that a friendship between two women is pure?" one dancer tells another as she seductively runs her fingers through her friend's hair. Instead of acting horrified, several of the girls act like they're in ecstasy when they're "speared" with the pitchfork, which is used to pin people down, not kill them. Subtle this is not. These bits may also explain why this was barely released. That, and the fact it's all pretty nonsensical and boring.

Most of the names in the cast list have been Anglicized, so it's difficult to know the true identity of most of these folks, though many appear to have been real-life dancers. Lead Barbara Hawards (most likely a pseudonym; she's called "Barbara Howard" on the posters) is very lovely so it's a shame this may have been her only film. Lost in the sea of other dancers is Milena Vukotic (playing "Carlotta"), the only one of the ladies who went on to much of an acting career. A trained dancer / ballerina herself, Vukotic would later act for the likes of Federico Fellini, Luis Buñuel and Andrei Tarkovsky and win most of Italy's top acting awards.

The director, who also co-wrote the script with Ernesto Gastaldi, had previously made THE VAMPIRE AND THE BALLERINA (1960), another entry in the 1960s Italian black-and-white Gothic cycle (also a much better film than this one), and would go on to work on some sleazier 70s genre films (usually utilizing the alias "Ralph Brown") like DELIRIUM (1972), MANIA (1974) and EROTIC GAMES OF A RESPECTABLE FAMILY (1975).

Discounting a French DVD release under the title L'orgie des vampires, which featured an English sub option but cobbled together a print from two different sources, the first English-friendly version was released by Sinister Cinema in 2020. That was followed by its inclusion in the 2023 Severin box set "Danza Macabra Volume One," which also included the forgettable THE SEVENTH GRAVE (1965), the mediocre SCREAM OF THE DEMON LOVER (1970) and, the most enjoyable of the lot by a fair margin, the minor cult classic Lady Frankenstein (1971).

★1/2

Mio caro assassino (1972)

... aka: Folie meurtrière (Murderous Madness)

... aka: La ronda de la muerte (The Round of Death)

... aka: Sumario sangriento de la pequeña Estefania (Bloody Summary of Little Stefania)

... aka: My Dear Killer

... aka: O Carrasco da Mão Negra (The Black Hand Executioner)

... aka: Time to Kill, Darling!

Directed by:

Tonino Valerii

This Italian / Spanish co-production starts with a very cool pre-credits sequence of a man at a rock quarry being grabbed by the neck by a excavator claw, lifted off the ground and decapitated, but don't get your hopes up. It's one of the only memorable moments in the entire film! The victim - insurance investigator Umberto Paradisi (Francesco Di Federico) - had curiously rented the piece of heavy machinery for one day only, and the operator - Mario Anzuini (Remo De Angelis) - has vanished without a trace. Police inspector Luca Peretti (George Hilton - THE SWEET BODY OF DEBORAH) is on the case. First assuming Mario accidentally killed the man, panicked and then fled, their initial theory soon falls apart when Mario is killed himself. Though found hanging, Luca determines that he was actually murdered and the scene was staged to look like a suicide. 

Believing the excavator was rented for the sole purpose of finding something in a swampy lake at the quarry, Luca orders it thoroughly searched, and then interviews both a strange old couple (Dante Maggio, Lola Gaos) living near the quarry and Umberto's former employer (Corrado Gaipa - CRAZY DESIRES OF A MURDERER). The same name comes up both times: Moroni.

Umberto had been tasked with investigating insurance claims made by the Moroni family. Their young daughter, Stefania ("Daniela Rachele Barnes" / Lara Wendel, in her film debut), was kidnapped. That was followed by an extortion attempt that was paid by her family, but when the father, Alessandro (Piero Lulli), tried to follow a mediator to the location of the blackmailers, he too disappeared and was found dead a month later, along with the little girl. Alessandro's insurance policy mentions the names of four people who'd been interviewed during the investigation: Eleonora "Rita" Canavese-Moroni (the wife), Oliviero Moroni (brother), Giorgio Canavese (brother-in-law) and Paola Rossi (a teacher). Luca decides to acquaint himself with all of these people.

Meanwhile, Umberto's widow (a wasted Helga Liné) shows up to identify the corpse and attempts to aid the police in the investigation. However, she's stopped dead in her tracks when a black gloved killer stalks and kills her in a highly unbelievable scene where she's strangled with her own scarf in the middle of the day in a very crowded post office. Though there were many witnesses to the crime (though apparently not a single one who tried to help the victim), none can seem to agree on what the killer looked like. The only clue left behind is a child's drawing clutched in the victim's hand, which leads investigators to a school called Instituto Benedettine.

