Seven Dead in the Cat’s Eye (1973)

Original title: La morte negli occhi del gatto

Freshly thrown out of school, young Corringa (Jane Birkin) arrives at the MacGrieff family castle in Scotland after years of absence to meet up with her mother Lady Alicia (Dana Ghia) who is in her turn there to visit her sister, Lady Mary (Françoise Christophe). It’s going to be a rather interesting holiday there, for soon Lady Alicia is murdered in what turns out to be only the first in a series of killings, and it more or less falls on Corringa’s shoulders to find the murderer

Alas, Corringa’s not exactly the most capable of heroines, a problem that is further exacerbated by the fact that the castle is populated by more suspicious weirdoes than an Edgar Wallace krimi. There’s Mary, who could really use the money of Alicia’s – or now Corringa’s – side of the family, her son James (Hiram Keller), who is mad, mad, I tell you, James’s pet gorilla James (some dude in the rattiest gorilla suit this side of the 30s), Mary’s lover Dr. Franz (Anton Diffring), a falsifier of death certificates, a liar, and a cheat, Suzanne (Doris Kunstmann), the “French teacher” Franz and Mary hired to seduce/cure James (Freud is blamed) and who is of course actually a lesbian, a priest (Venantino Venantini) so friendly he’s just as suspicious as the rest, and last but not least a bunch of servants of exactly the skulking and secretive type the skulking and secretive rest of the cast deserve. Oh, and the local police inspector is played by Serge Gainsbourg dubbed with a truly frightening “Scottish” accent.

And that’s before we come to the family curse that says inter-familial murder will turn the victim into a vampire, and the adorable fluffy cat present at all of the murders.

Antonio Margheriti’s Seven Dead in the Cat’s Eye is a giallo dressed in the set design and costumes of Italian gothic horror (though the film seems to take place in the 1920s, I guess?), and as a film directed by one of my favourite directors working in two of my favourite genres, you’d expect me to be rather happy with it.

And I sort of am, or rather, I am deeply pleased by the enthusiasm with which the film hits all the beats of its two chosen genres, and even adds a fake gorilla, but I gotta state the obvious for people not-me in emphasising the resulting film isn’t exactly a great one, certainly not as phantasmagorical as Margheriti’s best gothics, and just lacking in the depth these Italian genres generally achieve through a judicious mix of exploitation and style as substance.

Sure, Seven Dead does play around a little with changed mental states, some tiny suggestions of incestual feeling and starts from the deeply giallo-esque foundation that all rich people – perhaps except for certain slightly outsider-ish ones - are decadent shits, but all this doesn’t amount to as much as one might hope for. Instead, the film really is just a series of set pieces dressed in pretty colours and fashionably dubious yet excellent gowns worn by pretty people of dubious acting acumen but excellent build, with some wonderfully garish blood and a cute kitty, and nary a thought spent on anything not having to do with everything looking pretty in a decadent and somewhat morbid way.

If you’re into this sort of thing as I am, Seven Dead is a lot like falling into a very pretty and very comfy bed for a pleasant dream of nudity, random violence and gorilla costumes (of course accompanied by a dramatic Riz Ortolani soundtrack), and that’s a fine state of mind for a movie to produce, I think. However, there’s something not quite quantifiable missing here – perhaps danger, perhaps subversion, or perhaps the nastiness that never was Margheriti’s specialty (even some of his jungle action films are a bit friendly, for their genre); the thing that would turn this from a very pleasant diversion into the giallo/gothic mash up of my dreams.

Technorati-Markierungen: italian movies,reviews,horror,gothic,giallo,antonio margheriti,jane birkin,hiram keller,doris kunstmann,anton diffring,serge gainsbourg

Dark Places (1973)

Old Mister Marr (Carleton Hobbs) dies in an English asylum for the mentally ill, telling his friend Edward Foster (Robert Hardy being very very fragile) something about money hidden behind a wall, probably a wall in Marr's old mansion from where Marr's wife, his children, and their nanny one day just disappeared, which may or may not have been the beginning of the man's madness.

It just so happens that Marr leaves said mansion to Foster, and boy, are there many walls inside behind which money might be hidden. But Foster isn't the only one who knows about the money. The local physician, Ian Mandeville (Christopher Lee, there to cash in a paycheck, not to act) and his sister Sarah (Joan Collins, playing the role Joan Collins always plays in these movies, but hey, she is at least acting that much) have heard about the hidden treasure, too, and both seem hell-bent on acquiring it by any means (looking like Christopher Lee, flirting like Joan Collins) necessary. Marr's lawyer Prescott (Herbert Lom) is also clearly in the know about the money. Now, you may ask yourself why these people haven't looked for the money long before Foster arrived, seeing as how the mansion has been empty and slowly rotting away for decades; and there you are, already thinking things through more thoroughly than the writers of the film.

Prescott's and the Mandevilles' vague plans to get at the money aren't Edward's only problems, though, for the mansion has a peculiar influence on him. There's a picture of the young Marr hanging over a fireplace, and he just happens to look exactly like Edward does. Soon, the face of a young woman in a window, noises, lights and the laughing of children haunt Edward. Eventually, he will have waking dreams in which he sees himself as Marr, living with a mad wife and two sociopathic children, and not quite thinking an affair with the nanny (Jane Birkin) through. Why, it's all enough to drive a man to lose his identity.

Dark Places is one of the many films of Don Sharp, a seasoned workman director with some moments of brilliance in his filmography. In its first half hour or so, Dark Places promises to be one of Sharp's outstanding movies, with a properly gothic atmosphere so thick you won't forget Sharp had been working for Hammer for a bit. At the beginning, the film seems to strive to mix a classic British ghost story about a haunted house that drives a man into doubting his own identity and losing contact with reality with the type of rather spooky thriller the British film industry loved so dearly. That's a genre combination akin to mixing rice and refried black beans (read: perfect), so I found myself enjoying these early stages very much.

Alas, the film's script lacks the proper tightness ghost stories - at least of this type - and thrillers sorely need. Instead of slowly but surely building its plot out of hints and a tightening feeling of menace, the writers opt for over-exposition in form of Edward's hallucinations. Used more subtly, these could have been an excellent way to demonstrate our protagonist's deteriorating state of mind and give us glimpses at what really happened in the mansion in the past, but the script goes for a sledgehammer obviousness that killed most of my engagement with the story; even in 1973, we had seen all this before again and again, and realized with much more elegance. As it stands, the film shows its cards way too early and then doesn't seem to know what to do afterwards, except for shuffling its feet and showing Christopher Lee looking bored.

Sharp does his best with the rather indifferent script, but he's not the kind of stylistically dominant director who can turn Dark Places into anything more than a solid, watchable movie. Of course, there are worse things than that.

 

Technorati-Markierungen: british movies,reviews,horror,thriller,don sharp,robert hardy,joan collins,christopher lee,herbert lom,jane birkin