Before he moved into making TV movies, Michael Miller made Silent Rage and Class Reunion in the same year, as well as another rough film, Jackson County Jail. Street Girls is more raw than all of them, a movie that seemed to be sleazier than the majority of New World’s catalogue.
Shockingly, it was co-written by Barry Levinson.
Yes, the same person who directed Rainman.
Angel (Christine Souder in the only movie she’d ever make) goes from college girl to exotic dancer to getting hooked on heroin. Her father (Art Burke) decides to go the Hardcore route four years before that movie was made and head out into the filthy streets to find his little girl. At first, he has the help of her co-worker Sally (Carol Case, also in her only movie) until he learns that she was Angel’s lover. Disgusted, he abandons her and continues his search.
This also shows the life that Angel is in, down to a scene where a client brings her a swimming mask so that he can urinate on her. She locks herself in a filthy motel bathroom while he keeps banging on the door, begging for the opportunity to defile her. This scene goes way beyond any small town girl gone wrong movie than any I’ve seen in mainstream movies.
It’s not great, but man, it’s not afraid to show how cheap life can be.
I’ve gone on record saying that I hold Sergio Martino in the same esteem as Dario Argento and feel that his giallo films are if not as good, often really close to being better. In fact, I’d compare his five-picture run from The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardhto Torso to any giallo creator there ever is, was or will be.
Arrow Video has brought together three of his giallo in one impressive looking box set.
The Case of the Scorpion’s Tail (1971): While she makes love to someone else, Lisa’s husband dies in a jet crash. She stands to inherit all of his money, despite them being basically separated. An ex-lover has a confrontation with her, threatening her with blackmail. She pays up — some money now, then some when she gets the letter where she wished that her husband was dead. But a gloved hand finds the letter and kills the ex-lover!
Lisa has to go to Athens to collect the money, but runs into one of her husband’s ex-lovers, Lara Florakis (Janine Reynaud, Succubus) and a knife-wielding maniac. Peter Lynch (George Hilton from All the Colors of the Dark) saves her and takes her to the hotel. She asks for all of the money in cash, despite warnings to how dangerous that is.
That same maniac tries to kill Peter, then comes back to kill Lisa, sharp jazz wails staccato punctuating each stab of the knife, each rip across her body. Jump cuts and flashes and the room is covered by the police, who question him.
An INTERPOL agent, Inspector Stavros (Luigi Pistilli, The Good, the Bad and The Ugly, Your Vice is a Locked Door and Only I Have the Key), offers to help Peter with the case and the moment he goes to talk to Lara, he’s attacked by the gloved man.
That brings in Cléo Dupont(Anita Strindberg, Who Saw Her Die?), a journalist who pretty much instantly falls in love with our hero. They go up to his room, but it’s been turned over by the police, with even the bed sliced open looking for the million dollars that went missing when Lisa was killed.
Turns out the gloved man wasn’t on Lara’s side — he or she slits her throat, then runs up a spiral staircase as a guard gives chase. This reveals a room full of one-eyed baby dolls and a strange oil painting. Between the woman’s face against the glass with blood spraying everywhere and these reveals, this film is really tipping its hat toward Argento.
The bodyguard chases after the killer, but is knocked off the roof. One slash across the fingers and we have another dead body. It’s 45 minutes in…and most of the IMDB cast is already dead!
That said — there’s a stewardess that gets the gift of scorpion earrings from an unseen lover. So there’s that.
Meanwhile, Peter and Cléo make love on an orange shag couch while a peeping tom watches from the window. You know how Bruce Banner always has on purple slacks and you wonder, “Who wears purple slacks?” Peter does.
The peeping tom wants him to move his car, which is blocking the garage. That said — he’s awfully creepy about it. Peter moves the car and then gets back to business time. PS — if you’re into late 60’s/early 70’s patterns and fashions, you may fall in love with this movie.
