Gothic Originals: The Virgin of Nuremberg (Antonio Margheriti, 1963)

(AKA ‘Horror Castle’, ‘The Castle of Terror’, ‘Das Schloss des Grauens’, etc.)

When ploughing my way through the canon of ‘60s Italian gothics a few years back, I overlooked this early effort from Antonio Margheriti – his first entrée into the horror genre, I believe - simply because I couldn’t locate a watchable copy. Nowadays of course, the internet provides, but I’m not sure that ‘La Vergine di Norimberga’ was entirely worth the wait.

Filmed in colour on the same sets used for Mario Bava’s The Whip and The Body (does the presence of Christopher Lee indicate that both films were filmed around the same time?), Margheriti conjures some splendid - albeit entirely conventional - passages of gothic atmosphere here, complete with all the looming, cob-webbed staircases, candelabra-bearing, night-gowned peregrinations and baroque, wrought iron latticework one could possibly ask for.

Ernesto Gastaldi’s script (supposedly based on a book by the fictitious sounding ‘Frank Bogart’) meanwhile throws a few novel ideas into the mix to off-set the clichés – not least the decision to make this one of the first ‘60s gothic horror films which ostensibly takes place in the present day. It’s unfortunate therefore that the filmmakers consistently fail to put these innovations to very effective use, but… more on that later. (1)

For now, let’s simply state that the idea of our unsuspecting young bride (Mary, played by Rossana Podestà, in this case) discovering that the airless rooms of her aristocratic German husband’s creepy familial mansion are haunted not only by the memory of his most infamous ancestor, a scarlet-garbed inquisition torturer, but also by the more recent horrors of the Third Reich, is a fantastic and potent one indeed.

Specifically, the heroine’s dashing husband Max (Georges Rivière) is the son of a deceased Nazi general / surgeon, whose legacy is personified by the menacing presence of Lee, who remains largely in ‘looming heavy’ mode here in the role of Erich, the taciturn, scar-faced former adjutant of the house’s dead patriarch, who, obedient to the last, now spends his days maintaining his erstwhile commanding officer’s on-site family museum, dusting off the thumb-screws and iron maidens, and keeping the black-hooded effigy of the ‘The Punisher’ (as the medieval torturer was known) in good nick.

“He laid down the law in this region, and punished adultery with death,” Max cheerily notes of his nefarious ancestor. “It seems he killed many women, torturing them to death. Was he a moralist, or a maniac?” Let’s hope that was intended as a rhetorical question.

Though this ‘return of the torturer’ plot-line is a direct lift from Corman’s ‘The Pit & the Pendulum’, which had been a huge hit in Italy the previous year, the version of it presented here must surely have exerted a strong influence upon Massimo Pupillo’s camp classic Bloody Pit of Horror (1965), after which the idea of defunct torture instruments being put to use by contemporary killers went on to become a common motif in Italian horror, recurring in Fernando Di Leo’s ‘Slaughter Hotel’, Bava’s ‘Baron Blood’ and Emilio P. Miraglia’s ‘The Night Evelyn Came Out of the Grave’, to name but a few.

Likewise, the rich crossover between gothic horror’s familial, sins-of-the-past atavism and unresolved Nazi guilt was irreverently explored in a number of later European horrors - Jean Brismée’s supremely entertaining ‘The Devil’s Nightmare’ (1971) and Sergio Bergonzelli’s delirious giallo ‘In The Folds of the Flesh’ (1970) immediately spring to mind - but ‘The Virgin of Nuremberg’ feels very much like ground zero in this regard.

Indeed, unease over the inclusion of such contentious subject matter at this comparatively early date perhaps accounts for the fact that the treatment of this theme is somewhat bungled here by Gastaldi and Margheriti. The shaky lines connecting dusty medieval sadism, ultra-masculine Teutonic tradition and the apparent impossibility of reconciling war-time atrocities with peace-time forgiveness are all plainly visible to the viewer, but they remain frustratingly undrawn by the writer and director.

In particular, the final act revelation (conveyed to us via a crudely assembled stock footage-based flashback) that Max’s father was actually one of the conspirators who plotted to assassinate Hitler circa 1944, and that he was subsequently disfigured and driven insane by the punishments inflicted upon him as a result, feels like a real face-palm-worthy example of missing the point.

Thereafter, the film’s villain is allowed to become an ultimately sympathetic figure, somewhat akin to the tragic / damaged characters played by Vincent Price in the early Poe films, rather than the black-hearted, unrepentant monster from Europe’s collective id which this story’s younger characters should really be finding a way to stand up to and deal with as they try to build a new life for themselves in the 1960s.

