1970s Italian Horror Part Ten

THE FIFTH CORD

(1971)

Dir - Luigi Bazzoni

Overall: MEH

 

Jumping onto the giallo wagon, filmmaker Luigi Bazzoni's The Fifth Cord, (Giornata nera per l'ariete, Black Day for Aries), is an adaptation of D.M. Divine's novel of the same name.  Somehow the plot manages to be both unremarkable and convoluted, throwing a handful of characters at us early on that are difficult to tell apart from one another, which only makes their eventual demise or use as a red herring fall that much flatter.  Though each kills scene is expertly atmospheric and played out to almost total silence in usually heavily shadowed, minimal lighting, it is a shame that there is no amount of tension created by any of them since the audience can immediately tell that said victims are doomed the moment each set piece begins.  This inherent flaw is nothing new to the giallo/slasher framework nor is the use of filming them in a pin-drop quiet manner, which was something that both Mario Bava and Dario Argento quite famously perfected.  Bazzoni and cinematographer Vittorio Storara can at least be applauded for trying to elevate the lackluster material and pigeonholed tropes of the genre by going for an evocative look and more mood over substance.  Plus with a predominantly good-looking cast, (including a highly determined Franco Nero in the lead), enthusiasts for such movies can probably find enough here to enjoy.

 

L'OSSESSA

(1974)

Dir - Mario Gariazzo

Overall: MEH

Fairly belonging in the several-titles-deep assortment of Italian knock-offs of The Exorcist, L'Ossessa, (The Exorcism, The Eerie Midnight Horror Show, Enter the Devil, The Sexorcist, The Devil Obsession), is a hilarious lackluster one.  Director Mario Gariazzo had a handful of crime and Spaghetti Westerns under his belt by the time he ventured into horror for the first time here and this would not be his only purposely derivative Euro cash-grab off of an American blockbuster as he would also deliver Very Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind four years later.  Here, the entire plot run-down could fit on a napkin as the movie essentially features Stella Carnacina moaning or fanatically screaming in all of her scenes after a life-sized crucifix turns into the Devil, (played by diabolical character actor Ivan Rassimov), and rapes her.  To throw more sleaze into the mix than necessary, it also features a completely inconsequential side-arc that never goes anywhere of Carnacina's parents engaging in - as her dad wonderfully calls it - "masochistic tomfoolery" for one scene.  Elsewhere though, nothing is bothered to be explained.  It really is just a series of loud scenes taking various, blasphemous cues from every other movie with a Satanic possession angle from the era, all while throwing narrative anything to the wind.  Such simplicity, (cough, stupidity, cough), is almost admirable though.

 

THE CURSED MEDALLION

(1975)

Dir - Massimo Dallamano

Overall: MEH

Wonderfully photographed though boasting a hum-drop story line, Massimo Dallamano's final work in the horror genre The Cursed Medallion, (The Night Child, Together Forever, Perché?!, Il medaglione insanguinato), does not reach its eerie potential.  One of several Italian productions to feature naturally creep child actor Nicoletta Elmi as well as giallo regular Ida Galli, The Haunting's Richard Johnson, and one of the first prominent roles for Joanna Cassidy, it is all played more seriously than typical low-budget fare from the era.  This occasionally boats some unintended chuckles, (particularly where Elmi is concerned who looks like a twelve-year old, female Carrot Top), though the film's lone special effects shot is the most jarringly ridiculous amongst the otherwise exceptional cinematography from Franco Delli Colli.  The script boasts some familiar cliches such as a remote, spooky old house, a diabolical piece of jewellery, a possessed kid who is jealous of her widowed father's advances towards a new woman, an elderly mystic lady who gives cryptic warnings, etc.  None of it is interesting unfortunately and the supernatural tomfoolery at work that involves mysterious, Satan/hell inspired paintings is too underplayed to effectively deliver the chills.  Let us also not forget that mere variations of the exact same piece of music provide the only such music in the entire film, played only about nine-thousand times throughout.