While George was out, the killer snuck in. Good thing he forgot his keys! He stumbles in at the last second, but Cléo has already been sliced up. The cops suspect Peter — but they also find a scorpion cufflink that looks just like the earrings we saw earlier.
Oh yeah — about that stewartress’s boyfriend? Yeah fights the killer, only to get his eye hacked out. Somewhere, Fulci was smiling.
Cléo is out swimming off Peter’s yacht and finds the money buried in a cave. Like a Republic serial villain, he reveals his entire plot. He worked for years to make money and saw rich people just throw it away. He put everyone against one another and even had a partner who would do the killings while he was in the room. It’s all rather simple as the police find and kill him before he can hurt her.
The Arrow Video release of this movie has an audio commentary with writer Ernesto Gastaldi, moderated by filmmaker Federico Caddeo (in Italian with English subtitles); interviews with Hilton and Martino; an analysis of Martino’s films by Mikel J. Koven, author of La Dolce Morte: Vernacular Cinema and the Italian Giallo Film; a video essay by Troy Howarth, author of So Deadly, So Perverse: 50 Years of Italian Giallo Films; a trailer; an image gallery and a reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Chris Malbon.
Your Vice Is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key (1972): Has a movie ever had a better title? Nope. Sergio Martino’s fourth entry into the giallo genre, following The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh,The Case of the Scorpion’s Tail and the previously reviewed All the Colors of the Dark, it refers to the note that the killer leaves to Edwige Fenech’s character in Mrs. Wardh. And the title is way better than the alternate ones this film has — Gently Before She Dies,Eye of the Black Cat and Excite Me!
Martino wastes no time at all getting into the crazy in this one — Oliviero Rouvigny (Luigi Pistilli from A Bay of Blood, Iguana with the Tongue of Fire, Death Rides a Horse) is a dark, sinister man, a failed writer and alcoholic who lives in a mansion that’s falling apart (If this all feels like a modernized version of a Poe story like The Fall of the House of Usher, it’s no accident. There’s even an acknowledgment that the film is inspired by The Black Cat in the opening credits.). His wife, Irina (Anita Strindberg from A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin and Who Saw Her Die?), suffers his abuses, but never more so than when he gathers hippies together for confrontational parties. He makes everyone pour all of their wine into a bowl and forces her to drink it, then humiliates their black servant Brenda until one of the partygoers starts singing and everyone joins in, then gets naked. This scene is beyond strange and must be experienced.
The only person that Oliviero seems to love is Satan, the cat that belonged to his dead mother. A black cat that talks throughout every scene he’s in, his constant meows led to my cats communicating with the TV. God only knows what a 1970s giallo cat said, but it seems like his words spoke directly to their hearts.
One of Oliviero’s mistresses is found dead near the house, but he hides her body. The police suspect him, as does his wife. Adding to the tension is the fact that Irina hates Satan, who only seems to care about messing with her beloved birds.
Remember that servant? Well, she’s dead now, but not before she walks around half-naked in Oliviero’s mother’s dress while he watches from the other room. She barely makes it to Irina’s room before she collapses, covered in blood. Blood that Satan the cat has no problem walking through! He refuses to call the police, as he doesn’t want any more suspicion. He asks his wife to help him get rid of the body.
Oliviero’s niece Floriana (Edwige Fenech, pretty much the queen of the giallo) is in town for a visit, learning how Oliviero hasn’t been able to write one sentence over and over again for three years, stuck in writer’s block (and predating The Shining by 5 years in book form and 8 years away from Kubrick’s film). Unlike everyone else who tolerates Oliviero’s behavior or ignores it, Floriana sees right through the bullshit. The writer is used to seducing every woman he meets and she initially rebuffs him, even asking if it’s true that Oliviero used to sleep with his mother. He angrily asks if it’s true that she’s a two-bit whore. “Those would be two bits worth spending,” is her caustic reply.