Whilst the skull-faced killer’s depredations may be curtailed in the physical sense at the film’s conclusion, the psychic and historical wounds he represents remain untended and unacknowledged, lending the film a numb, depressing feel which is only enhanced by the longueurs of relative tedium which precede its finale.

Readers familiar with Margheriti’s work will be aware that his chief behind-the-scenes innovation involved dramatically speeding up production schedules on his films by using the kind of multi-camera shooting style which would later become the norm for TV soap operas and sit-coms. Said readers will also sadly be aware though that, however much money this technique may have saved for his producers, it also had a tendency to leave Margheriti’s films feeling distant and emotionally uninvolving, even when (as here) all the necessary ingredients for a greatness were seemingly present and correct.

This was by no means always the case of course (career highlights like ‘Castle of Blood’ (1964) and Cannibal Apocalypse (1980) remain absolute bangers), but ‘The Virgin of Nuremberg’ suffers particularly acutely from Margheriti’s characteristic lack of dynamism, to the extent that it’s run-time feels padded to an absurd degree, even at a double-bill friendly 80 minutes.

The purportedly exciting final act in particular feels like a master class in how to not generate tension, as Rivière’s character finds himself stuck in that ever-green classic, the locked room slowly filling with water, whilst Podestà, unaware of her husband’s predicament, traipses around the house’s interior in the company of a maid, in search of a door that the killer hasn’t yet locked.

Suspenseful stuff, you might think, but as Margheriti proceeds to simply cut between master shot footage of these two scenarios for about ten minutes, with no narrative development and no clearly defined, visible goal for his imperilled characters, even the most indulgent of viewers will be liable to find their eyelids crashing down in anticipation of bed-time.

Performances are likewise pretty flat across the board. Not even Sir Chris (who is dubbed by other actors in all of the film’s extant language tracks, much to his chagrin no doubt) manages to make much of an impression, despite some impressive scar make-up, whilst editing and audio/visual match up feels sloppy throughout (in the version viewed for this review, at least), suggesting that a rushed and/or uncaring attitude prevailed during the film’s post-production.

An incongruously upbeat, jazz-inflected score from the usually reliable Riz Ortolani doesn’t exactly help matters either, incorporating a series of hysterically bombastic cues which sometimes feel entirely inappropriate to the relatively sedate activity on screen.

In accordance with its torture theme, ‘The Virgin of Nuremberg’ does dutifully include a few ghoulishly sadistic horror ‘bits’, which I’m sure must have sent the British censors in particular into a veritable meltdown when it arrived on these shores as ‘Caste of Terror’ in 1964. Most notably, one somewhat revolting scene involves an unfortunate woman getting a basket containing a hungry rat strapped to her face - whilst ‘The Punisher’ meanwhile delivers a chilling monologue concerning the universality of torture techniques across the globe, which serves as probably the film's most legitmately unsettling moment.

The rat device dates from the fifteenth century and was utilised as far afield as China, he calmly informs his victim, as if she might find this interesting. Whilst the modern era has brought us many innovations, he darkly reflects, the old methods are the best.

Though not as explicit or impactful as they might have been in the hands of some of Margheriti’s more visually daring contemporaries, such ‘shock’ moments – including the ‘Black Sunday’-influenced opening in which Podestà finds a mutilated corpse within the iron maiden, and some equally gory B&W surgery flashbacks - have a touch of sordid, low rent nastiness about them which makes them feel like distant precursors to the hey-day of Nazisploitation other more full-on forms of Italian exploitation, which were still some 15 years down the line at this point. (The idea of a hideously mutilated, insane surgeon lurking in a darkened dungeon even reminded me slightly of Fulci’s ‘The House by the Cemetery’ (1981), if we’re keeping score.)

If the sheer number of later films I’ve managed to name-check above might suggest that ‘The Virgin of Nuremberg’ deserves to be reconsidered as a significant landmark in the development of Italian horror though, this would have been cold comfort to anyone who actually paid to see this visually attractive but otherwise rather dreary plod through the halls of gothic cliché in the early 1960s, especially after the local censors’ scissors had inevitably done a number on it.

Unsurprisingly perhaps, the film doesn’t seem to have made much headway in winning over the hearts and minds of horror fans in the decades since then either, despite of its scattered innovations and points of interest, joining such later cobweb-strewn Margheriti snooze-fests as ‘Web of the Spider’ (1971) and ‘Seven Deaths in a Cats Eye’ (1973) on the “walk don’t run” / “not as good as it sounds” list.

