Leonor

When his beloved wife Leonor (Liv Ullmann) is crushed by her horse, medieval nobleman Richard (Michel Piccoli) rushes to be by her side, the woman dying shortly thereafter. Richard attempts to assuage his grief by 'getting back in the saddle', so to speak, immediately marrying local beauty Catherine (the stunning Ornella Muti, of Flash Gordon fame) - and by 'immediately', I mean the very same day that Leonor carks it. That should take his mind off things!

Of course, some guys are never happy...

Catherine bears Richard two sons, Matthew and Gregory, but even after ten years, the wealthy lord still longs for the companionship of his first wife. So when a mysterious stranger tells Richard that he can reunite him with his long dead Leonor, he jumps at the chance. Sure enough, Leonor is resurrected, leaving Richard to make Catherine disappear - by stabbing her in the guts and chucking her down a well (divorce clearly not an option in medieval times).

This being a dark, tragic, gothic love-story/horror with strong art-house leanings, Richard's happiness is short-lived, as his undead wife begins to feed on local children, the black death approaches his castle, his livestock becomes uncontrollable and nothing grows in his garden. The atmosphere is one of morose futility, with death and decay always lurking around the corner - not exactly a barrel of laughs. Director Juan Luis Buñuel (son of cinematic surrealist Luis Buñuel) conducts proceedings with an eye for an interesting shot, but employs a languorous approach that I imagine will alienate many modern-day viewers - let's be honest, not a lot happens for much of the film. For a '70s Euro-horror, there's also a distinct lack of nudity and gore.

That said, I still found Leonor interesting enough to stay the course: there's a lyrical, haunting quality to the film, the cinematography is impressive, Ennio Morricone supplies the score, there's a scene where a young girl is burnt alive with a container of gunpowder around her neck, and the film kicks off with gang of bandits attacking Richard, one of whom is a dwarf (naturally, Richard makes short shrift of him!). I also like that the ending is totally bizarre: Richard and Leonor escape from the castle only to ride their horse off a bridge and into a ravine.

5.5/10, rounded up to 6 for IMDb.

If anything, LEONOR is a very Grimm fairy tale of love, loss, sorrow, and horror set in the Middle Ages during the time of the black plague but unfortunately, it's also less than the sum of its parts. Feudal lord Richard (Michel Piccoli), mad with grief over the death of his beloved wife Leonor (Liv Ullman), tries to assuage his torment by marrying a village girl (Ornella Muti) who eventually bears him two sons. Ten years pass but the pain doesn't ease and when Richard gets the chance to bring his lost love back, he takes it. His dream comes true but soon animals can't be tamed, crops won't grow, and children begin disappearing from the village...

Filmed among the mountains and crumbling castles of Spain by Luis Buñuel's writer/director son Juan (who worked mostly in TV after this), LEONOR is a vampiric variation on "The Monkey's Paw" and "could have been a contender" since dark romantic horror can be just as potent as erotic horror in the right hands. The sweeping vistas and medieval tableaux by Dario Argento's SUSPIRIA cinematographer Luciano Tovoli and the moody Ennio Morricone score both serve the story well but the Gothic, Poe-like tale (based on a 19th century work by J. Sheridan Le Fanu contemporary Matthew Gregory Lewis) is slow moving and the horror implied rather than explicit. Both factors work against the film but the casting of Liv Ullman in the role of "Leonor" is the final nail in the coffin, so to speak. Ingmar Bergman's muse may be a very good actress but as someone quipped to Katharine Hepburn when she said she wanted the part of Scarlett O'Hara, "I can't see anyone chasing you for ten years" and if Liv and ravishing Ornella Muti had switched places this would have gotten a 8/10 from me. As is, it's a 7.

The combination of "slow," "arthouse," "surreal" and "horror" is very appealing to me, so it was disappointing upon finally seeing this mid-70s flop to find out that it does actually deserve its rep as something of a lifeless slog. The problem isn't the lack of overt "horror" content (at least that's not a problem for me), though if you're expecting more, it will no doubt be disappointing that Ullmann's quasi-vampiric slayings of children are no more explicit than her enfolding them in her cloak. But the film simply lacks style and atmosphere, as well as verve, so the human aspects are as limp as the supernatural ones.

We only meet Leonor on her deathbed, so we get no sense of her (before her revival from the dead), or the Piccoli character's supposed great love for her. It's a bit hard to believe in the latter, as the very day she's buried he demands to marry young Ornella Muti, to the bafflement of her, her father, and the viewer. Nor does he express any notable emotions (beyond eventual impatience and hostility) towards his new bride, either. Ergo we feel nothing about the passion that supposedly leads him to resurrect one wife and neglect, then destroy another. He's a selfish, combative, unappealing character. That element might have provided its own social commentary, but the film doesn't seem to be saying anything in particular with it. The two women are beautiful, but their considerable acting skills are put to little use here. (Nor does it help that both are dubbed by others in the English language version I saw--it's particularly weird to be deprived Ullmann's familiar voice.)

