1970s Italian Horror Part Fifteen

THEY HAVE CHANGED THEIR FACE

(1971)

Dir - Corrado Farina

Overall: GOOD

 

The first of only two theatrically released full-lengths from director Corrado Farina, They Have Changed Their Face, (...Hanno cambiato faccia, They've Changed Their Faces), is one of the more singular genre films to metaphorically examine vampirism.  Here, the undead may or may not be conventional bloodsuckers as they are never shown engaging in such garish activity, but many of the hallmarks are still alluded to.  The plot itself mirrors Bram Stoker's Dracula in a few ways, namely how a lower level employee, (a Renfield stand-in), is instructed to visit his allusive boss who never emerges during the daytime and whose remote estate is surrounded by unfriendly locals.  The main baddie played with disarming cool by Adolfo Celie is even named Giovani Nosferatu just to slam home the point.  Giuliano Disperati is sort of an Italian Roddy McDowall who gets caught up in the bizarre scheme which reveals itself to be a heavy-handed yet somewhat surreal essay on the populous, controlling aspects of consumerism.  Farina's pacing faces occasional issues in the second act, but the sinister and oppressive tone is expertly maintained, plus he and Giulio Berruta's script has plenty of amusing/disturbed ideas to digest.

 

SEX OF THE WITCH

(1973)

Dir - Angelo Pannacciò

Overall: WOOF

 

Suffering a double whammy of being both borderline incomprehensible and insufferably boring, director/co-writer Angelo Pannacciò's sophomore effort Sex of the Witch, (Il sesso della strega, Les Anges Pervers), is Euro-trash of the more rightfully forgettable variety.  All of the lousy hallmarks are there; sluggish direction including static shots of people walking and cars driving away, random/snore-inducing sex scenes, repetitive dialog exchanges in only one or two different rooms, abrupt editing, a terrible hippy rock band sequence for zero reasons, the same two pieces of music played in nearly every other scene, and a beyond overdone set up of a police inspector trying to figure out which shady relative is picking off their family members in order to gain access to a larger inheritance from a recently dead old guy.  The sleaze is more haphazardly thrown in there than anything, vaguely hinging on a perverse family secret which never goes farther than some of them occasionally behaving like degenerates.  None of it is likely to appall, arouse, or lest of all entertain anyone besides the most stubborn of low-budget, Italian horror apologists, but even they will have to admit that there is far better as well as far more enjoyably worst in such a league out there.  Also, the dog's name is Twinky and they kill it, so fuck this movie.

DAMNED IN VENICE

(1978)

Dir - Ugo Liberatore

Overall: GOOD

 

The final time that screenwriter Ugo Liberatore was also behind the lens, Damned in Venice, (Nero veneziano), is one of the more interesting Antichrist films made in the 1970s.  While the occasional bouts of romantic music are inappropriate, it is otherwise a more eerily surreal presentation than standard Euro-horror generally is.  The fact that it ends up being about Satan's offspring in the first place is not directly stated until the third act, though there are various clues given that are more obvious in retrospect.  Blind, well-meaning Renato Cestiè's soft focus visions of an up to no good, mustached man with a cane interject with various deaths for the family members of he and his persistently annoyed sister, (Rena Niehaus), all leading up to her virgin impregnation which mirrors the birth of Jesus in typical blasphemous fashion.  The movie is loaded with surreal sequences that certainly seem to be of supernatural origin, yet they may or may not be fictitious bouts of fantasy or actual events.  Some of them are downright shocking as well, including one of the final ones involving Cestiè's rather unconventional babysitting tactics towards his diabolical nephew.  The sleazy elements are less in abundance that most exploitative foreign films from the period and also come off as more creepy than unintentionally humorous.  As an Italian Rosemary's Baby/The Omen hybrid with various unique plot points, it stands out well.

1970s Italian Horror Part Fourteen

QUEENS OF EVIL

(1970)
Dir - Tonino Servi
Overall: MEH

Tonino Servi's second directorial effort Queens of Evil, (Le regine, Il delitto del diavolo), embarks on its own singular path as far as being a hippy era occult movie, but it is also too low on momentum to be enjoyably memorable.  An Italian/French co-production with Raymond Lovelock not only staring in the lead but also providing two folk rock songs that are typical for the time period, the movie takes a problematic amount of time to do anything besides show said protagonist gorge himself on cake and fish while changing his mind about leaving a cabin with three beautiful women living there who each take turns having sex with him.  With this summing up ninety-percent of the movie, (no exaggeration), occasional, curious moments break up the monotony that seem to allude to some witchery going on, yet the final set piece is really the only moment where a sinister mood takes over.  For genre fans at least, giallo scream queens Silvia Monti and Ida Galli, (here going under one of her several Westernized names as Evelyn Stewart), join French actor Haydée Politoff as the trifecta of lovely ladies with a plethora of wigs to go along with their eccentric mannerisms.