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(1)Curiously, this film also assigns an extremely unlikely co-writing credit to Edmond T. Gréville, the Anglo-French director best remembered for 1960’s ‘Beat Girl’. Quite how he got involved, god only knows, but I think it's fair to say that the finished script feels far more like Gastaldi's work than anyone else's, to the extent that I'm comfortable with naming him as the primary author. 

(Pure speculation here on my part here, but, given that Christopher Lee also appeared in ‘Beat Girl’, and also boasted an Anglo-French background, perhaps he and Gréville were friends? Perhaps Lee brought him in to do some rewrites, or perhaps Gréville just threw in some ideas over dinner which were then brought to the production by Lee, or something? Who knows...)

Exploito All’Italiana / October Horrors # 3: Cannibal Apocalypse (Antonio Margheriti, 1980)

AKA ‘Invasion of the Flesh Hunters’, ‘Cannibals in the Streets’.

Readers who have been keeping up with my reviews of Italian exploitation films over the past few years will probably not need to be reminded that I am not a fan of the Italian cannibal sub-genre. Notwithstanding ‘Cannibal Holocaust’s allegedly subversive political message, I find the socio-cultural context of these films deeply uncomfortable, whilst their execution is generally shoddy and mean-spirited, and their inclusion of genuine animal cruelty footage is absolutely abhorrent.

So, not a fun time in order words, at least for those of us who can tear themselves free from the tangled webs of prurience and nostalgia that drive so many film fans to obsess over the damn things. If schlock masterworks like Zombi Holocaust have taught me anything however, it is that the weird interzone wherein cannibal movie tropes intersect with more fantastical elements (well, zombies, anyway) is, by contrast, almost always a whole lot of fun - but just tread carefully out there folks, and keep a close eye on the wildlife.

It was in this spirit that I recently found myself sitting down to watch Antonio Margheriti’s ‘Cannibal Apocalypse’, and I am thrilled to report that I found it to be perhaps the very best entry in the rarefied sub-sub-genre of cannibal/zombie cross-overs, and, in fact, one of the most wonderfully demented ‘80s Italian horror films I’ve seen to date.

Despite the redundancy of its blunt, ‘Cannibal Holocaust’-aping title, Margheriti’s film is a deeply eccentric affair (interestingly, it was released in Italy as the more quizzical / humourous ‘Apocalypse Domani’ – ie, ‘Apocalypse Tomorrow’). Scripted by the ubiquitous Dardano Sacchetti and shot at least partially in Atlanta, Georgia, ‘Cannibal Apocalypse’ entirely ditches the cannibal film’s usual “WASP assholes meet a sticky end in the jungle” formula in favour of a storyline that takes the Vietnam flashback anxieties of Bob Clark’s ‘Deathdream’ or John Flynn’s ‘Rolling Thunder’, the urban virus outbreak paranoia of Cronenberg’s ‘Rabid’ and the no-fucks-given combat zombie mayhem of Umberto Lenzi’s ‘Nightmare City’... then hits max power on the blender, with deliriously exhilarating results.

Things do at least begin in the jungle – or at least, in one of those versions of the Vietnam War recreated using potted plants and gel lighting on a small soundstage – wherein Sergeant John Saxon (YES) is leading his boys in an ambush against a deeply entrenched cell of Viet Cong guerrillas (an enjoyable away-day for the staff of the Chinese restaurant nearest to De Paolis Studios, presumably).

Once the waiters have been defeated, Saxon’s G.I.s do a quick recon on their hideout, and find two of their MIA buddies cruelly imprisoned in a hole in the ground topped with a bamboo cage. (One of them is played by pasty-faced Italio-gore regular Giovanni Lombardo Radice, and the name of his character is – I kid you not - Charles Bukowski.)

Unfortunately, it soon becomes clear that something is very wrong with Charlie and his fellow prisoner (Tom, played by blaxsploitation regular Tony King) – well, besides the obvious, I mean. That they are chewing on some suspiciously human-looking bones is perhaps forgivable given their grim circumstances, but the two men are also foaming at the mouth and seem entirely deranged and unable to sensibly communicate. Once they are released furthermore, they display a worrying tendency toward biting people, beginning with Sgt Saxon. Uh-Oh.

