Friday, August 4, 2023

70's Italian Horror Part Twelve

THE NIGHT OF THE DAMNED
(1971)
Dir - Filippo Walter Ratti
Overall: MEH

The only horror film from director Filippo Ratti, (here under one of his often used Americanized names of Peter Rush), The Night of the Damned, (La notte dei dannati, Night of the Sexual Demons, Les nuits sexuelles), excels with Gothic, spook show imagery, yet falters hard everywhere else.  It was shot in conjunction with the erotic drama Erika which also utilized the same screenwriter and was released earlier in the same year.  In fact a more explicit version of this movie exists which is to say one featuring more naked ladies and overt lesbianism.  Visually, there are a generous amount of shots featuring eerily lit rooms in castles, sometimes with unnatural back-lighing and other times with an adequate level of fog thrown in.  Shots of hooded figures, skulls, and nude female corpses are joined by howling winds and whatnot on the soundtrack that certainly give it the appropriate look and feel.  Unfortunately, the script by Aldo Marcovecchio never manages to meld its cliches of witches, vampires, family curses, anagrams, dark family secrets, and books on black magic together in any way remotely interesting, let alone unique.  Ratti's direction is also detrimentally sluggish, sticking to the usual Euro-horror blunder of copious amounts of screen time dedicated to characters sitting around and slowly talking about the same things over and over again.
 
WHO SAW HER DIE?
(1972)
Dir - Aldo Lado
Overall: MEH
 
A frustratingly convoluted giallo with easily the most obnoxious musical score out of any of them courtesy of the usually competent Ennio Morricone, Who Saw Her Die?, (Chi l'ha vista morire?, The Child, Ko ju je vidio mrtvu?), serves as Aldo Lado's second directorial effort.  Having multiple, credited screenwriters is nothing new with such movies, yet the "too many cooks in the kitchen" approach here wields a messy, borderline incomprehensible plot where two parents conduct their own investigation in Venice after their daughter is found murdered.  There are obvious narrative similarities that Nicholas Roeg may or may not have borrowed for the far superior Don't Look Now which came out the following year and this does in fact differentiate itself from the usual giallo with a more grounded tone, better performances, and less exploitative elements.  Be prepared to have Morricone's unbelievably repetitive, child-chanting theme, (which is virtually the only piece of music in the entire film), stuck in your head for days though which literally fades in and out of long, boring scenes every forty-five seconds or so on numerous occasions.  In that respect, at least SOMETHING here is memorable, be it in an unfortunate manner.  Everything else going on though is bound to leave you checked-out long before the finish line or just scratching your head when said finish line mercifully arrives.

THE NUN AND THE DEVIL
(1973)
Dir - Domenico Paolella
Overall: MEH
 
A typical period piece nunsploitation film with certain witch trial motifs thrown in for good measure, The Nun and the Devil, (Le Monache di Sant'Arcangelo, Die Nonne von Verona, Sisters of Satan, The Nuns of Saint Archangel), was the second such movie made in the same year by co-writer/director Domenico Paolella, the other being Story of a Cloistered Nun.  This particular entry is more or less centered around office politics concerning Anne Heywood's Sister Julia who concocts a scheme to become the new Mother Superior while shady church officials try to secure donations and whatnot, all parties involved in the hope of garnishing more power for themselves within the deeply corrupt system.  Keeping up with all of the back-and-forth is irksome at times even as Paolella dashes in select moments of nudity and mild lesbianism to keep Euro-trash enthusiasts interested.  The film never goes very hard in any direction though which is to its detriment as it is primarily dull in its dramatics, only revving up the tension within the final moments where the torture devices are brought out by creepy guys in black, pointed hoods and Heywood then gets to let lose her character's pent-up frustration with a bravado, scenery-chewing death scene.  There are certainly more nasty and more sleazy movies out there of an all too similar variety, with this one just lukewarmly falling in the middle.

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