At the school, Luca consults Paola Rossi (Patty Shepard), who'd previously been questioned by Umberto. She helps place the drawing as having been made just a week prior to Stefy's disappearance. Later that night, she inadvertently lets the killer into her apartment because she personally knows whoever it is and is then killed with an electric saw, making a complete mess of her spotless white kitchen in the process! For an encore he bashes her skull in with a statue, though that takes place off-screen and we only hear about it later.

Our hero then pays a visit to the dreary Moroni household and discovers that Stefy's mother, Eleanora (Dana Ghia), has gone mad and is still expecting her little girl to return home from school at any moment. Slightly more help, or at least a little more lucid, are brother-in-law Oliviero (Tullio Valli) and his wife, Carla (Mónica Randall - THREE DAYS IN NOVEMBER). While Oliviero, who lost an arm in the war, holds his late brother in high esteem, Carla resents him for having been a charlatan and a leech.

The other Moroni brother, Beniamino (Alfredo Mayo - VOODOO BLACK EXORCIST), is an artist and used to take little Stefy outside for long periods of time, he claims, to shield her from her parents' constant bickering. The two were on the verge of divorcing. His creepy artwork centers around dismembered baby doll parts and he's seen in his studio with a naked pre-pubescent girl, whom he claims is "a model." Then there's Eleanora's shady brother, Giorgio (William Berger), who owns an international shipping company involved in illegal activity; potentially drug smuggling. Giorgio may also enjoy the company of underage girls employed by a local brothel, just in case we needed a second potential child molester on the suspects list. Luca assures him that if he's willing to cooperate that no one will ever find out about any of that though (!)

Lumbering, talky, overlong and filled with multiple sketchy suspects and possible motives behind the crimes, this is a fairly competent example of the giallo subgenre, but middling and (mostly) bland all the same. Leaning very heavily into the police procedural side of these films, there are endless scenes of Luca and his colleagues, Chief Marò (Salvo Randone) and Brigadier Bozzi (Manuel Zarzo), standing around, sitting around, walking around or driving around discussing the case, plus endless scenes of Luca drilling various suspects. Because so much time is spent with the cops, most of the supporting cast (and there are actually some good actors in this bunch) are stuck playing flat, uninteresting roles. Sadly, that also includes whoever it is who's laying the killer. The person is so ill-defined that the big reveal doesn't hold any kind of impact whatsoever. It may as well have been a complete stranger.

Similarly, the direction here is extremely workmanlike. It's not stylish or creative, merely adequate, and the few murder set pieces, which should be highlights, are poorly staged and lacking in suspense. Though Valerii had previously co-written a couple of Gothic horror films (Crypt of the Vampire and THE LONG HAIR OF DEATH), he doesn't seem to have much flair for this kind of stuff; which is probably why he's better known for spaghetti westerns like My Name Is Nobody (1973). A good example of botched potential is Shepard's death scene. While memorably bloody, the execution leading up to it kind of undermines its overall effectiveness. After running away from the killer, she "hides" by standing right in the middle of her kitchen with the door wide open, then stares at the killer, turns her back, crouches down and just lets the person saw her to death!

There are completely disposable characters wedged in here, as well, especially poor Marilù Tolo in a completely useless role as Luca's girlfriend, Dr. Anna Borgese. Being a doctor and all, you'd assume she'd come in handy helping to create a psychological profile of the killer or something, or at least be put in jeopardy at some point herself, but nope! The only reason she's in this is to appear topless a couple of times. She looks miserable and all of her dialogue is huffing and puffing that the detective is too busy to spend any time with her. Nobody cares!

Four different writers, including the director and Roberto Leoni (Santa Sangre), are credited with the messy script. The best thing to extract from this one is the nicely eerie score composed by Ennio Morricone, with Bruno Nicolai serving as conductor. The soundtrack is available from Death Waltz Recording Company.

While this was not theatrically released here in the U.S., it was in France, Italy, Spain, Brazil and some other countries (mainly in Europe). This also never received any kind of home video release in the 80s or 90s here. It wouldn't be until 2003 that Shriek Show finally got it out in an English-subtitled DVD. The British company Salvation also distributed an English-friendly version in the early 2000s. In 2020, Vinegar Syndrome included this in their box set "Forgotten Gialli Volume 2," which also includes French Sex Murders (1972) and The Girl in Room 2A (1974). Extras for this title include the rare English-dubbed print of the film, a new interview with co-writer Leoni and archival interviews with the director and star Hilton.

★★