1970s Italian Horror Part Nine

THE BLACK BELLY OF THE TARANTULA

(1971)

Dir - Paolo Cavara

Overall: MEH

Amongst the horde of giallos made in the sub-genre's heyday, The Black Belly of the Tarantula, (La tarantola dal ventre nero, Strele otrovnog pauka), is not a memorable one, despite the fact that it has one or two differentiating characteristics.  First, the killer trades in black gloves for brown rubber ones and does not die during the final confrontation of the film, but simply gets apprehended off camera with a Psycho-esque expository explanation given as to his perverse motivation.  He still has a specific weapon quirk of course, being an acupuncture needle in this case which, (like a tarantula, hence the title), paralyzes his victims so that they are fully conscious yet immobile during their murder.  The music by Ennio Morricone, (who also supplied the soundtrack for all three in Dario Argento's Animal Trilogy, as well as countless others), is lovely though repetitive, plus director Paolo Cavara goes for a less flashy approach to the material, which is problematic in the fact that the story is lame and could use more of that patented, exploitative Italian ridiculousness to plus it.  For pure, unintended hysterics though, this may very well have the least convincing "prop dummy getting thrown off of a roof" scene in cinema history.

MADELEINE: ANATOMY OF A NIGHTMARE

(1974)

Dir - Roberto Mauri

Overall: MEH

Near the end of his directorial career, filmmaker Roberto Mauri made Madeleine: Anatomy of a Nightmare, (Madeleine, anatomia di un incubo), a dull psychological drama with vague horror elements, plus Camille Keaton in the lead which is the only thing present that would truly appease genre fans.  The story sets up a series of  mundane events involving Keaton's title character who seems to be some sort of traumatized nymphomaniac, at least on the surface.  As the title would suggest, she is haunted by nightmares involving colorful, afro-haired witches, a car accident, and her miscarried child, so she naturally beds several people who are not her wealthy, twice-her-age husband.  Scenes involving disturbing and/or odd imagery are few and far between and the film is mostly dedicated to Keaton socializing, being upset, being naked, or just going about her business in her luxurious home where she falls in love, falls in lust, or just plain ole seems to be enjoying herself.  In other words, none of the stuff that suspense-laden horror films are made of.  Nitpicking non-existent genre attributes aside, it is an aimless film with a quasi-arthouse tone and lots of dated music to give it a then-contemporary, European slant that proves instantly forgettable as soon as the "it was all in her mind" finale is revealed.

WEREWOLF WOMAN

(1976)

Dir - Rino Di Silvestro

Overall: MEH

On paper at least, Euro-trash maestro Rino Di Silvestro's Werewolf Woman, (La lupa mannara, Daughter of a Werewolf, Naked Werewolf Woman, She-Wolf, Terror of the She-Wolf, Legend of the Wolf Man), is an interesting mess of conventional lycanthropian film, psychological/supernatural possession horror, police procedural, rape and revenge movie, and low-budget sleaze.  Di Silvestro's intention was allegedly to make a "serious" lycanthropy movie, showcasing the severity of a woman's violent outbursts and mental breakdown being linked to past and repeated trauma, namely rape from almost every male that she encounters.  In execution though, the script comes off as utterly absurd.  As every European exploitation movie from the time period grievously indulged in, camera zooms are everywhere, the horrid dubbing makes already goofy dialog even more hilarious, and the pacing is rendered comatose at regular intervals from flat cinematography and boring exposition sequences.  Several of the performances are scenery-chewing as well, especially that of Annik Borel in the lead, though that one is certainly supposed to be over-the-top at least.  Character's regularly summarize what has already happened in the movie, with information at their disposal that they could never actually have unless they read the script.  A mess in every respect from a filmmaker with hardly any of the chops at his disposal to pull off something so ambitious, but that in effect is a large part of the fun.

1970s Italian Horror Part Eight

WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO SOLANGE?

(1972)

Dir - Massimo Dallamano

Overall: MEH

A properly atmospheric giallo from filmmaker Massimo Dallamano and his follow-up to the British co-production remake Dorian Gray, What Have You Done to Solange?, (Cosa avete fatto a Solange?, Das Geheimnis der grünen Stecknadel), is leisurely in the pacing department and tonally dire, but these are not inherently bad attributes.  Itself a co-production with West Germany and falsely listed in the credits as being an Edgar Wallace adaptation to link it to the krimi sub-genre of exploitation movies, the film's shock value comes in the form of the killer's brutal, vagina-stabbing tendencies which are shown within the first scene.  Revolving around back-alley abortions and sexually promiscuous college girls involved in a hedonistic club, one may think that such material would be dealt with in a more sleazy fashion than it is.  By treating the subject manner more respectfully then, Dallamano creates a sombre atmosphere that is more graceful than classy, yet it also differentiates the movie from countless others of its kind which is either a good or a bad thing depending on the giallo enthusiast looking for typically tasteless, misogynistic, and red-herring fueled silliness.  As the tragic title character, this also marks the screen debut of Camille Keaton who of course made quite the career out of playing horrendously victimized leading ladies.

