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.

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!

I would love to see a cleaned up copy of The Unnaturals, as I can tell even from the dingy copy I saw that the lush setting of Victorian decadence in the Gilded 1920s time period would be lovely in sharp, clear color.

However, the flashbacks are orchestrated in a less than perfect manner, making them a bit confusing rather than simply creating backstory and tension. Long before Quentin Tarantino was dragging his audience back and forth through a series of crimes, Antonio Margheriti made a creative choice to staple together an upsetting collage of non-linear infidelity and murder. Going character by character instead of back to the beginning was probably not his brightest idea.

To be honest, despite my more than fair knowledge of the "Euro-Cult" style of film-making, I only recently became aware of this particular title – where it was even described as possibly Margheriti's best work; having watched THE UNNATURALS for myself now, I would actually be hard-pressed to disagree with that assessment: it certainly ranks among the top three efforts by this major exponent that I am familiar with, along with two other Gothic horror entries i.e. THE LONG HAIR OF DEATH (1964) and SEVEN DEATHS IN THE CAT'S EYE (1973). For the record, this is a German-Italian co-production to which the director himself contributed the script – a highly atmospheric chiller (with a séance figuring prominently throughout) yet boasting an atypical elegance due to its 1920s England setting. Interestingly, the plot more or less harks back to vintage "old dark house"-type pictures (emanating from this very era i.e. the last days of Silent cinema) and which revolved around a gathering at some remote location for the sake of an inheritance that goes terribly wrong, resulting in a murder spree; actually, this takes things a bit further (also taking advantage of the permissiveness of the age with its inclusion of by-now quite mild instances of nudity) – where the vicissitudes of the crime are slowly assembled via multiple flashbacks (unveiling various illicit affairs, both financial and romantic, into the bargain) and the whole set-up ultimately revealed to be an elaborate retribution (incorporating surprisingly neat, i.e. not heavy-handed, apocalyptic connotations) from beyond the grave! Though somewhat undercast, there are still a few familiar faces among the actors recruited for the movie – Joachim (DEAD EYES OF London [1961]) Fuchsberger, Claudio Camaso (a Tomas Milian look-alike but really the younger brother of Gian Maria Volonte' whose life ended in tragedy!), Marianne Koch (from A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS [1964] and exhibiting here lesbian tendencies which prove her undoing in both the past and present time-frames of the narrative), Dominique (FANTASTIC ARGOMAN [1967]) Boschero and, of course, Luciano Pigozzi (distinguished by his uncanny physical resemblance to Peter Lorre) in perhaps the most significant role of his prolific career. For fear of repeating myself (see the concluding statement in my AMUCK! [1972] review elsewhere), the appropriately old-fashioned strains of Carlo Savina's score provides one further reason to enjoy this – for "Euro"-buffs and adventurous movie fans alike; it goes without saying, then, that this is a title that ought to sustain a lot more than the current semi-obscure reputation I alluded to at the start...

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.