Irina confides all of her pain to Floriana as the two become lovers. And another girl gets murdered — perhaps by Oliviero. Then, a dirt bike racer comes to drop off milk and hit on Floriana. Whew — I was wondering when this film would get hard to follow and start piling on the red herrings!
After being questioned by the police, Oliviero comes home to choke his wife. He stops at the last second…then we’re off to the races! The motorbike races! The milkman loses when his bike breaks down, but he’s the real winner — taking Floriana back to the abandoned house that he lives in. And oh look — there’s creepy Oliviero watching the action.
Meanwhile, Satan has gotten into the coop and chowed down on several of the birds. Irina catches him and they have quite the battle. He scratches her numerous times before she stabs him in the eye with a pair of scissors. An old woman watches and is chased away by Irina’s yelling.
She’s afraid that her husband will kill her once he learns that she killed Satan. And Oliviero keeps wondering where the cat is, especially after he buys the cat his favorite meal from the store — sheep eyes. That said — Satan might not be so dead, as we can hear his screaming and see him with a missing eye.
Floriana puts on Oliviero’s mother’s dress, asking if this is what the maid looked like before she died. Whether it’s the dress or the forbidden family love or just her beauty, he rips off her dress — at her urging, mind you — and begins making love to his niece. We cut to Idrina, caressing her pet birds, when Oliviero confronts her with scissors and questions about Satan. He almost stabs her before he ends up raping her inside the coop, while Floriana looks on. She playing them off the other, even telling Idrina that she’s slept with her husband. She also tells her that Oliviero wants to kill her, so she should kill him first.
Idrina wakes up to the sound of Satan, but can’t find him anywhere. What she does find is her husband in bed with Floriana, who is belittling him. With every sinister meow, there’s a zoom of the cat’s damaged eye. Finally, Oliviero attacks her for spying on him, slapping her around before he leaves to write. She walks the grounds of the mansion, seeing the motorcycle rider make a date with Floriana and catching sight of Satan, who runs from her. In the basement, she finds scissors and the hidden bodies of her husband’s lover and the murdered maid. In a moment of clarity — or madness — she stabs her husband while he sleeps. The sequence is breathtaking — a giallo POV shot of the murder weapon intercut with the same sentence being typed over and over interspersed with all of the abuses that Oliviero had wrought upon her. She stabs again and again before Floriana interrupts, asking her if it was easy. The sentence that the author had written again and again was him claiming that he would kill her and there was a space in the wall for her, so obviously, she had to kill him.
As for Floriana, all she wanted was the family jewels, which were hidden in the house. They seal Oliviero’s corpse within the wall while Walter watches from afar. He’s played by Ivan Rassimov, who does creeping staring dudes better than anyone else — witness his work in All the Colors of the Dark. And it turns out that he’s the real killer! He’s been typing “vendetta” over and over again. Floriana asks if Idrina was planning to kill her before she runs off into the night, then Walter appears to kiss Idrina. Turns out they were working together all along — she tells him where to find Floriana the next morning. Holy shit — Idrina reveals her whole plot, revealing how she drove her husband crazy, making him believe that he could have been a murderer! She wishes that there was an afterlife so Oliviero’s mother — who she killed! — could tell him how great her revenge was. She ends by wishing that her husband was still alive so that he could suffer for eternity.
Walter sets up an accident that takes out Floriana and her boyfriend, as their motorcycle crashes, sending blood across the white heart of a billboard and out of her lips. He tosses a match on the gasoline-soaked highway, burning both of their corpses. He collects the jewelry and gives it to Idrina, who responds by shoving him off a cliff!
When she returns to the mansion, the police are there, as there were alerted to her stabbing Satan by the old woman. They come inside the house to write a statement, but hear the sound of Satan’s meows. Following the sound, they find him inside a wall — with the corpse of her husband!
