The Unnaturals

"The Unnaturals" isn't nearly on par with director Antonio - oh sorry, he prefers Anthony M. Dawson - Margheriti's best efforts in the genre, notably "Danza Macabra" and "The Long Hair of Death", but it's nonetheless a worthwhile and enjoyable gothic soap opera. The film benefices most from the unsettling atmosphere, genuine décors and the bright use of mandatory gothic aspects, like raging thunderstorms and enigmatic beauties. A bunch of greedy and self-centered people, each of them hiding dark secrets and/or scheming sinister plans, end up in a ramshackle old shed in the woods when their car gets stuck in the mud. Inside the cabin, a spooky old hag is stuck in a sort of bizarre trance, but her equally spooky son (Bava-regular Luciano Pigozzi) invites the guests to partake in an all-revealing séance. The pacing is often slow, and the flashbacks contain too many tedious and irrelevant parts, but the last 10-15 minutes make up for a lot. The seemingly everlasting thunderstorm causes havoc, which ensures a spectacular and unforeseeable climax.

PS: I'm not in the habit of criticizing DVD-releases, but in case you consider purchasing this film via the French label "Les Chefs-d'oeuvre du Gothique", I strongly recommend you NOT TO. Despite being quite expensive, the picture and sound quality are poor, the disc constantly falters and the audio switches back and forth between Italian and German.

A rich old man and his greedy group of hangers-on get stranded in the middle of nowhere when their car breaks down (in a thunderstorm, of course) and the motley crew make their way to an old dark house where they interrupt a seance that reveals their deadly secrets...

What's basically an Agatha Christie murder mystery set in the Roaring Twenties gets all supernatural in the last ten minutes but it's too little too late for anyone expecting a horror film. Although flashbacks help open things up, it's still a "drawing room whodunit" at heart with nice period detail (except for the hairdos) and a bit more style than usual for this sort of thing. The (brief) sex scenes are lesbian (were they "the unnaturals"?) but not erotic and the movie's nothing to get excited about, either, despite its reputation as one of the director's best.

It's the second time I read this page and I can't understand why Contronatura (aka Schreie in der Nacht aka The Unnaturals)is still waiting for 5 votes! In fact, I think, it's a really good italian horror, a kind of "summa" of all themes of this particular genre. The director, Antonio Margheriti (also writer, in this case) is very skillful and builds his movie around a number of impossible flash-back, that articulate a disquieting narrative of murders, guilty men, strange women...I can't speak english very well, so I can't describe in the right way this movie, but if you like italian horror, you have to see Contronatura!

Just a waste of time. Poor Marianne Koch, after that beautiful role, Marisol in "A Fistful of Dollars", here she has an embarrassing one, the whole movie is embarrassing.

The Unnaturals takes place in England circa the roaring '20s (or the late-'60s, judging by the women's hairstyles): after their car gets stuck in mud during a thunderstorm, a group of people take shelter at a nearby house, home to Uriat (Peter Lorre-alike Luciano Pigozzi) and his mother (Marianne Leibl), who is in a trance as a result of a seance being interrupted by the visitors. In order to try and bring the woman back from the 'other dimension', the guests agree to complete the seance, during which their darkest secrets are revealed.

Despite plenty of treachery, murder and a little gratuitous lesbianism (very tame by today's standards), Antonio Margheriti's The Unnaturals is quite a tedious affair, hampered by leaden pacing, a confusing narrative structure (there are quite a number of flashbacks), too much talk, and a predictable ending: my guess that the characters were all ghosts wasn't too wide of the mark. Some say that this film is one of Margheriti's best, but I much preferred Castle of Blood and Cannibal Apocalypse (hell, Killer Fish is preferable to this one).