Mill of the Stone Women

Mill of the Stone Women otherwise known as Drops of Blood is a creepy little horror that looks fantastic for a movie barely out of the 50's.

It tells the story of a young man who is set to work on a macabre waxwork laden carousel. He becomes bewitched by the mysterious daughter of the owner, but nothing is quite as it seems.

Italian made the film looks incredibly ahead of its time. Sure the acting is offensively overdone, the score is forgettable and the external sfx of the windmill are laughable but the concept itself and delivery is really quite impressive.

Italy dominated horror throughout the 60's and 70's, this early title is a demonstration of why. Yes it's flawed (Badly in places) but it's an interesting little title regardless with a brilliant dark finale.

The Good:

Looks great

Solid ideas

The Bad:

Gratuitous overacting

Could have been constructed a tad better

Things I Learnt From This Movie:

She totally got a head of herself!

Waxworks were a common subject matter in the 50-60's, we need a revival!

Neatly expressionistic mood piece about a mad scientist/sculptor trying to keep his afflicted daughter from turning to stone by transfusing her with the blood of local babes. The storyline (a favorite of European horror films - THE AWFUL DR. ORLOF and EYES WITHOUT A FACE also had to do with a mad scientist trying to save a deformed daughter at the expense of anyone within reach) has holes thick enough to bowl a woman's severed head through, but the film is great on atmosphere and ambiance. Completed without credit by Mario Bava after director Giorgio Ferroni began it, the Mondo Macabro DVD version includes the uncut French edition (massacred in bad US VHS prints till now). This film was one of two that reportedly started the Eurohorror boom of the '60s and '70s, of which Bava was a primary maestro.

Vintage and cult Italian movie , an offbeat and creepy story whose important status it retains today . It deals with a sculpture-studying art student called Hans (Pierre Brice) who encounters in Holland a mysterious mill , and inside a carousel , a type of sinister wax museum which showcases amazing figures . There Hans meets the professor's attractive and seductive daughter (Scilla Gabel) , and starts feeling passion for her in spite of his real love for Lisa Lotta (Dany Carrell) . Little by little he becomes aware of the strange experiments being conducted by a deranged mad doctor (Herbert Böhme) and his nefarious helper (Wolfgang Preiss) . UNBELIEVABLE! A Beautiful Girl Becomes a Petrified Monster! In Blazing Technicolor . Chilling : it will scare your pants off . Monstrous : have you been petrified lately ? . Grisly : blood is red in Technicolor . Frightening and wonderful exciting ¡ . Why do warm-blooded beauties suddenly turn to stone?

This is an outlandish chiller story with grisly horror , genuine thrills and shocks . This was reportedly Giorgio Ferroni's one of the biggest success and being well written by notorious writers/filmmakers as Remigio Del Grosso , Ugo Liberatore , Giorgio Stegani and Giorgio Ferroni himself , though taking parts here and there of other films . The eerie story contains bit good fun with killings , chilling interpretations , relentless horror and thrilling events . The chiller version of the 50s films packs scary chills and terrifying deaths . Concerning a strange carousel with beautiful babes rather than horses , and the starring soon finds out that the statues contain shocking secrets . The film blends ¨Roger Corman's Edgar Allan Poe¨ films , ¨Hammer¨ style , and ¨Andre De Toth's House of wax¨ . The Carousel figures are the real stars of this production , being alrightly realized . Some scenes are clumsily shot but the movie has some good moments here and there , the illogical parts in the plot are more than compensated for the excitement provided by the creepy wax models , eerie killings and many other things . This one still has the power to give the audience the creeps , thanks to attractive characters nicely played by protagonists as Pierre Brice -the unforgettable Winnetou- as Hans who despite his true love for his girlfriend Dany Carrell he falls with a mysterious woman : the always gorgeous Scilla Gabel , as well as Wolfgang Preiss who starred several wartime films playing Nazis , Liana Orfei who performed a lot of Peplum and the unknown Herbert A.E. Böhme .