Your Vice is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key is superb. An intriguing story — only a few derailing giallo moments (like the killing of the girl in the room with the dolls and the B roll motocross scenes) — with great acting, eye-catching camerawork and some genuine surprises, it’s well worth seeking out and savoring.
The Arrow Video blu ray of this movie has an interview with Martino; a making of with interviews with Martino, Fenech and Gastaldi; a visual essay by Michael Mackenzie exploring Martino’s contributions to the giallo genre; a feature by film historian Justin Harries on Fenech’s career; Eli Roth speaking on the film and a reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Matthew Griffin.
This is the last of Martino’s giallo and doesn’t feature his usual cast, like Edwige Fenech or Ivan Rassimov. It does, however, have Claudio Cassinelli, who was in Murder Rock and What Have They Done to Your Daughters?
Cassinelli plays police detective Paolo Germi, who meets a girl named Marisa (Patrizia Castaldi, in her only acting role before becoming a costume designer) who is soon murdered. She was a prostitute and now, Germi is haunted by her death and wants to find the killers. Unfortunately, Marisa was in way over her head and getting the answers won’t be simple. After all, there’s a man with mirrored shades killing everyone that gets close to the truth.
While this film doesn’t reach the lunatic heights of Martino’s finest works, it’s still a gleaming example of how great 1970’s Italian genre film can be.
The Arrow Video release of this film also has extras like audio commentary by Troy Howarth, author of So Deadly, So Perverse: 50 Years of Italian Giallo Films; an interview with Martino and a reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Chris Malbon.
You can purchase this Arrow Video box set from MVD.
Arrow Video continues its exploration of giallo with its fourth box set after the Black, Red and Yellow editions of Giallo Essentials.
The Night Evelyn Came Out of the Grave (1971): Emilio Paolo Miraglia created two giallo — this film and The Red Queen Kills Seven Times. This one goes more into the horror realm than the typical themes of the genre.
Lord Alan Cunningham starts this movie off by running away from an insane asylum, a place he’s been since the death of his redheaded wife, Evelyn, who he caught having sex with another man. To deal with his grief, Alan does what any of us would do — pick up redhead prostitutes and strippers, tie them up, then kill them.
A seance freaks Alan out so badly he passes out, so his cousin — and only living heir — Farley moves in to take care of him, which basically means going to strip clubs and playing with foxes. Alan nearly kills another stripper before Farley gives him some advice — to get over Evelyn, he should marry someone that looks just like her. Alan selects Gladys (Marina Malfatti, All the Colors of the Dark) as his new wife and comes back home.
Sure, you meet someone one night and marry them the next. But nothing could compare Gladys for the weirdness of living in an ancient mansion, along with a staff of identical waitresses, Evelyn’s brother and Alan’s wheelchair-bound aunt. Our heroine is convinced that Evelyn is not dead. And the other family members get killed off — Albert with a snake and Agatha is eaten by foxes!
Gladys even looks at the body in the tomb before Alan catches her and slaps the shit out of her, as he is going crazier and crazier. Finally, Evelyn rises from her grave, which sends him back to a mental institution.
The big reveal? Gladys and Farley were in on it all along. But wait, there’s more! Susan, the stripper who survived Alan’s attack, was the one who was really Evelyn and Gladys has been poisoned! Before she dies, the lady who we thought was our heroine wipes out the stripper and Farley gets away with the perfect crime.
But wait! There’s more! Alan had faked his breakdown and did it all so that he could learn that it was Farley who was making love to his wife and killed her when she refused to run away with him. A fight breaks out and Farley gets burned by acid. He’s arrested and Alan — who up until now was pretty much the villain of this movie — gets away with all of his crimes!
This is a decent thriller, but it really feels padded in parts and tends to crawl. That said, it has some great music, incredibly decorated sets and some twists. Not my favorite giallo, but well worth a Saturday afternoon watch. There are some moments of sheer beauty here, such as the rainstorm where Alan sees Evelyn’s ghost rise.
