Director:Alberto De Martino
Year: 1963
Country: Italy/Spain
Alternate Titles: Monster
Genre: Supernatural
Plot:
Returning home to the family castle, a woman and her friends intending to celebrate her birthday early find some bad news about their relatives that hinders the celebrations, and the longer they stay come to believe it’s all due to a family curse of a scared ancestor coming back to kill her before her birthday.
Review:
Overall, this turned out to be quite the fun Gothic Horror effort. Among the brighter aspects of this one is the rather engaging and twist-filled storyline that has a lot of outstanding qualities from the genre. With the initial return of the daughter who brings her friend and brother along and immediately getting a sense of the new dynamic within the house meeting the scenes of new servants, the sense of unease and tension that comes about once they arrive hints at something secretive going on. This is a great setup not just for the desire to understand what’s happening but also for playing with the tropes of the style as this one starts unraveling a series of secrets as the girls stay at the castle.
As this goes along and the series of reveals and secrets are unearthed, the film becomes quite exciting for how it all gets tied together. The initial dismissal of their hearing screams in the night becomes revealed when the bombshell about the thought-dead father is revealed and subsequently, the family curse that follows him is a great way to not only build off this early setup but also carry out the Gothic atmosphere already engaged by the use of secret passageways, candle-lit hallways, and howling rainstorms. Even the secretive romances and supposed ulterior motives that turn out to be far less malignant than expected serve the film quite well to provide intrigue as well as Gothic hallmarks.
It all builds quite nicely into the final half as the intertwining stories are put into place for a nice series of reveals. The interactions with the deformed father that is soon given purpose for concern with the hypnosis reveal which causes a series of impressive dream sequences to lead into the striking finale when everything comes together. The series of big scenes in the ruins of the abbey and how it comes into play with the connection to the storyline being presented lets some fun action and dark sequences that hint at something quite intriguing which is all sorts of fun as well as getting the spectacular resolution to this one. These factors all come together to make this one quite a bit of fun.
There isn’t much to dislike here but it does have some minor factors. One of the biggest drawbacks is the somewhat obvious series of reveals that this one is playing with as they are quite easy to spot. The exploits of the guilty party can be guessed rather easily as who’s really in league with whom, and while it’s not as easy to guess what the full purpose is even that can be figured out so this can somewhat ruin the tension during the middle where the other issue appears in a rather plodding pace. Since the clandestine affairs are useless due to us already knowing what’s going on, the scenes trying to set this up slow the pace down during a section where not much happens, these few factors hold this one down.
Overview: ****.5/5
A stellar and enjoyable Gothic Horror effort, there’s so little to dislike here that this is quite the impressive effort on most levels which makes it quite fun. Those who enjoy this style of Gothic Horror, are general appreciators of this era of the genre, or are fans of the creative crew will have a lot to like while only those who aren’t fans of these factors should heed caution.
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