Now, if you’re awaiting some insight into the nature or origins of this cannibal/zombie plague, don’t hold your breath. The possibility that the Viet Cong infected the men with the virus for some reason seems rather distasteful, but nothing in the film specifically suggests this (although I suppose we might wonder why they were kept alive by their captors given that they’re obviously such a menace). It’s equally likely however that they just ran into a cannibal in the jungle, or perhaps they were exposed to some sort of chemical, or were bitten by an infected monkey, or, well... I don’t know! Your guess is as good as mine, as Margheriti and Sacchetti certainly give us sweet F.A. to work with here. These guys are just weird, demented cannibals now, alright? What more do you need to know?

Anyway, whatever subsequently happened in ‘Nam, stays in ‘Nam, as Saxon (I should switch to using his character name I suppose – NORMAN HOPPER, folks) wakes up in the traditional cold sweat, and we flash forward an unspecified number of years to find him back at home in the States, shakily readjusting to civilian life. Hopper’s wife (Elizabeth Turner) is a local TV news reporter, and they have a handsome, white timber period property in what looks to be a quiet, leafy suburb. He has nightmares and feels a bit funny sometimes (the glossy photos of war crimes and exploding huts he keeps pinned to the wall probably don’t help), but he’s basically doing ok.

As you might imagine, Charlie and Tom are doing considerably less ok. Confined to a high security mental institution, Tom has shown little sign of improvement vis-a-vis his feral, flesh-eating condition, but Charlie has managed to recover to some degree, and has in fact been granted a release from the hospital – which is quite an achievement, given that he basically looks clinically dead.

I’m unsure whether or not it was a conscious element of Dardano’s script, but there is definitely a strong class dynamic in play here re: the very different circumstances in which Norman and Charlie find themselves after their return from ‘Nam. This makes the scene in which Charlie (who is clearly destitute, and presumably homeless) calls up his former C.O. from a payphone to ask whether he wants to meet up for a beer feel extremely uncomfortable.

Obviously not relishing the prospect of chugging bud-lite in some dive whilst swapping “hey, remember that time you found me trapped in a hole gnawing a human thigh bone?” type stories, Norman turns Charlie down cold, but immediately feels guilty about his decision – and rightly so perhaps, in view of what goes down next.

Given the bums rush by Norm, Charlie does what any lonely, traumatized Vietnam vet would do, and goes to see an Umberto Lenzi war movie which is playing down the block. Distracted by the enthusiastic necking of the couple in front of him however, our boy soon snaps and decides he fancies a chunk of that neck for himself.

This prompts an extraordinary series of events that see Charlie fleeing the cinema, blood dripping from his lips and a crowd of outraged / terrified patrons in close pursuit, at which point he attacks another woman and gets involved in a ruckus with a gang of dirt bike-riding “punks” (what?). Fleeing for his life, he soon finds himself under siege inside what appears to be a large indoor market that has closed for the day.

This being Georgia, the market naturally boasts a fully-stocked gun shop, and, one or two shotgun-blasted bikers and a security guard later, the cops are outside in force, as an irascible detective with a cowboy hat and a delightful “fuck you” attitude loses patience with the bullhorn / talk-him-out approach and prepares to get busy with the tear gas.

To break out of “plot synopsis hell” for a moment, I think it was at around this point that I first paused to shake my head and exclaim “wow, this movie is AWESOME”. Perhaps the paragraphs above don’t quite convey this awesomeness, making the film instead sound like a grim, violent trudge, but seriously – all this chaotic, hap-hazard action is a pure joy, and more than anything I think, it’s the incongruous mixture of berserk Italio-exploitation mayhem and ‘70s Deep South thriller vibes (cf: ‘Macon County Line’, or the aforementioned ‘Rolling Thunder’) that really won me over.

Anyway – as soon as Norman hears of all this hullaballoo on the TV news, he rushes straight down to help out, infiltrating the market using his superior Commando Skills™, and defusing the situation by persuading a tearful Charlie to come out with his hands up.

Thereafter however, Norman’s fragile mental stability swiftly begins to collapse. He starts sweating and grasping his head, and feels an inexplicable hunger for…. well, you guessed it. In a bizarre turn of events, the frumpy teenage girl who lives next door picks this moment to pop over with the intention of seducing Norman, and, uh….well, as he confesses to his wife that evening in a fit of remorse, “it’s not what you think - I just felt an uncontrollable urge to BITE her..”. (So that’s fine then.)