 

A BLACK RIBBON FOR DEBORAH

(1974)

Dir - Marcello Andrei

Overall: MEH

 

Though not without some effective atmosphere, A Black Ribbon for Deborah, (Un fiocco nero per Deborah, The Torment), is hardly the most gripping, contemporary-set, supernatural horror film that Italy produced.  Co-writer/director Marcello Andrei had only a sporadic career behind the lens before this, his first movie on the 1970s and his lone offering in the horror genre. Allegedly, the script had been sitting around for a decade before it was ultimately made, with a total of four screenwriters getting their hands on the material and according to Giuseppe Pulieri, it was mangled in its finished form.  Wherever the blame lies, the resulting movie has Euro scream queen Marina Malfatti as a troubled woman who cannot physically have children, that is until she finds herself pregnant after being involved in a car accident that proved fatal for another would-be mother who was carrying child.  Things play out predictably from there with her husband growing increasingly frustrated at both the improbability of the situation and with the fact that his lovely wife refuses to partake of any hanky panky with him.  Gripping set pieces are few and far between, but the final ghostly showdown is chilling enough under the circumstances at least.

RING OF DARKNESS

(1979)

Dir - Pier Capri

Overall: MEH

 

The 1970s sure had its share of Satanic trash that was especially pumped out after The Exorcist and The Omen made all of the money at the box office.  Writer/director Pier Capri's Ring of Darkness, (Un'ombra nell'ombra, Satan's Wife), is a blatant knock-off of the aforementioned The Omen, with Lara Wendel serving as the Damien stand-in, here named Daria which is close enough.  The film opens with a goofy, candlelit occult dance featuring women in white robes, but the majority of what follows bypasses the expected overt sleaze and just has Wendel acting like an asshole for nearly ninety-minutes.  This is hardly the actor's fault as her character is given no other personality traits besides "teenage brat who thinks she knows everything", so she just talks back to the adults, stares everyone down as if she is going to deck them in the face, and arrogantly smugs around in full awareness that she is the child of Lucifer or some adjacent equivalent thereof.  The details are hazy and it all has something to do with an unwilling coven of witches who pissed off their master apparently, leaving them at the mercy of John Phillip Law making a cameo as a corrupt priest who unsuccessfully tries to exorcise whatever evil mojo is making Wendel such an annoying jerk.  At least the synth musical score by Stelvio Cipriani is fun and creepy though.

1970s Spanish Horror Part Twelve

THE BUTCHER OF BINBROOK

(1971)

Dir - Miguel Madrid

Overall: MEH

There is a lot going on in Miguel Madrid's The Butcher of Binbrook, (Necrophagus, Graveyard of Horror); too much in fact, which makes its silliness increase tenfold as things plow along.  Formulaic, Euro-horror nonsense is present such as the same tiny handful of stock musical cues played over and over again, said musical cues popping up arbitrarily and being cut off at a dime due to the slap-dash editing, American dubbing that makes every performance preposterously melodramatic, shady family members held up in a creepy castle, a greedy/physically unappealing graveyard keeper, (good ole lazy-eyed Víctor Israel), loosey-goosey scientific experiments, blaring noises showing up every time that a different character enters a room, a deformed monster that looks like a child made his mask out of rubber and plastic, plus more camera zooms than Willie Nelson has blunts.  Madrid's story is hilariously convoluted as if he had a quota to meet by throwing in so many characters and schemes as to leave the audience on the edge of their seat instead of howling at how nonsensical it all is.  Some weird moments are produced here or there though and when the awful music shuts the hell up, Madrid can build a mild level of suspense with creepy noises and startling scenery.