 

THE DRIVER'S SEAT

(1974)

Dir - Giuseppe Patroni Griffi

Overall: MEH

 

Filmmaker Giuseppe Patroni Griffi's The Driver's Seat, (Identikit), is an adaptation of Muriel Sparks novella of the same name; a strange, psychological drama where Elizabeth Taylor portrays one of her most mentally unhinged protagonists.  Told out of sequence, it takes some time for the viewer to gain their proper footing as Taylor meanders around Italy, coming across one horny asshole after the other who refuse to take "no" for an answer.  Not that Taylor is behaving in any more rational of a manner since she seems to be on a perpetual short fuse with service people, all in some sort of insane quest to meet up with someone who is "her type" that will follow her disturbed instructions.  These moments are inter-cut with the police interviewing those that she came in contact with, though Taylor's fate remains unclear until the very end which introduces yet another layer to the mystery as to why so many people seem both afraid of and interested in her.  Oh, Andy Warhol also shows up for two scenes playing a clearly dubbed English Lord, for reasons that are probably better left not understood by the rest of us.  Though Taylor is excellent here, the film's curious tone is far from welcoming and the ugly chain of events, (mostly rapey), help leave a sort of nihilistic taste in one's mouth once the credits hit.

GIALLO A VENEZIA
(1979)
Dir - Mario Landi
Overall: WOOF

Tasteless crud coming unsurprisingly from the guy who would make Patrick Still Lives the following year, Giallo a Venezia, (Giallo in Venice), is less of a giallo and more of a mean-spirited and juvenile excuse for exploitative depravity.  Rape, harassment, sadistic sex, and indulgent murders make-up an asinine story that is structured in the least engaging way possible, meaning police inspectors walking around interviewing every other character and gracing us with meandering flashbacks one after the other.  Jeff Blynn plays the detective on the case who looks more like a homeless hippy than anything and he also seems incapable of taking his job seriously.  He is usually smirking, casually chumming it up with suspects, and seems as bored with the proceedings as we are watching them.  As he did in the aforementioned Patrick sequel, Landi makes sure that Mariangela Giordano suffers a ridiculous and humiliating death, being tied naked to her own kitchen table while a maniac slowly saws her leg off and then puts her dismembered remains in the fridge.  We also have a guy getting drowned and then dragged to the shore, a guy getting shot and then set on fire, and two different people are stabbed to death with scissors, with the women of course getting said utensil shoved into her crotch.  Speaking of genitalia, there is plenty of snore-inducing sex scenes to stretch this dung heap out even further because of course.

1970s Italian Horror Part Thirteen

FRANKENSTEIN '80

(1972)

Dir - Mario Mancini

Overall: WOOF

 

It is not every day that one comes across a movie taking "inspiration" from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein which features the monster raping and murdering a prostitute and then choking out a stripper, but that is where Frankenstein '80, (Midnight Horror), unfortunately comes in.  A textbook bit of Euro-horror sleaze that is heavy on the sleaze and all around awfulness, it checks off most of the necessary components that the worst of low-budget Italian grindhouse garbage has to offer.  As the lone directorial effort from cinematographer Mario Mancini, it is alarming how hilariously inept the film looks with awkward framing, no atmospheric lighting, (or sometimes no lighting at all), crude gore effects, and slap-dash editing that literally cuts characters off in mid sentence.  The dubbing is of the melodramatic variety that bottom-barrel, foreign exports were all too often given, with whoever did Renato Romano's police inspector deserves particular "props" for his ridiculously over the top line readings.  While this is certainly horrible enough to garnish laugh out loud responses here or there, it is of course mostly an painful, ugly bore that would be better enjoyed as a gag-reel than as an unforgiving, eighty-nine minute viewing experience.

 

DEATH SMILES ON A MURDERER

(1973)

Dir - Joe D'Amato

Overall: MEH

 

Notable as the first film that Euro-trash exemplar Joe D'Amato was credited as the director on, (though he had unofficially made a handful of others beforehand), Death Smiles on a Murder, (La morte ha sorriso all'assassino, Death Smiles at Murder), finds him sort of lazily reworking several Gothic horror tropes with both Klaus Kinski and Ewa Aulin on board.  Kinski is only partially present as a mostly useless doctor whose small handful of scenes almost come off as if they are taken from a different movie, though Aulin is appropriately top-billed as a beautiful woman who was raped by her hunchback brother, married Giacomo Rossi Stuart, suffered amnesia, got walled into a locked room Edgar Allan Poe style by her lesbian love interest, and then haunts everyone else on screen with hilariously awful corpse makeup on for the rest of the film.  It is all silly business that by D'Amato's own account was the result of inexperience as a screenwriter as well as him being unable to successfully collaborate with enough people to help flesh-out his rather desperate number of ideas.  His directing chops are not all that impressive either as it drags quite a bit and adheres to the same soft-focus, by-the-books aesthetic of every other low-budget genre film of the era, with plenty of zooms and repeated musical cues to boot.  A waste all around, but not an insulting one at least.