You can probably imagine the general drift the story takes after this, although ‘drift’ feels too mild a word to really describe the raging whirlwind of cannibal hospital breakouts, high velocity ambulance hi-jacks, gory-drenched flesh-eating, random jump-scare virus outbreaks and public hysteria that comprise the final act of ‘Cannibal Apocalypse’, all climaxing with Norm, Charlie and Tommy reunited along with a cannibal-ised female doctor in the sewers beneath Atlanta, heavily armed and gearing up for a fight-to-the-death against flamethrower-wielding cops, in a finale that appears to wish to pay tribute to – of all things – ‘The Third Man’. (1)

Man, what a movie. I confess, I didn’t think old Antonio had it in him, but he really knocked it outta the park on this one.

As dedicated Italian horror fans will be aware, Antonio Margheriti was well known in the industry through the ‘60s and early ‘70s for his then innovative multiple camera shooting technique, which, as I understand it, saw him filming entire scenes as master-shots taken from several different angles, then cutting the results together later to give the illusion that multiple camera set-ups had been used.

Though undoubtedly efficient, this method had the unfortunate effect of making much of Margheriti’s work feel flat and rather bland in comparison to that of his more stylistically daring peers in Italian genre cinema, and his reputation has suffered as a result, despite the wealth of extremely effective moments scattered through his filmography.

I’m unsure whether or not Margheriti was still using his multiple camera technique by the time he got around to ‘Cannibal Apocalypse’ (the profound tedium of The Squeeze would tend to suggest it was still in full effect in the late ‘70s), but either way, he sure put a rocket under it this time around, resulting in a hyper-energised, highly original movie whose “literally ANYTHING could happen next” atmosphere makes it, for my money, the director’s most rewarding film since 1964’s ‘Castle of Blood’.

Riding hard on the heels of Lenzi’s ‘Nightmare City’ and Deodato’s ‘Atlantis Interceptors’, ‘Cannibal Apocalypse’ is one the wildest action-horror rampages of its era, and as such comes highly recommended.

Unfortunately however, John Saxon himself thinks otherwise, and has spent many years deriding this film as a disgusting travesty and claiming that he was more or less hood-winked into appearing in it under false pretences – all of which makes me very sad.

I mean, if he’d found himself top-billed in ‘Make Them Die Slowly’ or ‘SS Experiment Camp’ or something, I could understand his position, but, besides the title, there’s really very little here to cause offense to anyone comfortable with the idea that violent horror movies exist – never mind a guy who happily turned up every morning to make Blood Beach, and directed a movie named Zombie Death House a few years later.

Sure, it made the ‘Video Nasties’ list in the UK, but so did ‘The Werewolf and The Yeti’ ferchrissakes. There is no animal cruelty here, minimal sexual violence, and the gory bits are pitched more or less at the level you’d reasonably expect of an early ‘80s horror movie with this kind of subject matter. So c’mon John, what’s the deal? Lighten up a bit.

[DISCLAIMER: If it turns out John Saxon is simply holding a grudge because he never got paid or something, I will respectfully withdraw the above criticism and take his side. I know it’s been nearly forty years, but keep bad mouthin’ these muthas ‘til they pay up John! We’re with you all the way!]

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(1)As with the film’s refusal to bother even trying to explain the origins of its cannibal/zombie virus, I enjoyed the vast, plot convenience-defined variations in the time the virus takes to manifest itself; John Saxon apparently exhibits no symptoms for actual YEARS after he is bitten in ‘Nam, whilst supporting characters infected later in the movie flip out and start biting people in a matter of minutes.

VHS Purgatory/Exploito All’Italiana: The Squeeze (Antonio Margheriti, 1978)

Not to be confused with the excellent, Stacy Keach-starring British crime movie of the same name, THIS Squeeze was shot in New York with a largely American cast by our old friend “Anthony M. Dawson”.

Given how little known it remains amongst the Euro-Cult contingent, I was pretty stoked when I fished this VHS copy out of some mouldering old cardboard box somewhere about five years ago. Apparently I wasn’t sufficiently stoked to find time to actually watch the damn thing however – that’s a pleasure I left until the clock was approaching midnight last Saturday, and…. well it wasn’t a moment too soon, let’s put it that way.

The plot here sees Lee Van Cleef’s retired master safe-cracker lured out of retirement when the needy and weak-willed son of his former boss (Edward Albert) drops into Lee’s Mexican ranch to explain that his life is on the line if he can’t successfully pull off a daring diamond heist for some nasty German mobsters he’s involved with. Out of loyalty to the kid’s dad, Van Cleef reluctantly agrees to help him out, and soon finds himself on the wintry streets of NYC, with only a full length white overcoat and a furry Russian hat to protect him from the thrills and spills that one imagines will inevitably ensue.

