The Red Queen Kills Seven Times (1972)

Do most people actually have a favorite color?  I know mine seems to change each time the question comes up (which is not often, I grant you).  I mean, I can completely understand having a least favorite color (olive green aka puke, I’m looking at you), but do folks really have a color they absolutely can’t live without?  I suppose they must, since some people feel compelled to festoon their entire living space in one pigment (or slight variations in tone thereof) to the point of obnoxiousness.  I know, because I have worked in houses like that.  I have worked in a house where it was literally floor to ceiling white (we won’t get into additive and subtractive color theories here) with slight gold highlights.  My question would be why?  Why would you spend money decorating your house in a color which will get dirty the instant you breathe on it?  Never mind that it looks like a Kubrickian or Fuestian movie set, it’s completely impractical to me.  Between you, me, and the wall, I think this type of behavior reeks of obsessive-compulsive disorder.  Granted, it’s not as harmful as skinning people, because everyone is only beautiful on the inside or running around in a red cape killing people, but it’s still damned odd, to my point of view.  You don’t have to agree.  But you know you do, right?

Kitty Wildenbrück is a young, pleasant girl who likes to play with her red-dress-wearing dolly.  Her precocious sister Evelyn enjoys tormenting her sibling, and steals said toy.  Intruding on Grandfather Tobias’s (Rudolf Schündler) study, the sisters scream at each other until Evelyn is mesmerized by a rather gruesome painting on the wall.  Suddenly, the diminutive brunette is seized with an uncontrollable rage, and she proceeds to stab the doll to pieces.  Naturally, this is a good time for Tobias to tell the daughters about the family curse, wherein the Black Queen kills the Red Queen, because she didn’t want to share her man.  The Red Queen later returns from the grave and proceeds to kill six people (wait for it…), with the Black Queen being the final one (…and there’s the seven).  This curse rears its head every hundred years and is due to occur again in about fourteen more.  Leap forward fourteen years, and the adult Kitty (Barbara Bouchet) is now a photographer with a successful German fashion company and boinking the openly adulterous Martin (Ugo Pagliai).  But soon Grandfather Tobias is found dead, and a woman matching Evelyn’s description is seen fleeing the castle (of course, he lives in a castle) wearing a red cape and laughing maniacally.  The Red Queen has claimed her first victim.

Emilio Miraglia’s The Red Queen Kills Seven Times (aka La Dama Rossa Uccide Sette Volte aka The Lady In Red Kills Seven Times aka Cry Of A Prostitute: Love Kills) bears a few non-significant but definitely noticeable similarities to his The Night Evelyn Came Out Of The Grave released the prior year.  Both focus on characters obsessed with someone they believe to be dead.  The deceased are both named Evelyn.  The two films include characters who have been (and probably still should be) locked in an asylum.  They both involve a mystery which is both more and less unbelievable than one would suspect at first glance.  Taken by themselves, there’s nothing all that outstanding about these similarities.  They are all common facets in the Giallo subgenre (excepting the name Evelyn, obviously), and Miraglia certainly knows his way around them.  However, what struck me the most in this film is how the subgenre’s devices are used in a dual capacity.

When we think of duality in film, we expect to be presented with double images as a visual metaphor.  Things like mirrors, reflections, and so forth are typical for this type of motif.  Miraglia doesn’t go that route, though, and I think that’s wise, because it is a practice which can just as easily tip its hand and give away all of the story’s surprises (Gialli being films difficult to second guess to begin with).  Doubles are things which can work better as a theme than as a story element.  It’s all in the user.

The main binary idea behind the film, to my mind, is in a juxtaposition of reality (or cinematic reality, at least) and artifice.  It starts in the very first sequence.  Evelyn steals her sister’s doll, and because of the influence of the painting of the Black Queen stabbing the Red Queen (kind of odd in the grand scheme of the plot, but still…), she starts stabbing the doll with the negligently placed (family?) dagger.  Already the folkloric world has infiltrated the real world.  Tobias believes in a family curse to an absurd degree, and he even allows this belief to govern his life and decisions.  The Red Queen is a story come to life, literally enacting a fantasy which is difficult to put any credence in if we accept that this film is set in the “real” world.  Using montage rather than any clever compositions, the filmmaker creates a dichotomy between verity and fiction.  

