EDITOR’S NOTE: A Black Ribbon for Deborah was first on Chiller Theater on Saturday, February 3, 1979 at 1:00 a.m. It also aired on October 4, 1980 and October 2, 1982.

Marcello Andrei directed this movie  wrote the script with Alvaro Fabrizio, Giuseppe Pulieri and Piero Regnoli — who wrote the original idea of a woman passing her child to someone else before they “all the usual bullshit: the witches, the sorcerer, the special effects.” It was released as The Torment in the UK.

Deborah (Marina Malfatti) wants a child of her own more than anything anyone could ever want. She’s told that only a miracle will make her pregnant. This fact has destroyed her marriage to Michel (Bradford Dillman). Deborah is also a powerful psychic, even if she doesn’t know it, and when she and her husband find a car crash with a dying pregnant woman named Mira (Delia Boccardo),  those skills are used to solve the mystery in this movie.

Marina Malfatti is rocking the short Mia Farrow hair here and is finally getting the chance to be the lead in a giallo after supporting Barbara Bouchet in The Red Queen Kills Seven Times and Edwige Fenech in All the Colors of the Dark. She’s also up front in The Red-Stained Lawn.

Sure, this is more supernatural than straight up giallo, but it aspires to f-giallo, as Deborah tries to be a mother in any way that she can, whether that’s doting on her dog Igor or giving toys to every kid she meets.

This also has some more American star power with Gig Young (in a role that Jose Ferrer was supposed to play) as a parapsychologist named Ofenbauer who is friends with Michel and debates him the difference between science and religion. There’s also a dinner party where he demonstrates his skills as a psychic but the feedback between Deborah and him is nearly a tragedy for everyone.

Soon, Deborah begins to feel that she is pregnant and starts to have a psychic proxy pregnancy, if you will and if that’s a thing, while also occasionally being hysterical and destroying all of her artwork. And as you can imagine, this is all heading toward a shock ending.

I love that Un Fioggo Nero per Deborah played on Pittsburgh’s Chiller Theater. What a strange lineup that show played over its decades of being on the air, going from American 1950s science fiction to Japanese monsters, Hammer horror and odd Italian psycho affairs like this. I can only imagine what the talk at the mill or school was the next day about this movie.