The film is not so much badly as indifferently made, which is odd considering the director's pedigree (and the fact that it was his debut feature). It's watchable, but stubbornly refuses to become hypnotic, frightening, insightful, or any of the other things you might hope for. I saw the longer original cut, presuming it would be better than the shorter (by about 15 minutes) U.S. version, which was very poorly received. But I suspect the shorter edit simply made the story less comprehensible, without making it any livelier, and the long version isn't exactly dull, just very flat. If a director with more visual and atmospheric flair, say anyone from Bava to Herzog, had made this around the same time, it might have turned out brilliantly. But the best you can say about Juan Bunuel's handling is that it is technically competent if uninspired--not what you want from a film about a love that defies death itself.

Being an arty example of horror (much more so, in fact, than the same director's poltergeist-themed EXPULSION OF THE DEVIL [1973]), this medieval tale revolving around a Satanic pact that results in resurrection and a spate of vampire killings was considered too atypical for either sensibility and consequently fell through the cracks over the years; then again, such disparaging remarks by popular critics as Leonard Maltin – who labeled it "idiotic", even awarding the film his dreaded (but undeserved) BOMB rating – has not helped the chances for a proper reappraisal much! Indeed, most seemed to be of the same opinion as it prematurely terminated the director's career in mainstream cinema – he would go on to make just one more feature-length film in 1986, an obscure Western entitled THE REBELLION OF THE HANGED – and was restricted to work exclusively in TV thereafter!

Though the film is a Spanish/Italian/French co-production, the copy I acquired was mostly dubbed in English with the occasional lapse into Italian (actually, I had first watched it eons ago on late-night TV in the latter language). The presence of Michel Piccoli and Liv Ullman drew obvious parallels with the works of Bunuel's own more renowned father and Ingmar Bergman respectively; the obsessive love lasting beyond the grave shared by the protagonists and the general sense of godlessness on display was clearly up the Spanish Surrealist's alley, while the character-driven downbeat nature of the whole is akin to the austere Swede's chamber dramas.

Ornella Muti co-stars as Piccoli's young and lovely second wife who, failing to replace his affection for Ullman, the inconsolable husband coldly eliminates and disposes of. The wanderer-cum-devil he meets soon after was similarly featured in this guise in the contemporaneous ALUCARDA (1975), where he was played by Claudio Brook (a Bunuel Snr. regular!); here, he tells Piccoli that he can bring back his former spouse but asks him to let her rest in peace – naturally, our hero thinks only of himself, and Ullman's return has serious repercussions on both their lives and that of the entire community.

The vampirism angle is not rendered explicit and even abruptly handled: no sooner has Leonor re-awakened – the ten-year period is itself seen passing at the bat of an eyelid – that there are a dozen or so kids missing from the village (the inference being that she drains them of blood); in fact, she at first rejects Piccoli's advances but, once she has been nourished, feels quite ready to express passion – this recalls the Sadean credo perhaps best exemplified by the horror classic THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME (1932), when Count Zaroff states something to the effect of "Kill, then love – only then will you have known true ecstasy!". The Inquisition/plague elements which come into play during the latter stages also tie LEONOR to THE MONK (1972), adapted by the elder Bunuel and Jean-Claude Carriere (who also co-wrote this) from Matthew Gregory Lewis's classic novel; incidentally, the protagonists' children here are named after that particular author!

Apart from the afore-mentioned Muti, there are three other notable Italian credits – screenwriter Bernardino Zapponi (who was just coming off Dario Argento's DEEP RED [1975]), as well as cinematographer Luciano Tovoli and composer Ennio Morricone, both of whose contribution is essential to the film's stunning recreation of a distant and harsh past. Still, if the film does not emerge a complete success, it is because of the rather unsympathetic characterization of the central figures (the boorish Piccoli in particular), a general lack of incident (as already mentioned, the introspection and feeling of dread would have doubtless gained from a better exposition detailing Piccoli's solitude and Ullman's depredations) and the fact that, frankly, it seems not to have much idea how to end (after being lured into a trap by the locals, the female bloodsucker escapes and makes it back home, where she kills one of her former husband's children and even seems to attack Piccoli but, now presumably afflicted himself, the two of them take off on horseback, one suspects, to spread the vampire plague even further: as with the two versions of NOSFERATU {1922 and 1979}, this much-abused horror device is equated with an all-pervasive - and very real - disease).

This is probably one of the most underrated, if not, THE most underrated horror film of all time. It has a 4.8 rating on IMDb, yet it deserves at least a 7.8. Never released in theaters in the US, the film eventually showed up on VHS, marketed as a cash-in on The Exorcist, under the title "Mistress of the Devil", and it was a huge disappointment, mainly because the two films have absolutely nothing in common. The story here, which recalls the works of Poe, follows a man who makes a pact with the Devil to have his dead wife, played by Liv Ullmann, back from the grave. She does come back, but as vampire who preys on young children. Stylishly directed by Luis Bunuel's son - Juan Bunuel, the film is a slow-burn, but never really boring, and it is actually pretty scary at times, while being romantic and touching as well, including some of the most heartbreaking scenes in horror cinema. The beautiful cinematography, courtesy of Suspiria's Luciano Tovoli, and the gorgeous locations at the Spanish countryside, add to the film's brooding Gothic atmosphere. Ullman gives an amazing performance as usual, and is one of the most gorgeous vampires out there IMO. Ennio Morricone's fantastic score perfectly captures the gloominess and foreboding atmosphere of this tragic love story. Overall, 10/10 for me.