Miraglia contrasts the fictive tale of the Red Queen and her exploits against the concrete world of Inspector Toller (Marino Masé) and his quest to find the killer in his jurisdiction.  The scenes involving Toller and the police serve two purposes (duality again).  First, they are exposition to give the audience background information on characters, primarily, but they also serve to give a procedural perspective on the case.  Never mind that the police are as ineffective here as they are in almost every Giallo ever filmed.  Second, they provide a sense of verisimilitude to the goings-on which are ludicrous on their face.  In my opinion, they also serve to kill the film’s pacing (a third, most assuredly unintended, purpose).  In the police scenes, we are in a world of dreary brick walls and hard, flat lighting, just like the world we actually live in.  Contrast this with the scenes involving the Red Queen, which are stylishly lit and choreographed and normally take place away from any semblance of civilization (if you’ll notice, a large portion of these scenes occur in castles, villas, parks, and empty streets).  In some ways, it is problematic to determine which side the filmmaker favors (that’s not to say that he has to favor one over the other).  After all, the plot revolves around murders caused by a character who shouldn’t exist, and we know that there is no way the final explanation can be anything other than mundane.  Yet, like great Gialli, not only is the explanation banausic but it also contains several preposterous aspects, so that even when the last shot disappears from the screen, we’re still left with the struggle between real and imaginary, film and life, presentation and representation.  We decide.

MVT:  The most valuable thing for me is the mystery aspect of the story.  One of the most enjoyable things about Gialli is in trying to play along and unravel the mystery before the other characters do.  It is usually a hopeless pursuit, as there will be so many twists and turns and revelations so far out of left field, you tend to accept them more because of their lunacy rather than in spite of it.

Make Or Break:  The Make is the dream sequence that appears about halfway through the film.  It marries real and unreal in the same shots, summing up the film neatly.  It is also the most stylishly directed portion of the film in my opinion, and puts Miraglia’s skills behind the camera front and center.

Score:  6.75/10

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The Night Evelyn Came Out Of The Grave (1971)

There is a cemetery near where I live.  Actually, there are quite a few (no shock there).  In one of them, though, there is a somewhat unorthodox mausoleum.  The cemetery is not that large (it measures about three blocks long and goes back another two [not city blocks, mind you]).  Anyway, the mausoleum I’m thinking of sits at the rear of the cemetery.  The family name I cannot recall, but inside the crypt is a statue of a demon.  Why this particular sculpture sits inside a mausoleum in a Christian cemetery, I haven’t a clue.  The rumor is that that the man buried there was a Devil worshipper (yes, I know it makes no sense), and that on the night of a full moon, the statue’s eyes glow.  Here’s what I can tell you; I have seen the statue.  It does exist and from what I recall, it definitely is of a horned person.  Whether that would be Satan, a satyr, or a reproduction of Michelangelo’s Moses statue is uncertain (I was about ten or so when I saw this thing).  The eyes didn’t glow when I saw it, but then again, I don’t remember if it was a full moon out that night, and I would probably swear that they did anyway, the human mind being as suggestible as it is.  

Lord Alan Cunningham (Anthony Steffen) is a swinging widower who likes to pick up redheaded hookers, bring them back to his castle, torture, and kill them.  Nice guy.  Creepy brother-in-law, Albert (Roberto Maldera) knows about these attacks and extorts money from Alan regularly.  Alan’s friend Dr. Richard Timberlane (Giacomo Rossi-Stuart) wants Alan to get help for the seizures he has when he thinks about his dead wife Evelyn (which is a lot).  Cousin George (Enzo Tarascio) takes Alan to a party, where he meets, falls in love with, and swiftly marries Gladys (Marina Malfatti).  After moving into the castle alongside wheelchair-bound Aunt Agatha (Joan C. Davis), though, Gladys soon begins to get the feeling that Evelyn may have some unfinished business with Alan.