Lionel Stander – looking more like Ernest Borgnine than ever – gets a substantial role as Van Cleef’s old time fence/pawnbroker buddy, Karen Black is the – uh – “kooky” next door neighbour who inexplicably turns up to care for a sullen Van Cleef whilst he’s holed up in a rented apartment with a leg wound, and Robert Alda is the cop hot on their trail.

Although the print under review here is an absolutely brutal pan-and-scan job, it's still clear that cinematographer Sergio D'Offizi (an Italian exploitation vet whose credits include ‘Don’t Torture a Duckling’ and ‘Cannibal Holocaust’) extracted some great atmosphere from the snow-covered Brooklyn and Manhattan locations, and composer Paolo Vasile also keeps things ticking over nicely with some cracking ‘70s cop show music.

So far, so good but… oh man. How can I best put this? If you watch this one at all, don’t do so late at night. I took the plunge, and my battle to keep my eyes open until the end proved more epic than anything than unfolds in ‘The Squeeze’.

A director who spent most of his career making competent, impersonal mid-tier genre movies, Margheriti seems to have taken the opportunity to strike out in an uncharacteristically bold direction with ‘The Squeeze’. Unfortunately however, that direction involves ditching the action-packed hi-jinks viewers might reasonably have expected of a film like this, and instead attempting to craft an under-stated, melancholy thriller in the vein of, say, ‘The Conversation’ or ‘The Friends of Eddie Coyle’, perhaps even drawing slightly on ‘Midnight Cowboy’ in its attempt to concentrate on the oddball friendship that develops between the Van Cleef and Albert characters.

The thing is though… (deep sigh)… making a film work on that level requires a few things. Like excellent writing, good direction, and a convincing set of performances. With all due respect to the combined talents of the cast members I’ve listed above, no one working in any of these capacities on ‘The Squeeze’ seems to have felt the need to raise their game much beyond the level you’d expect of a run-of-the-mill late ‘70s Italian crime flick.

Which is to say, ‘The Squeeze’ basically plays out like a run-of-the-mill late ‘70s Italian crime flick in which nothing whatsoever happens. There are no real action scenes as such. No fights, no running around. No sleaze or violence, no crazy shenanigans, not even any amusing dubbed dialogue. The characters are one dimensional, the plotting is predictable and boring. The cast spend most of their time sitting around moodily, muttering dialogue that you feel might have carried some meaning in an alternate universe where it hadn’t been knocked out by a team of writers who were just treading water between the ‘Death Wish’ rip-offs and the ‘Rambo’ rip-offs.

There’s a big explosion after Van Cleef pulls off the diamond heist, but one explosion does not an action movie make. Thereafter, Van Cleef spends most of the remaining run time hiding out with a bad leg, trading sullen banter with Black’s genuinely rather insufferable ‘ditzy single chick’ stereotype.

In one of the film’s weirder touches meanwhile, Albert is arrested for the heinous crime of playing the display drum kit in a shop window without permission (I kid you not) – a caper that apparently lands him with a stretch in maximum security, where he spends much of the rest of the movie playing poker with some Black Panther type dudes.

(Even more unfeasibly, Van Cleef is shown reading about this in the papers the next morning, where we briefly see a headline along the lines of “LOCAL HOOD DRUMS HIMSELF TO JAIL” topping a full page story – it must have been one hell of a slow news day in NYC.)

Whilst all this is going on, the film’s primary antagonist – the nasty, Boris Johnson-lookalike German mobster – has been unceremoniously rubbed out by some thugs working for the guy they stole the diamonds from, and so, with its two protagonists both cooling their heels in confined locations and its main villain out of the picture, the movie proceeds to ramble on toward…. what exactly?

I mean, I’m sure Robert Altman or Sidney Lumet or someone like that could have pulled some compelling drama out of this lackadaisical scenario, but – again, with all due respect to his achievements in the field of broadly decent exploitation flicks - Antonio Margheriti, not so much.

The film’s eventual conclusion is, admittedly, nicely played out, with a bit of a melancholy kick to it, but it’s more of an “I guess I should be feeling something here?” kind of deal than anything else, and the faux-profound closing dialogue between Van Cleef and Stander, like much that has proceeded it, falls flat.