The Arrow Video blu ray release of this movie has commentary by Troy Howarth, an exclusive introduction by Erika Blanc, an interview with critic Stephen Thrower, two interviews with Blanc and one with production designer Lorenzo Baraldi and a trailer.
The Iguana With the Tongue of Fire (1971): Other than The Ghost, I hadn’t seen many Riccardo Freda films before, only really knowing him from not finishing both I Vampiri and Caltiki – The Immortal Monster, films which Mario Bava took to completion. After The Bird with the Crystal Plumage made giallo into a box office success, Freda decided to try his hand at the form.
While the film’s credits say that this is based on the book A Room Without a Door by Richard Mann, that was probably an invention of the filmmakers. Freda ended up being unhappy with the movie, wanting Roger Moore for the lead.
The first thing you may notice about this film is that it’s made in Ireland, so the typical giallo set pieces aren’t there. There’s one gorgeous shot of the hills and rocks high above the water later in the movie that is completely breathtaking. And the accents in the film mark this as nowhere near Italy.
Starting with the first murder, where a girl has acid thrown in her face and her throat slashed, the film sets the tone that this is a lurid, scummy affair. But unlike most giallo, the murders appear at odds with the story. They just happen — there’s rarely any lead or tension to them and we often only see the final results, unlike the movies of Argento that wallow in both the set-up and execution of the murders, often at the expense of the story itself.
Once the corpse is found inside a limo — one that belongs to Swiss Ambassador Sobiesky — that suspect claims diplomatic immunity. So the police pull an end around, bringing in tough ex-cop John Norton (Luigi Pistilli, A Bay of Blood, Enter the Devil, Your Vice Is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key) to get close to the family and discover the real killer.
He gets close in the biblical sense with the ambassador’s daughter Helen (Dagmar Lassander, The House by the Cemetery, Hatchet for the Honeymoon)and caught up in the blackmail and sheer lunacy of the entire clan. Valentina Cortese (The Girl Who Knew Too Much, The Possessed) really stands out as the mother, who is always smoking long cigarettes and showing up way overdressed for any situation.
This is the kind of movie where every single individual — even the grandmother and daughter — can be the killer. It also has a completely pointless scene where the family cat is decapitated and left in the icebox. There’s no real hero here, just a lot of bad people and people who are worse than them. By the end of the film, you’ll have an entire living room filled with red herrings, trust me.
Arrow Video has released the ultimate version of this film, using a new 2K restoration from the original 35mm camera negative, along with the original English and Italian soundtracks, titles and credits (with newly translated English subtitles for the Italian soundtrack).
There’s also audio commentary by giallo connoisseurs Adrian J. Smith and David Flint; Of Chameleons and Iguanas, a newly filmed video appreciation by the cultural critic and academic Richard Dyer; Considering Cipriani, a new appreciation of the composer Stelvio Cipriani and this film’s score by DJ and soundtrack collector Lovely Jon; The Cutting Game, a new interview with Iguana’s assistant editor Bruno Micheli; The Red Queen of Hearts, which is an essential and thorough interview with actress Dagmar Lassander; the original Italian and international theatrical trailers; an image gallery; a reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Graham Humphreys and a collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by Andreas Ehrenreich.
This is the last of Martino’s giallo and doesn’t feature his usual cast, like Edwige Fenech or Ivan Rassimov. It does, however, have Claudio Cassinelli, who was in Murder Rock and What Have They Done to Your Daughters?
Cassinelli plays police detective Paolo Germi, who meets a girl named Marisa (Patrizia Castaldi, in her only acting role before becoming a costume designer) who is soon murdered. She was a prostitute and now, Germi is haunted by her death and wants to find the killers. Unfortunately, Marisa was in way over her head and getting the answers won’t be simple. After all, there’s a man with mirrored shades killing everyone that gets close to the truth.
While this film doesn’t reach the lunatic heights of Martino’s finest works, it’s still a gleaming example of how great 1970’s Italian genre film can be.
