(1960)
Dir - Giorgio Ferroni
Overall: GOOD
Notable as the first Italian horror movie to be shot in color, Giorgio Ferroni's Mill of the Stone Women, (Il mulino delle donne di pietra), is highly stylish and often atmospheric enough to make up for its consistently sluggish pace. It is unfortunate that the first act takes its time too leisurely as well as having laughable, melodramatic touches like characters falling in love to the point of having compete mental breakdowns over it. Once the film plays the "It is all a hallucination" card and starts toying with the audience through its dashing, leading man Pierre Brice, things become a bit more interesting. Ferroni and cinematographer Pier Ludovico Pavoni utilize Gothic, shadowy lighting and balance the primarily beige color backdrop with vivid reds, violets, and greens, but it is nowhere near as otherworldly clashing as what Mario Bava would famously indulge in around the same time if we were to compare. As a more ghastly, Italian-flavored re-working of the already established House of Wax tropes though, Mill of the Stone Woman ultimately delivers, particularly with its gruesome carousel of hell and mad doctor romp final set piece.
(1963)
Dir - Brunello Rondi
Overall: GOOD
Frequent Federico Fellini screenwriter, art director, and collaborator Brunello Rondi made his second full-length as director with Il demonio, (The Demon). Unsettling and quite stark, it is an unrelenting depiction of superstition run amok in a small, Italian village where a woman for whatever reason has claimed a local man as only hers and resorts to witchcraft to obtain him. Or so she and others claim. As no supernatural activity is explicitly confirmed, (at least any that cannot be explained as being part of any kind of frenzied delirium), it works intentionally as an examination of religious ignorance, fear, and the mental instability caused by such things. Israeli actress and future Bond girl Daliah Lavi, (who also appeared in Mario Bava's The Whip and the Body the same year), is captivating and frighting as the bewitched peasant girl, who dishes out as much torment as she gets back from the locals. Themes of hypocrisy run frequent throughout the movie where men both condemn and banish her as well as sexually take advantage of her when it is convenient for them. At the same time, villagers throw rocks, beat, and blame her for any current misfortunes bestowed upon them.
(1965)
Dir - Garibaldi Serra Caracciolo
Overall: WOOF
An Italian take on The Cat and the Canary, The Seventh Grave, (La settima tomba), is the disastrous only film from Garibaldi Serra Caracciolo. More to the point, it does everything in an incredibly bland and mediocre fashion. Gothic horror/mystery cliches run amok, (frequent organ cues on the soundtrack when something is supposed to be scary, an ancient castle, a seance, mad scientist experiments, corpses in caskets, a crypt, characters getting picked off or gone missing, a dead rich guy's will, a long and unnecessary explanation at the end to make sense of everything), and the story is so perpetually lame-brained that not a single plot point registers even the most minute intrigue. Caracciolo's lifeless direction does not help, but the script offers so very little to work with that only a select few directors could have added enough flare to distract you from how monotonously mundane it is. Dreadful pacing is nothing new to low-budget horror films from the era, (whether made in Hollywood or internationally such as here), and in fact is actually expected. Yet everything going on in here could not be more uninspired if it tried, which it does not.
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