In closing, it’s worth noting that my tape of ‘The Squeeze’ ran about eighty four minutes, whilst the box states ninety three minutes and IMDB gives a run time of ninety nine. Could it be possible that I’ve just subjected myself to some kind of heavily neutered TV version of the film with all the good bits cut out? Or alternatively, is there an uncut version out there somewhere that is even more monumentally tedious? Or, is the ninety nine minute thing on IMDB just a mistake, and the differential in the video run-time just a result of those always mind-boggling PAL / NTSC conversion issues? Answers on a postcard, please.

Until the first of these three possibilities is proven to be the case however, I’m going to let this rather dispiriting review stand – partly just for the purposes of consumer advice, and partly to highlight the superb poster artwork reproduced on the VHS cover. (Aside from the explosion, and Lee Van Cleef holding a gun, absolutely none of the details depicted in this painting are reflected in the film itself, by the way.)

I suppose it’s possible that, at some point in the distant future, you might run across this movie on late night TV and, noting the intriguing cast, the great locations and the cool music, think to yourself, “gee, this looks like a good movie”. Maybe, if you can call to mind the merest fraction of what I’ve written here today, your evening could still be saved. Take heed.

Long Hair of Death (Antonio Margheriti, 1964)

One of the more obscure items in Barbara Steele’s catalogue of Italian gothics, it’s easy to see why Antonio Margheriti’s supremely named ‘Long Hair of Death’ (god bless those literally translated titles) has ended up being somewhat overlooked in the history of such things. Appearing towards the end of the era in which these comparatively bloodless, black & white horror flicks were considered commercially viable (not that it stopped Steele ploughing through another four entries in the cycle before packing it in in ’66), ‘Long Hair..’ is a game of two halves really – uninspired through much of its run time, the film’s best sequences nonetheless contain some of the most powerful moments ever realised in Italian gothic horror.

Things certainly start off all guns blazin’, as we emerge from the opening credits into a vague, late-medieval mid-European setting (which at least makes a change from the vague, Victorian mid-European settings of most of these things), where condemned witch Adele Karnstein is being burned alive in the town square as her distraught and uncomprehending young daughter looks on. Meanwhile, Adele’s older daughter Helen (Steele) finds herself in the bed chamber of the local feudal lord, reluctantly submitting to his lecherous advances in a last-ditch attempt to delay her mother’s execution, as he assures her that his subordinates wouldn’t dare commence the burning without his presence, even as the flames take hold.




An extraordinarily bleak scenario for all concerned, with Margheriti's cross-cutting between the excruciating death of a mother and the rape of her daughter by a treacherous aristocrat leaving us in little doubt as to where the film's sympathies lie re: the old 'suspected witches vs church & state' debate, prefiguring the real-world hypocrisies dramatised by Michael Reeves’ ‘Witchfinder General’ and the raft of witchhunter-sploitation (if you will) movies that followed in the wake of Ken Russell’s ‘The Devils’ by a number of years.

This in itself is pretty unusual – I could be wrong, but I think ‘Long Hair..’ is the only Italian horror movie I’ve ever seen in which the ‘witches’ are presented as sympathetic victims rather than satanic evildoers – and Margheriti’s decision to hit us with such gruelling human drama is brave indeed, dredging up some slightly more visceral emotions than we’re used to experiencing in gothic horror movies, with their rather more emblematic expressions of ‘mourning’ and ‘despair’.

(In fact, as an aside, it’s interesting to note how easily ‘Long Hair of Death’ could be read as a feminist horror film, if admittedly on a rather shallow level. Throughout the film, the evils of patriarchal society are wheeled out in the form of sexual exploitation, forced marriage, domestic confinement and the use of innocent women as scapegoats for male crime. And when the Karnstein sisters eventually return to wreak their vengeance (hope I’m not giving too much away here), the implied collaboration of the castle’s taciturn matron/housekeeper character in their plans points not just to a personal or familial revenge, but to an organised cabal of women striking back against their oppressors. Not exactly PHD level stuff I’ll grant you, but interesting food for thought in the midst of the ultra-masculine Italian film industry, no?)



Anyway, getting back on track, the production design in this opening sequence is pretty stunning too. Bypassing the traditional ‘tied to the stake’ burning, the execution sees Adele confined within a kind of makeshift maze of burning hay bales, forcing her to flee in vain from the flames begging for mercy, and eventually to voluntarily climb the crucifix which acts as a central pillar, from whence the crowd can clearly witness her gruesome demise. Imaginative touches like this, along with the solemn hooded monks, iron-masked soldiers etc, lend the scene a disturbing sense of brutal medievalism, culminating with a beautifully tragic shot of Steele cradling a handful of ashes from the burnt out pyre, as the blackened crucifix looms above her, and the dead woman’s voiceover pledges supernatural vengeance. Carlo Rustehelli’s stately, genuinely haunting score undoubtedly helps add poignancy here too - he had scored Bava’s ‘Whip And The Body’ the previous year, and his work here is similarly subtle and effective, featuring only occasional theremin abuse.



