Le amanti del mostro

One of the better films from director Sergio Garrone, Le Amanti del Mostro benefits from star Klaus Kinski, who delivers a surprisingly subtle and nuanced performance as Alex Nijinksi, a doctor who stumbles upon a secret experimental laboratory when he returns to his wife's ancestral homestead. Work in the lab turns the curious Kinski into a Jekyll and Hyde split personality, with the evil alter ago going on a killing rampage blamed on a pair of tramps--one of whom bears the name Polanski. Whether this is a tribute to the great director or a commentary on 19th century anti-Semitism isn't made clear, but the film DOES feature an amusing cinema in joke in the early going, when co-star Katia Christine (the Nicole Kidman lookout playing Kinski's wife) visits her father's grave, which bears the name Ivan Rassimov! A surprisingly bloodless late period example of Italian Gothic cinema, Le Amanti del Mostro is available on a grey area Shoarma DVD which also features a generous stills gallery of Kinski performances, and the crown jewel: a 1985 German television interview featuring a reticent Kinski and some amusing outtakes from his then current production, Commando Leopard.

The lesser of the two Turkish Sergio Garone movies but it has some great stuff in it and Kinski kicks ass as always. Kudos to Full Moon for digging this one up. It's been hard to find and it looks great on the Full Moon channel. If you're a Kinski fan you'll want to catch this but make sure you see the Full Moon version because it looks like ass in all the bootlegs out there.

What we have here is a concoction obviously based on the classic Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde story and taking a bit of influence from Frankenstein. It actually reminded me a lot of the modern horror classic Re-Animator; although anyone expecting anything as gory/entertaining as that film will likely be very disappointed after seeing this one! Lover of the Monster is the second 1974 film directed by Sergio Garrone and starring Klaus Kinski- the first being The Hand That Feeds the Dead, and the two are apparently often confused. The plot here focuses on a doctor and his wife who go to stay at the wife's childhood home despite having some marital problems. The doctor begins snooping around the house and comes across some work investigating life and death. Naturally the doctor wants to investigate this himself, but things go wrong and he ends up with a murderous alter-ego and goes round the countryside murdering people, only for a poor innocent tramp to get the blame for the killings.

Sergio Garrone was responsible for one of the most notorious (and one of the very worst) Video Nasties with SS Experiment Camp in 1976; so it's surprising just how tame Lover of the Monster is. The film is very slow indeed and features practically no bloodshed whatsoever; which is fairly surprising considering that there are more than a handful of murders on display. All the murders are committed through the eyes of the killer; and it's really rather dull and pointless since we always know exactly who the murderer is and thus it may as well be shown. The film takes on a period setting; which doesn't do it any favours either, aside from the fact that Klaus Kinski looks right at home. The film runs for less than ninety minutes but somehow it still manages to outstay its welcome and my interest in the film waned further as the film went on, and unfortunately there was nothing at the end to reignite it. Lover of the Monster is a rather rare film; and I'm sure it will stay that way as there's no good reason to dig it up!

This was made at the same time as Garrone's Hand That Feeds the Dead, starts mainly the same people, with scenes occurring in the same place. It's also just as boring as that film, and I had to force myself to watch it to the end. Hand That Feeds the Dead had a kind of mad scientist thing going on, whereas this one goes for the Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde deal, which is a bit of problem as Klaus Kinski kind of looks like Mr Hyde in real life. So how can we tell when Klaus has turned into a sex-crazed killer? His shirt is a bit dishevelled and he looks a bit tired.

Klaus and his wife are drifting apart, it would seem, and have moved into a new house (giant castle) in order to repair their relationship. His wife hits it off with the local doctor so in his despair Klaus somehow manages to turns himself into an insane killing machine, courtesy of something he finds in a hidden laboratory inside the castle. Was it a book? It was hard to maintain interest in this one.

Don't get all excited about that sex-crazed killer part either, because sex and gore are at the bare minimum for this one. Kinski rampages through the landscape, attacking people and gurning for the camera (i.e just acting like Klaus Kinski), while we are dragged kicking and screaming through a sub-plot about a homeless man accused of carrying out the killings, and a whole load of scenes between Kinski's wife and the doctor that make the entire one-hour, twenty-three minute film seem like an eight hour miniseries. This is nineteen seventy four, Garrone, which you seem to remember ten second from the end, judging by the downbeat ending.

Sergio Garrone, who started off with the pretty good Django the Bastard, would sink much lower by giving us the Nazisploitation film SS Experiment Love Camp. This one nearly de-railed the 'watch all the Euro-films' project.

In hindsight, this obscure, meaninglessly-titled Italian horror movie is to "Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde" what LADY FRANKENSTEIN (1971) was to "Frankenstein" but, as an erotic version of the classic tale, it is a long way behind Walerian Borowczyk's brilliantly delirious DOCTEUR JEKYLL ET LES FEMMES (1981). The atrocious print displayed on this bootleg DVD – replete with fuzzy video and annoyingly processed audio as if it had been recorded under water! – destroys any attempt at the Gothic feel the film strives for but, in truth, the whole production is a mind-boggling hodgepodge of every horror cliché in the book with elements of Frankenstein, Jekyll and Hyde and Jack The Ripper (whom star Klaus Kinski would play, far more successfully, for Jess Franco a couple of years later) thrown into the mix…not to mention an impotent villain given to raging fits of jealousy, indigestible dollops of Freudian self-analysis (usually uttered by a wimpish Kinski while lounging from one sofa to another), a rival doctor vieing for the attentions of the mad scientist's neglected wife, gore (the gratuitous vivisection of a dog), not one but two distinct tramps convicted of the murder spree (lazy writing, if you ask me!), hilarious character names (Nijinsky, Polanski, Boris, Ygor, Ivan Rassimov), etc.!

Having said that, Kinski – who is unusually subdued here - is always worth watching but, while the movie is mostly dull, it is occasionally alleviated by the vivid colors and two effective sequences: Kinski's savage attack on his wife while transformed and the conscience-stricken flashback to his past murders. The film's final image is arresting as well, the music score is rather nice and Katia Christine makes for a lovely leading lady (almost like an older Scarlet Johansson) and the intermittent bits of nudity certainly don't hurt any. Still, all the frenzied cutting and odd camera angles prove laughable rather than laudable; Kinski's make-up only extends to close-ups of his bulging eyes and, what's worse, although a serum is concocted, his transformation seemingly occurs when he comes in contact with a certain laboratory lever (what the f***?)…but what about the other times (unless his jealousy attacks bring on the mutation)? For the record, writer-director Sergio Garrone is brother to actor Riccardo (best-known nowadays for portraying God on a slew of coffee commercials on Italian TV!) and THE LOVER OF THE MONSTER itself was simultaneously filmed with another obscure international potboiler, THE HAND THAT FEEDS THE DEAD (1974), with most of the same cast and crew participating in both productions.