 

THE SPIRIT OF THE BEEHIVE

(1973)

Dir - Victor Erice

Overall: GOOD

 

The debut from the highly sporadic filmmaker Victor Erice The Spirit of the Beehive, (El espíritu de la colmena), is a renowned work in Spanish cinema and one that very tenderly portrays dread through childlike imagination.  Sneaking past the Francoist censors by way of exclusively subtle symbolism towards the right wing government, it is no accident that the film is set at the tail end of the Spanish Civil War where a small, well-to-do family in a remote, countryside village go about their existence with a barely penetrable aura of melancholy.  As the adults seem preoccupied with nostalgic longings, their two children are brought up in a world of poisonous mushrooms, deserting soldiers, and sporadic visits from a traveling movie theater company whose showing of James Whale's seminal, 1931 Frankenstein casts a particularly potent spell on the youngest, played wonderfully by seven year old Ana Torrent.  Erice's tone is incredibly deliberate; very little happens in the film yet the viewer still feels that the younger characters could be in danger at any moment, if not from death, than from some sort of mental vulnerability.  Those familiar with the subdued, arthouse presentation will feel much more at home here than genre hounds who are clamoring for immediate reveals, but it is quite beautiful stuff in any capacity.

 

BEATRIZ

(1976)

Dir - Gonzalo Suárez

Overall: MEH

 

Moody with fittingly subdued performances and a somewhat aloof narrative, Beatriz is a less sensationalized bit of Euro-trash than most.  Director Gonzalo Suárez and screenwriter Santiago Moncada adapt Ramón del Valle-Inclán's story "Beatriz y Mi hermana Antonia" about a Countess' home invaded by a witch's curse, a mysterious Friar, and rapist bandits.  The supernatural elements are underplayed as a servant girl sacrifices the soul of her Lady's daughter, (the title character played by Sandra Mozarowsky who is oddly not the main focus), which are inconclusively portrayed to be the work of the Devil.  It has the usual exploitation elements of women being nonchalantly abused, coupled with religious dogma taken as factual by vulnerable people in such a period, isolated setting.  It is difficult to grasp the movie's themes though as it never lands anywhere profound and just goes from scene to scene in a repetitive fashion where very little happens besides a young boy trying to get people to take him seriously, his sister sick in bed and then inexplicably in love with the aforementioned friar, and of course random outbursts of rape.  It is photographed well by Carlos Suárez and has more of an arthouse presentation than an unintentionally silly one for low budget genre exports of the era, but nothing more than that.

1970s Spanish Horror Part Eleven

THE FEAST OF SATAN

(1971)

Dir - José María Elorrieta

Overall: MEH

 

Filmmaker José María Elorrieta closed out his directorial career with a small handful of horror cheapies, The Feast of Satan, (Las amantes del diablo, Feast for the Devil), being one of many with the usual stylistic choices on prominent display.  Sexy, hip jazz music whether it belongs on the soundtrack or not, melodramatic dubbing that gives most characters a pompous cadence, gorgeous women who all look alike, the lead male who said females all find irresistible, said females getting smacked around, enormous amounts of chatty padding, and very arguably the world record for camera zooms/reverse zooms in any motion picture.  Also standard procedure, a number of people are credited with the screenplay which was apparently necessary to fill every scene with nothing more than aimless dialog in place of well, anything at all that could be more interesting.  The stakes are incredibly low, diabolical atmosphere is alarmingly absent, and while there is no prominent feast to speak of, at least a few aristocratic people finally give alms to Satan with less than ten minutes to spare in the running time.

VOODOO BLACK EXORCIST

(1974)

Dir - Manuel Caño

Overall: MEH

Imagine Universal's 1932 masterpiece The Mummy as weird, Spanish, and mostly terrible and that gives you a bare-bones representation of what Voodoo Black Exorcist, (Vudú sangriento, Bloody Voudou), is.  Director Manuel Caño had mainly been doing jungle movies by the time he got behind the lens here, which is fitting as various sequences that were shot in the Dominican Republic feature barely-if-at-all-clad natives dancing around to tribal drums in the middle of exotic foliage.  Genre regulars Fernando Sancho, Aldo Sambrell, and Eva León are all on-board and are all laughably dubbed.  To the film's credit, there are a few memorably outrageous moments though.  Spanish actors in black-face, unconvincing decapitated heads, melodramatically stupid dialog, a silly piece of romantic music dropped in here or there, the bad guy getting attacked by a fire hose, and a rushed, "wait, what?" ending are all unintentional hoots.  The final set piece in an actual cave looks great with multi-colored lighting scattered around, plus Sambrell's makeup as the Karloff stand-in is primitive yet effective in how jarring it is.  Pacing wise, it drags as much as you would expect, but there is a naive, garish, exploitative charm to it that almost holds things together enough to recommend.