The Arrow Video release of this film also has extras like audio commentary by Troy Howarth, author of So Deadly, So Perverse: 50 Years of Italian Giallo Films; an interview with Martino and a reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Chris Malbon.
This limited edition Arrow Video box set comes in rigid packaging with the original poster artwork in a windowed Giallo Essentials Collection slipcover. You’ll enjoy 2K restorations from the original camera negative for all three films as well as reversible sleeves for each film featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Gilles Vranckx, Graham Humphreys and Chris Malbon.
AKA The Seduction of Amy, this film finds Jean Rollin stuck yet again in that horrible trauma of having no money to make the movies that he wants to make and instead making adult films and trying to sneak in art amongst all the same old in and out.
It’s set in a castle where de Sade once performed black magic rites and there’s a beach — there’s always a beach — and the Castel twins show up and spank one another, so I’m not made of stone, you know? That said, it’s kind of a kick in the pants to go from slow drone Rollin to just basic coupling and it’s so static and clinical and there it is — just coitus — when I’ve been inside the magical movie drug world, you know?
Back in Video Watchdog #31, Rollin said very much the same: ” I was sure that, with this type of film, one could come up with something new and of interest. I tried with Phantasmes but failed miserably. The reason for the death of French hardcore culture, if you want to use that term, is that the audience just doesn’t care. They don’t want cinema, they want people screwing and that’s it. That’s why after Phantasmes, I made my porn films in a rather uninspired way. I was very disappointed with the failure of that film. I really tried to make something out of it and nobody gave a damn. It was a porno with a real story, with real direction and real actors. The Castel Twins were in it again, for example. Knowing what I know now, I would say it is impossible to turn pornography into something of interest. There is simply no market. I don’t like the other porn films I did, that’s true, but I enjoyed shooting them. I made the acquaintance of a lot of very interesting people and I have respect for them. Today, the actors only do it for money, but back then, it was something different. Some of them did it because they wanted to explore their desires, some because they wanted to enter the film business, but they all had something in common. They were proud of what they did, like a little group of outsiders, because they did something which most people didn’t dare to do. It was some sort of rebellion, a statement, and it was honest.”
As he attends a media event that launches a new perfume, Frédéric (Jean-Loup Philippe) stares at a photo of a château by the sea, which reminds him of the days when he actually walked to the gates of that crumbling castle and met a girl inside not much older than him. He feels that she was trapped within that place after they met and despite his mother telling him it was all a dream, he feels as if it actually happened.
That woman is Jennifer (Annie Belle, Fly Me the French Way, The House On the Edge of the Park, Absurd) and she’s been trying to reach out to our hero and he’s been struggling because his mother has sent women who claim they are Jennifer — yet get killed by vampires — and hired guns to keep her from finding this woman from his dreams.
After being committed by his mother, Frédéric learns that this place was Sauveterre Castle and his mother claims that he can never go there, as Jennifer really is a vampire and that she will destroy him. Let me tell you about gorgeous dangerous women, mother of Frédéric. This ends, as it must, with boy and vampire girl climbing inside a coffin so that the tide can drag them to Sand Island, a place where they can kill rich sailors without consequence, which is as close as Rollin gets to a happy ending.
Seeing the Castel twins appear as the servants of Jennifer made me happy, as if I were seeing two old friends from a distance and waving hello to them fervently.
Also, if you didn’t get that Frédéric is Jean Rollin, well, he made about six other vampire movies to clue you in on that. He’s also the caretaker who is killed by the vampiric thralls.
This was remixed and had Rollin use his Michel Gand name to re-release this gorgeous work of art as the adult film Suce-moi vampire, which is quite sad, as so much of this is about innocence to me.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Cinematic Void will be playing this film on Monday, Jan. 16 at 7:00 PM PT at Los Feliz 3 in Los Angeles (tickets here). For more information, visit Cinematic Void.