It packs a rousing and suspenseful original music by Carlos Innocenzi . Colorful as well as glimmer cinematography with brilliant colors by Ludovico Pavoni . This creepy and gory horror movie is also titled : ¨Mulino delle donne di pietra¨ , or ¨Horror of the stone women¨ , ¨Drops of blood¨ and was professionally directed by Giorgio Ferroni . He was an expert on Peplum and Western . As he directed ¨Pompei (1936)¨, ¨The war of Troy¨ with Steve Reeves ,¨Hercules against Molock¨ , ¨Il Colosso Di Roma¨ with Gordon Scott and ¨Lion of Tebas¨ (1964) . He also directed Western as "Fort Yuma Gold" , ¨Wanted¨ , "Blood for a Silver Dollar" , and Wartime genre as ¨Battle of El Alamein¨ and Terror in acceptable results , such as : ¨Night of the Devils" and ¨ Mill of the stone woman". Rating . 7/10 . Decent terror movie .

Based on a Flemish short story by Pieter Van Weigen, Mill of the Stone Women is an excellent slice of Eurocult Gothic horror. The film is along the same lines as films by Mario Bava; most notably Black Sunday and Kill Baby Kill, and just like the aforementioned masterpieces; bathes in its own atmosphere and most of the horror is drawn from that. Horror is a genre that people often mistake for not having many ideas, but films like this prove otherwise. Here, we have a story that couldn't be further away from the 'norm' in horror, and on a technical level, Mill of the Stone Women is both inventive and influential. The macabre plot follows a young journalist named Hans who travels to Holland to write an article on the mysterious sculptor, who lives in a mill, that the locals have nicknamed "The Mill of the Stone Women". While there, he meets the Professor's beautiful daughter; but she's damaged goods, as she suffers from a sinister malady that means she has to remain within the mill. Is there something yet more morbid to this intriguing set up...?

The mill at the centre of the piece makes for an excellent location for this story to take place in. Old castles are a more common location for Gothic horror, so the fact that this one takes place in a mill again differentiates it from the norm, and is yet another example of the imagination behind the story. The colour scheme is largely quite drab, and to be honest, I'd have preferred either more striking colours or a black and white picture...as the in-between doesn't look good in my opinion. That's pretty much the only thing I don't like about this film in regards to the style, however. The plot moves slowly, but this means that the film has time to both build up it's plot and wallow in the atmosphere. One of the trademarks of Italian horror is a muddled plot and things that don't completely make sense; and this film adheres to that. There are several threads within the plot, and a number of them are left unexplained by the conclusion...which is a shame. Still, the final conclusion is fitting and at least it doesn't suffer from bad dubbing! Recommended.

Predictable but highly watchable tale of a mad sculptor who is trying to keep his daughter from dying from a horrible disease by giving her a blood transfusion. Donors are in short supply, so the guy has to 'volunteer' women to give their blood, turning the exsanguinated bodies into bizarre wax figures for display to the general public - in a windmill.

This weird set up barely functions as it is, what with the sculptor's doctor buddy totally in love with the daughter, and the daughter totally in love with the new guy hired to work in the library. He's in love with a childhood friend, although he does realise this after bedding the crazy guy's daughter, and he declares his love for her right in front of the sick girl. Pretty tactless. His mate, by the way, is concerned that his model friend has mysteriously disappeared - guess where she's currently tied up?

Things get slightly less predictable when the hero Hans does a really bad job of giving sick girl the brush off and she seemingly dies, but when he goes to confess to her dad the doctor gives him LSD! He spends a good portion of the film tripping out his head and seemingly talking to people who aren't there. After that, things get back into the 'rescue the girl from the mad doctor plot' but filmed very well, especially the shots of the melting wax 'models' at the end.

Was Mario Bava involved? Who knows.