THE SKY IS FALLING

(1979)

Dir - Silvio Narizzano

Overall: MEH

 

Largely incomprehensible and rambling, The Sky Is Falling, (Las Flores Del Vicio, The Flowers of Vice, El cielo se cae, Bloodbath), is a bizarre fever dream of hedonistic grime and decadence.  Shot on location in the seaside village of Mojacar in Almeria Spain, it focuses on a group of expatriates who wallow in alcohol and drug-fueled bitterness, bonding with a mysterious, newly-arrived bunch of hippies who ultimate prove to have manipulative, sinister intentions.  This is not revealed to be the case until the last few minutes though, leaving almost the entirety of the movie to meander in a surreal stupor that becomes frustratingly monotonous early on.  Dennis Hopper was in his prime, drugged-out state here and it is disturbingly difficult to tell how much of his unkempt, drenched-in-sweat performance was the result of actual acting.  Several of the other participants go off the rails just as much, with Win Wells and Carroll Baker in particular laying into a type of mania that is appropriately scenery chewing for such an affair.  The tone is consistently aggressive and impenetrable for those who can get on board with it and if anything else, it definitely represents a type of "nail in the coffin" cynicism towards all things peace and love.

1970s Spanish Horror Part Ten

THE HORRIBLE SEXY VAMPIRE

(1971)

Dir - José Luis Madrid

Overall: WOOF

 

An obvious joke to make with The Horrible Sexy Vampire, (El vampiro de la autopista), is that it is far more horrible than it is sexy.  The only supernatural horror film from director José Luis Madrid, (who immediately followed it up with two crime thrillers with Paul Naschy), there are indeed several shots of women taking off their clothes and occasionally bathing and/or engaging in a few seconds of foreplay with a man, but the ridiculous title still proves to be misleading as the main blood-sucker does nothing remotely tantalizing.  Instead, the decades old count resurrects himself every handful of years and chokes people while being invisible, if for no other reason than because the preposterous script tells him to.  Speaking of the script, Madrid is as lazy of a screenwriter as he is a director, throwing random crap into the mix as if any old cliche will do.  The plotting is atrocious and filled with absolute idiots running around engaging in monotonous behavior, which is not helped by the typically sloppy editing common in most Euro-horror movies with a noticeably minuscule amount of funds to work with.  On that note, they could only afford two pieces of music which are played continuously whenever characters are not wasting screen time prattling on about whether or not vampires are real.

MURDER IN A BLUE WORLD

(1973)

Dir - Eloy de la Iglesia

Overall: MEH

 

The Spanish A Clockwork Orange, Eloy de la Iglesia's Murder in a Blue World, (Una gota de sangre para morir amando, A Drop of Blood to Die Loving, Le bal du vaudou, The Voodoo Ball, Clockwork Terror, To Love, Perhaps to Die), is an interesting if uneven fusing of dystopian science fiction and giallo.  Set in the near future, it takes its cue directly enough from Anthony Burgess' unofficial source material where youth gangs dress up in matching outfits and go about raping, robbing, and murdering people while the Fascist government enlists scientists and doctors to perform unwilling psychological experiments on captured criminals in order to reform them back into society.  Some of the thematic elements are broad enough to come off as afterthoughts like how various commercials are shown which allude to a type of totalitarian consumerism that is only vaguely in tune with everything else going on.  As a foreign knock-off, it is fun to spot the obvious similarities between this and Stanley Kubrick's much more famous work and the addition of Sue Lyon's beautiful and deranged, murdering nurse give it an extra, B-movie slant.  The story is hardly through-provoking though and falls into the typical Euro-trash faux pas of meandering with repetitive scenes, but even as a messy hybrid of sorts, it breaks the mold more than most.

 

LA CRUZ DEL DIABLO

(1975)

Dir - John Gilling

Overall: MEH

Hammer filmmaker John Gilling came out of retirement for his final cinematic work of any kind, the Spanish production La cruz del diablo, (The Devil's Cross, Cross of the Devil).  Yet another take on the Knights Templar that is unrelated to Amando de Ossoria's Blind Dead series, the script was originally written by Paul Naschy as a starring vehicle for himself based on the works of Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer.  The project was ultimately taken out of his control though, sold without his knowledge, re-written, and then re-cast.  Even without Naschy's involvement, there are some redeeming qualities to an otherwise mediocre Euro-horror vehicle.  For one, Gilling has a noticeably better eye for macabre visuals and a keener sense of pacing than most other Spanish directors of the era, so the movie has a polished aesthetic that is understandably akin to the Gothic horror that Hammer established a decade or so earlier.  Also, the music is appropriately used for once which is a miracle in and of itself.  Unfortunately though, the story is too thin to maintain interest and it meanders aimlessly where characters seem to take absolutely forever to get to the bottom of anything.  As was all too often the case with such movies, we mostly just watch them suspect each other while exchanging niceties while standing and sitting in rooms repeating the same information ad nauseam.  The climactic finish is underwhelming as well, though at least the evil Templar move with a sense of urgency here as opposed to the laughable snails pace that they do in Ossoria's films.