Armando Crispino really only did two horror films, 1972’s The Dead Are Alive and this 1975 giallo, which is a shame, as this is a pretty decent entry in the genre. Known in Italy as Macchie Solari (Sunspots), it does indeed feature sunspot footage from space before we see any major murders. And if you’re looking for a movie packed with autopsy footage, good news. It totally lives up to its title.
Simona Sana (Mimsy Farmer, who is also in Argento’s Four Flies on Grey Velvet and The Perfume of the Lady in Black) is a pathology student who is trying to work on a theory about suicides, one that’s disputed by a young priest, Father Paul, whose sister — Simona’s dad’s latest fling — has recently killed herself. It turns out there’s been a whole series of self-killings which are being blamed on, you guessed it, sunspots.
I mean, what can you say about a movie that starts with several of said suicides, like sliced wrists, a self-induced car explosion and a man machine gunning his kids before turning the gun on himself? Obviously, this is a rather grisly affair, with real corpse photos spread — quite literally — throughout the film.
In between all of the gore, corpse penises, two bodies falling to their deaths and crime museums, there’s also Ray Lovelock (The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue) as Simona’s boyfriend, an out there Morricone score and a heroine who hallucinates that the dead are coming back to life.
The plot gets pretty convoluted, but if you’re on this site, you obviously appreciate films like this and will get past it. This is an Italian 70’s murder movie, though, so if you get easily upset about the way men behave, well, be forewarned.
Is there a more striking visual in horror than the Blind Dead, freshly awakened from their centuries of slumber, slowly plodding their way toward their victims? Not for my peseta. Well, they don’t make those any longer. Let me rephrase: not for my euro.
Night of the Seagulls (La Noche de las Gaviotas) is the fourth and final Blind Dead film, a series which began with 1972’s Tombs of the Blind Dead and continued with 1973’s Return of the Blind Dead and 1974’s The Ghost Galleon. Like those films, this was also written and directed by Amando de Ossorio.
Ossorio would lament the fact that these films’ budgets meant the final product could never live up to the vision inside his head. The end of The Ghost Galleon, where a boat in a bathtub is supposed to be the Knights’ dreaded ship set ablaze, is prime evidence of this.
His iconic Templar Knights would later appear in two other Spanish horror films, Jess Franco’s film Mansion of the Living Dead and Paul Naschy’s The Devil’s Cross. These aren’t official sequels, but homages.
PS – If you catch this movie and think, “I saw a movie called Don’t Go Out at Night, or was that Night of the Death Cult, and that seemed a lot like this one,” you’re not crazy. Those are some of the wild alternate titles for this movie.
Night of the Seagulls shares the same Templars we’ve come to know, love and perhaps fear while not sharing continuity with any of the previous films.
Back in medieval times, we watch a young couple get attacked by the still human Knights Templar, who kills the man and sacrifice one of the women to their unspeakable god.
Centuries later, Doctor Henry Stein and his wife Joan come to the same town, where they’re shunned by the locals. Seriously — Joan can’t even buy apples at the only store in town without some attitude.
The reason why is that it’s Templar season. Yes, every seven years, the Templars rise and demand a virgin sacrifice for seven consecutive nights. Of course these outsiders are going to screw it all up for the town by trying to save one of the girls. Luckily — or unluckily — a village idiot attempts to aid them in their question, but all he’s really good at is being struck and thrown down hillsides.
While not on any of the official video nasty lists, this movie — under the title Don’t Go Out at Night — was listed on Greater Manchester Police’s original list of titles that were worth seizing. It took over a minute worth of cuts to enable this to be released again in 1987, but the Anchor Bay 2005 release was uncut.
Your enjoyment of this film will depend on how much you buy into the Templars, who appear to a haunting theme and then slowly make their way down the beach to expose a virgin and then do away with her. Some people find this movie slow and boring. We’re not in that camp.