 

THE KILLER RESERVED NINE SEATS

(1974)

Dir - Giuseppe Bennati

Overall: MEH

 

Though it goes for some eerie atmosphere and has a killer with a jarring mask on, too many unlikable, interchangeable characters ultimately doom the final film from director Giuseppe Bennati, The Killer Reserved Nine Seats, (L'assassino ha riservato nove poltrone).  People and their spouses, ex-spouses, boyfriends, girlfriends, and daughters all hold up in an abandoned, family theater for no decipherable reason, (likely bourgeois boredom), before they start getting slowly, very slowly picked off in accordance with some series of events that took place a century earlier.  No one likes each other until they admit to being madly in love with each other, everyone talks in one part of a room only to walk to another part of the room to talk some more, women get slapped around when they get upset, one of them dances around naked only moments after discovering a dead body, and the dubbing is made up exclusively of pompous, cartoon character British accents.  Equal parts melodramatic and exhaustively boring, the lackluster story is wasted on the excellent, foreboding setting.  If it was not so overly talky and meandering, then Bennati's frequent, silent detours down dilapidated hallways and stage sets would be appropriately chilling.

1970s 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.

1970s Italian Horror Part Eleven

THE CASE OF THE BLOODY IRIS

(1972)

Dir - Giuliano Carnimeo

Overall: MEH

After being behind the lens on no less than ten Spaghetti Westerns in a row, Giuliano Carnimeo took a detour with the adequately sleazy giallo The Case of the Bloody Iris, (Perché quelle strane gocce di sangue sul corpo di Jennifer?, Why Those Strange Drops of Blood on Jennifer's Body?, Erotic Blue).  Crediting himself once again under the Americanized name Anthony Ascott, Carnimeo scored genre regulars George Hilton and Edwige Fenech as the two good-looking leads. the latter who is pursued once again by a shady, hedonistic cult in a similar enough fashion as she was in the same year's All the Colors of the Dark.  As is typical with Euro-trash, women are treated particularly and hilariously awful here as they are berated, seen as hysterical nuisances, objectified, smacked across the face, raped, and of course murdered.  There is even a lesbian character and crotchety old woman who act as bad as the men do, just to make sure that Fenech is sparred nothing and punished in some form of another just for being gorgeous.  Carnimeo throws in more humor here than giallos often allow, (sometimes effectively and sometimes awkwardly), with quite a bit of police detective padding in place of more over the top murder sequences.  The film looks a lot better than it is, but it also seems to be in on its formulaic and silly nature.

 

SEVEN DEATHS IN THE CAT'S EYE

(1973)

Dir - Antonio Margheriti

Overall: MEH

 

The Gothic giallo hybrid Seven Deaths in the Cat's Eye, (La morte negli occhi del gatto, Sieben Tote in den Augen der Katzefrom), is unfortunately a lame one from director Antonio Margheriti.  Atmospheric on paper only, it has a typical set up of a motley crew of people conducting themselves in a large, Scottish mansion where everyone keeps getting picked off as a gorilla is seen occasionally through a window, bodies disappear and are assumed to be vampire for no reason, women have emotional nightmares that none of the men take seriously, a cat seems to be supernaturally up to something, characters are sleeping with and back-stabbing each other, and all of it is dreadfully boring.  The plotting plays out like a typical giallo, with an obvious red herring who the audience never once believes is the actual killer, only to reveal the real one in the final scene whose motivation is of course laughably convoluted and unsatisfying.  Though Anton Diffring is always a nice addition to any genre film and there is a barely touched upon lesbian angle thrown in to spice things up with Doris Kuntsmann's adulteress, neither of these things is enough to ward off the persistent sense of disinterest.  Margheriti has certainly done worse in his filmography, but he perhaps never did anything less memorable, at least as far as his horror works are concerned.

 

KILLER NUN

(1979)

Dir - Giulio Berruti

Overall: MEH

Set in the modern day and claiming to be based on the real life case of Cecile Bombeek who committed a series of murders at a Catholic-run hospital in Belgium circa 1977, Killer Nun, (Suor Omicidi, Sister Nun, Geständnis einer Nonne), is an unimpressive nunsploitation outing that arrived late in the sub-genre's heyday.  The second of only two directorial efforts from Giulio Berruti who was generally an editor, it is as poorly paced as any other Euro-trash movie and sans a nasty acupuncture murder and Paola Morra's naked, well-endowed chest area, it is mostly void of excessive violence and nudity.  Most of the sleaze, (which also includes lesbianism and drug abuse), is alluded to more than shown, despite the film's video nasty reputation.  It managed to score a past-her-prime, appropriately over the top Anita Ekberg in the lead, along with more subdued performances from Alida Valli as the Mother Superior and Andy Warhol regular Joe Dallesandro as a dashing doctor.  There is a "twist" ending that anyone who is only paying half attention to what is going on can spot a mile away and a couple of moment's where Ekberg's morphine withdraws spiral into nasty behavior for a hoot, but it is mostly a tame and monotonous affair that does not live up to its trashtacular title.

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.