Sadly, the very next scene sees the lustful lord ambushing Barbara in a remote stretch of countryside and unceremoniously hurling her off a bridge into a watery grave, after which the film pretty much follows suit, largely devolving into a stagey, poorly written melodrama with witchery and vengeance entirely forgotten. All verve and character seems to vanish from the direction and cinematography, and the remaining cast stride around a handful of shoddy interior sets (the crypt is ok, but I’ve seen better) like they’re killing time in an am-dram Shakespeare production.

And needless to say, whilst it may cop a riff or two from Macbeth, the drama that proceeds to unfold is far from Shakespearean in stature;

Leaping forward a few years, we’re reintroduced to the younger daughter we saw weeping at the execution – now an indentured servant at the castle – who has come of age in the shape of Halina Zalewska. As you might well expect, Elizabeth (for that is her name) is a rather sullen and troubled young woman who doesn’t really appreciate the crude advances of the Lord’s boorish son Kurt (the distinctly Shatner-esque George Ardisson), who had smugly presided over her mother’s execution. You’d think he might have at least realised that wasn’t an ideal basis from which to build a relationship, but then, he is a complete arse, so who knows.

Things do perk up briefly for another superb gothic set-piece in which Barbara Steele returns from the grave. Flinging open the doors of the family chapel amid a howling thunderstorm as the pastor conducts a plague mass based around the Book of Revelation, her appearance inflicts a fatal heart attack upon the by now elderly and guilt-ridden Lord, who dies clutching a ring he stole from her mother’s corpse. I mean, beat that for yr gothic atmosphere! Amazing!



After that though it’s back to the grind, as Barbara announces herself to be not an avenging spirit of the past, but Mary, a traveller marooned at the castle by the storm and fearful of continuing across hostile countryside. She swiftly sets her sights on seducing Kurt and… well let’s just cut to the chase and say that the major problem with the next thirty or forty minutes of the film (aside from the fact that nothing particularly cool or interesting happens) is that the previously established motivations of both our female leads seems to have been completely forgotten, whilst Kurt, who never had much motivation in the first place beyond being evil, just moons around like a goon. Elizabeth, who hates Kurt and was forced into marriage with him against her will, now suddenly seems to be desperately in love with him, and Barbara, or Mary, or whoever, seems all too happy to act as the happy-go-lucky femme fatale coming between them, with no hint as to what the hell she’s actually trying to achieve re: the whole returning from the grave thing.

Doubtless this was all wrought in an attempt to create a sense of mystery, and it’s all sorted out nicely in the big reveal at the end, but prior to that it’s a case of Bad Writing 101, resulting merely in confusion and disengagement from the narrative, as we assume one of those lazy-ass Italian scriptwriters was sleeping on the job again and just shoved in a bunch of pages from a different movie in the hope no one would notice.



It’s hard to overstate how dreary and muddled this middle section of ‘Long Hair of Death’ is, but things do at least rally for a brilliantly macabre finale that seems to eerily prefigure ‘The Wicker Man’ (pretty forward-looking film this, all things considered). And despite the stodge, the accumulated power built up during the good scenes gives the film an exquisitely foreboding aura that’s hard to shake, a feeling that is only enhanced by the apocalyptic shadow of the black death hanging over proceedings, and the accompanying sense of cloying medieval darkness that takes hold whenever the camera ventures out into the plague-ridden streets (a touch presumably inspired by Corman’s ‘Masque of the Red Death’, released six months earlier). Another interesting note is that, between the burning crucifix in the opening, the scene in the chapel, the severe bearded priests and the sight of hooded monks dragging plague victims from their homes, the film is absolutely drenched in oppressive, negative images of Christianity that must have carried particularly blood-curdling resonance for audiences in Italy.

If Margheriti had managed to keep up the momentum of ‘Long Hair of Death’s best scenes throughout, it would have been an unqualified masterpiece. As it is, connoisseurs of the Italian gothic will definitely want to check it out for its standout sequences, oddly radical political undertones and overall atmosphere - and Barbara Steele fans will certainly appreciate her relatively large amount of screentime - but newcomers to the sub-genre would be well-advised to start elsewhere.


Presumably a public domain item, 'Long Hair of Death' can be viewed in its entirety on Youtube.