Like nearly every other genre director in the Old Country, Amando De Ossorio had a possession movie in him and if their films feel purer than their American counterparts, it may be because they’re all true believers, raised in countries that had way more religion in their blood than the freer — and yet often more repressed — New World.
Our titular demon witch child is possessed by a witch named Mother Gautère (Kali Hansa) who starts this movie off by destroying a church, stealing a chalice and killing herself in the name of Satan by jumping out of a police station window rather than revealing where the baby she’s kidnapped is, telling the forces of law and order that the child would be dead by the time they found it. Meanwhile, young Susan (Marián Salgado), the daughter of head inspector Barnes (Angel del Pozo) is given a pendant that instantly begins her possession. Avoid all gifts from hippies as you would tanis root from old Hollywood actors.
Perhaps she can be saved by Father Juan (Julian Mateos), the priest who left behind love and condemned a good woman to a broken heart and a life on the streets? Or maybe the maid Anne (Lone Fleming) can get through to her. Well, no on either account and young Susan neatly slices off the penis of Anne’s lover and presents it to her in a napkin, along with crawling the walls like a prepubescent Dracula.
What strange coincidence that when The Exorcist came to Spain, Salgado was the voice of Linda Blair.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Happy holidays to a movie that wants to ruin your season. This was first on the site on January 10, 2021.
This Aldo Lado-directed piece of Italian grime also went by the names Night Train Murders, The New House on The Left, Second House on The Left, Don’t Ride on Late Night Trains, Late Night Trains, Last House Part II and Xmas Massacre, depending on the whims of fate (and Hallmark Releasing).
Margaret (Irene Miracle, who was also in Midnight Express, Inferno and Puppet Master) and Lisa are set to take the night train from Germany to Italy, but the train is full and they have to sit in a long corridor. They help Blackie (Flavio Bucci, Suspiria) and Curly (Gianfranco De Grassi, The Church) hide from the ticket taker as they board the train and hide from the cops. Of course, instead of saying thanks, they end up decimating the two girls, along with the help of an upper class blonde (Macha Méril, Deep Red) who has already turned the tables on Blackie’s attempts at assaulting her by seducing him. The two thugs really have no idea what they’re in for, because this mysterious blonde is more dangerous than both of them put together.
The whole time the girls are being victimized, murdered and forced into suicide, Lisa’s parents are hosting a Christmas dinner party where her doctor father speaks on the ills of a more violent society.
Later, when they arrive at the station to get the girls, they are worried when they don’t arrive. If you wonder, “Will they end up taking the people that killed them home?” then yes, you have seen your share of revenge movies. The most shocking thing is that the blonde may be the only survivor of the evil trio, as her fate is left open.
This video nasty is the kind of movie that I don’t put on when people come to visit.
While some decry the bumbling cop comedy in Craven’s film, this one jettisons any attempt at levity, adds some 1975 Italian style, gets a soundtrack from Morricone and gets way, way dark.
Lado also made Short Night of Glass Dolls and Who Saw Her Die?, two of the more original and downbeat giallo to follow in the wake of Argento. Even when he’s ripping someone off — not that Craven didn’t also rip off The Virgin Spring, so there are no innocents here — he can’t help outdoing his competition.
Shot in Florida and pretty much forgotten until Garagehouse saved it, this movie was made by Chris Robinson (Stanley from, you know, Stanley) for $25,000 and the locations were free thanks to Yvonne DeCarlo and Mickey Rooney impressing the owners of the house they filmed at.
Several people have come to this house — Rooney was the boat captain that got them there — because Henry Peterson is going to give them the money they deserve. Or kill them. Maybe both.
There’s a great reveal of the killer as lighting explodes on the coast. That looks way better than the budget of this film would suggest. Imagine A Bay of Blood except shot in a Florida swamp by actors who also would show up on Love Boat or Fantasy Island and man, how do you not want to see that? How can you not love that?
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