Emilio Miraglia’s The Night Evelyn Came Out Of The Grave (aka La Notte Che Evelyn Uscì Dalla Tomba) is a Giallo, but it really doesn’t feel like one at the start.  For the better part of the first forty minutes or so, all we get are scenes of Alan having seizures and whipping hookers in the torture chamber in which none of them is uncomfortable to be, inexplicably.  As such, there is no real mystery or anything to pique a viewer’s interest, with the exception of how Evelyn died, and even that isn’t addressed overtly in this portion of the film (though anyone who has ever watched a movie before can make a pretty good guess).  From this first half, one expects the film to be about Alan’s maniacal doings, basically a sleaze and torture film.  Thankfully, though, the story does pick up in the second half, but in all honesty, getting to the interesting part is fairly difficult, seeing as there’s nothing all that interesting going on to maintain interest, and the plot follows a repetitious cycle of events.  

Anthony cannot let go of Evelyn, most prominently signified by the portrait in his bedroom of which he refuses to rid himself.  This leads to his obsessive behaviors.  He will not allow anyone with red hair in the castle (humorously, the five maids Aunt Agatha hires look identical, all the way to their blonde afros).  He is instantly attracted to Gladys and even desires her sexually (he wouldn’t allow a redheaded prostitute to kiss him, but he has passionate sex with Gladys), and the viewer gets the idea (based on previous experience) that part of the reason is her blonde hair.  His murderous episodes serve a dual purpose.  On the one hand, they allow him to take control of a situation that he couldn’t control the first time around.  On the other hand, they allow him to take out his anger on surrogates, something he never had the chance to do when his wife was alive.  And while the toll his wife’s death took on him is prevalent throughout the film, after Alan weds Gladys, his violent outbursts seemingly cease (seizures excepted) and are (somewhat disturbingly) never brought up again in any significant way (essentially allowing him to abrogate responsibility for these crimes). 

  

The film uses flashbacks as both exposition and a reinforcement of the unreliable narrator facet on which the film is built.  We see a naked (we assume) Evelyn lilting through a misty glen.  Under a pine tree, she falls into the embrace of a naked (we assume) Alan.  And again, these sequences serve multiple ends.  The first is as an allusion to the biblical Garden of Eden, a time when everything was perfect, and there was no such thing as sin.  The second point is as suggested explanation for why Alan is the way he is now, and an idealistic interpretation of events which may or may not have happened, as well as something which is unattainable in the real world for Alan.  Yet a third point offers that these images only exist in Alan’s head, and are false, merely more symptoms of Alan’s sickness.

Despite the daunting first half, the film does come into its own once the supernatural elements enter play.  Early on, Aunt Agatha arranges a séance, wherein Alan sees an image of Evelyn and passes out, but this episode is shrugged off as being one of Agatha’s patented unfunny practical jokes.  It isn’t until Gladys informs Alan that she got his evening milk from a maid with red hair that suddenly avenues open up in the viewer’s mind.  The puzzle deepens through the rest of the film, and it plays heavily on the angle of revenge from beyond the grave.  Of course, this means characters are going to start dropping like flies, and here’s where there is an interesting twist on a traditional Giallo convention (it was interesting to me, anyway).  Those familiar with this subgenre know that the hidden killer is often only depicted on screen via his (or her) black gloves.  In this film, we do get the gloves, but they are yellow.  Giallo gloves for a Giallo film.  Of course, an observant watcher of the film will have a pretty good idea of what’s going on and by whom by the time things get interesting, but by that point, you’re along for the ride, and there are still several wild twists which I guarantee you will not see coming and make the film worthwhile to see, but it’s in no way one of the classics of the subgenre.

MVT:  Miraglia’s direction is slick, professional, evocative, and effective.  He is stylish or subdued as is necessary, and knows when those times are, though he could admittedly use some work on his pacing.  Personally, I’ll be seeking out more of his films in the future.

Make Or Break:  The Make is (as stated above) the moment when Gladys lets drop that the maid she met in the kitchen had ginger hair.  Something is up, and now the viewer actively wants to know what and how.  It provides the impetus for the momentum which will drive the film through the remainder of its runtime, right up to its lunatic finish.

Score:  6.25/10

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