60's Antonio Margheriti Part One

THE VIRGIN OF NUREMBERG

(1963)

Dir - Antonio Margheriti

Overall: WOOF

Quite sadly, Christopher Lee appeared in one of the worst movies ever made and that movie is The Virgin of Nuremberg, (La vergine di Norimberga, Horror Castle).  A rushed production which was filmed in three weeks hot off the heels of director Antonio Margheriti's Castle of Blood which was released the following year, Nuremberg is based on a disposable, cheap Italian paperback novel of the same name by Maddalena Gui with a screenplay credited to three different people including Margheriti.  This makes sense considering how utterly messy and ridiculous it all plays out.  Every single detail in the plot is almost impressively stupid.  Everything every character says, everything they do, every single thing that happens is devoid of logic in a manner far surpassing even the usual Euro-horror standards.  The sets are fine and the music is awful in a generic sense, but the mind-numbingly stupid script and cripplingly tedious pacing makes it as close to unwatchable as can be imagined.  Even by silly and lousy Italian horror standards, only the truest gluttons for punishment can hope to endure how unentertainingly terrible this is.  Truly the worst of its kind, that is for sure.

 

CASTLE OF BLOOD
(1964)
Dir - Antonio Margheriti/Sergio Corbucci
Overall: MEH

Occasionally spooky and containing a more than admirable if cliche ridden plot, flaws in Castle of Blood, (Danza Macabra), sadly do too much harm to the proceedings.  Sergio Corbucci was initially on board to direct it, having been given the opportunity to make a Gothic horror film on the cheap from producer Giovanni Addessi who had some sets left over from The Monk of Monza that he wanted to get more mileage out of.  While he conceived of the initial story concept, Corbucci ended up dropping out, (though he was later brought in to direct a single scene), and his friend Antonio Margheriti took on the project instead.  Margheriti stretches the deliberate, would-be moody pacing too far and in several instances the movie goes from genuinely white-knuckled to tedious.  This makes it far too easy for the viewer to lose patience and by the end of it, more moments become undone by their exhausting presentation than not.  It is another common shame where the material is treated sincerely, the premise is solid, the performances are fine, the sets are wholly appropriate for such a gloomy affair, and the small budget is forgivable, but they just cannot pick up the goddamn pace.

WAR BETWEEN THE PLANETS
(1966)
Overall: MEH

It is occasionally charming how awful some cinematic dung heaps are and War Between the Planets, (not to be confused with about ten other Italian movies titled with the same group of words made in and around the decade that this one was produced), gets a solid "so bad it is almost kind of OK good" pass.  A typical drive-in schlock fest made on a dime and designed to maybe make a few extra dollars than it was worth, its only really remembered now by people who champion silly, cheap, European genre cash-grabs and that is perfectly fine.  Giacomo Rossi Stuart, (Kill, Baby, Kill), plays one of the most unnecessarily hard-assed space captains and when he is not getting into macho fistfights with other officers or scowling in all of his shots, he is yelling at everyone for not following his orders and spattering off some of the most redundant dialog you are likely to hear along with the rest of the cast.  The effects are an absolute hoot with toy space ships, astronauts dangling on wires against papier-mâché planets and cardboard backdrops, and a bubbling alien/comment/planet/something with snugly blankets that act as organic material.  The amount of effort put into pretending this is a real movie by the cast and crew is rather adorable at some instances, but of course it starts to drag too much by the pathetic finale and you are left barely remembering what you just watched.  Which is also kind of fine.

THE UNNATURALS
(1969)
Overall: GOOD

Antonio Margheriti closed out the 1960s with probably his strongest overall film, the cold and eerie The Unnaturals, (Contronatura in Italy, Schreie in der Nacht in Germany, both countries of which had studios that co-produced it).  The first half moves a bit too slow, but eventually we are treated to something closely resembling an anthology mystery, with the guilty secrets of a bunch of rich socialites all getting revealed to us in various flashbacks over a séance.  Margheriti maintains pretty tight control of the material here and working with his own screenplay as well as co-producing, it is one of the rare auteur works in the director's filmography, (and probably the reason he considered it his best movie).  The international cast is pretty strong with German-born Marianne Koch, (A Fistful of Dollars), standing out the most as a tragic, closeted lesbian.  The erotic aspects are mostly underplayed with only minimal nudity and the sex scenes being as atmospheric as the "creepy castle during a thunderstorm" ones.  The finale is a bit unexpected almost in a humorous way, but it is just another pleasantly surprising element to a film that would have been far less successful under more exploitative and uninspired direction.