1970s Spanish Horror Part Nine

THE ANCINES WOODS

(1970)
Dir - Pedro Olea
Overall: MEH

 

For his second full-length, filmmaker Pedro Olea chose to adapt Carlos Martínez-Barbeito's novel El bosque de Ancines which was inspired by Spain's first documented serial killer Manuel Blanco Romasanta.  Also known as The Ancines, Woods, The Forest of the Wolf, and The Wolf's Forest, the film tells the tragic story of Romasanta, (here called Benito Freire); a 19th century, epileptic peddler who in real life claimed to have suffered lycanthropy as an excuse for his thirteen admitted murders.  Going in here expecting a standard werewolf movie ala the kind that Paul Naschy was aggressively championing around the same time would be a mistake, not only because there are obviously no hairy monster transformation of any kind, but there is also no nudity and only the most mild of bloodshed.  Some of this was due to Olea being forced by producers to tone down the violence for censorship reasons so that the result cannot fairly classify the film as exploitative.  While this is not a bad thing in and of itself, it does lend to a pedestrian watch that never really picks up a riveting pace.  José Luis López Vázquez is good in the lead though, having primarily come from comedies and delivering an appropriately pathetic performance while looking equally miserable and gnarly in the process.

 

THE WITCHES MOUNTAIN

(1972)

Dir - Raúl Artigot

Overall: MEH

 

The first of only three directorial efforts from Raúl Artigot, The Witches Mountain, (El monte de las brujas), is a head-scratching/borderline irritating viewing experience to say the least.  Considering that Artigot was primarily a cinematographer, one would think that this would at least have a handful of visual flourishes, even on such a clearly shoe-string budget.  Such is oddly not the case though as the entire movie is shot in a completely pedestrian manner with not a single sequence being remotely inciting to look at.  Artigot also has absolutely zero sense of dramatic pacing, which is of course hardly anything unique to this particular bit of Spanish horror fare.  Driven almost entirely by a two person cast, our fabulously mustached leading man Cihangir Gaffari only tells scream queen Patty Shepard to wait behind in the car about seven-hundred and eight times, though never is it necessary for him to embark on anything alone, so why bother making this such a hilariously stubborn plot point in the first place?  More sloppily edited as it goes along with stretched out sequences of no musical score while people stand or walk around, the use of loud, Latin chanted music which the characters can actually hear on the soundtrack is an interesting and creepy idea when it randomly breaks up the monotony of it all.  The ending screams "We're running out of film stock so quick, just shoot something!", leaving the whole thing off like an inept, accidental arthouse movie.

 

NO ONE HEARD THE SCREAM

(1973)

Dir - Eloy de la Iglesia

Overall: MEH

 

Following up the one-two punch of the noticeably different The Glass Ceiling and The Cannibal Man was another detour for filmmaker Eloy de la Iglesia with No One Heard the Scream, (Nadie oyó gritar).  Reuniting with actors Carmen Sevilla and Vicente Parra who had each been a lead in the aforementioned, previous movies, de la Iglesia reveals the absurd premise early on, which is persistently confusing for the audience.  In Sevilla's career mistress, we have a thoroughly illogical-behaving character who takes every opportunity in her predicament to not do what anyone of sound mind would.  She fails to immediately call the cops after witnessing a murder even though she has ample enough time to do so, goes along with a cockamamie accomplice scheme, also fails to turn in and squeal on her kidnapper when literally dealing with the police out in public and in a police station, fails to abandon said kidnapper and/or murder him when given a perfect opportunity, only of course to then fall in love with him because movies.  Thankfully the tone here is not altogether serious as de la Iglesia sprinkles some darkly sly humor among tight suspense sequences, suspense sequences that exist entirely on the moronic choices that Sevilla continues to make.  In this way it has a perverse angle where she clearly is attracted in some strong enough way to the dangerous, immoral circumstance she is in, but nonetheless, this is definitely silly stuff.