The Witches' Sabbath / La visione del sabba (1988)

“Ayy, if you do get that chick, all you ‘gots’ is trouble...” – Greaser Greg 

Marco Bellocchio’s bewitching romance The Witches’ Sabbath is next-level surreal Italian witch horror, especially when it comes to the visuals. For me, it’s one of many descendants or even a culmination of Mario Bava’s Black Sunday (1960), but those well-known sacrificial witch-burning spectacles and inquisition tropes we’ve seen so many times at this point are given a makeover and an interesting alternate take. Familiar themes of reincarnation and romance are intentionally ambiguous, as we’re not really sure if the interactions with the witch are real or the fancy of a romantic dreamer. And if the witch is real, it’s anyone’s guess if she represents a fatal attraction for the mortal lover. These uncertainties still make for an enjoyably mystifying experience that really captivates with some of the best unreal and imaginative visuals that are worth the price alone. The film also has a surreal factor to it that keeps it interesting, with a real ‘80s fantasy feel to it at times. 

 

Considering the worldwide impact she must’ve made playing the unstable, complicated but highly desirable love interest as the title character in Jean-Jacques Beineix’s successful Betty Blue (1986), it’s no surprise that the producers were interested in casting Béatrice Dalle in this complex witch/romance drama that kind of feels like a supernatural successor to Betty Blue. Dalle really does feel right for the role. Actually, I think she fits this part to a tee. 

 

It’s important here to have a stunning lead that can capture the attention of any viewer and have the kind of dark and haunting beauty to make her convincing as a desirable witch, and Dalle has all of this in spades. She really sells the surreal sex scene with her co-star Daniel Ezralow with her expressions. This is a love scene I really feel each time I see it. Dalle also gives an impressive, emotional backstory monologue that lasts over two minutes, detailing the time she encountered Napolean that may or may not be delusional. Everything she is saying seems like lies, but she also comes off as sincere.

 

The film starts and ends with some impressive pyrotechnics. It had my attention at the very beginning with Beatrice Dalle in the foreground when a sudden fire explosion drops behind her, like a ball of burning witch energy that can’t touch her. The lingering shot of the witch’s melancholic silhouette here against the background fire is a powerful visual that will stay with you. 

 

Centuries in the past, during an examination of an imprisoned woman (Dalle) accused of being a witch, a man attending the inquisition, Davide (Daniel Ezralow), seems to show pity (or is it fascination?) and falls in love with the accused. Being the only one to really care about her, it’s implied that he saves her and forms an emotional bond with "the witch" that lasts through the centuries.

 

In the present day, Davide wakes from a dream. He’s a psychiatrist who works in an asylum with women suffering from delusions and mania, which kind of makes him the right man for an upcoming job of evaluating a prisoner who believes she is an immortal witch. He later travels with his wife, Cristina (Corinne Touzet), to an old town to evaluate this woman, Maddalena (Dalle again), imprisoned for attempted murder, who claims to be born in the year 1630. She appears to be the same persecuted witch from Davide’s dream, who he feels hopelessly drawn too.

 

When Maddalena is first introduced to Davide in the present, we are treated to an insane hallucination, a spiraling visual that had me reeling. I wouldn’t be surprised if this image of Maddalena literally spiraling in front of Davide becomes a widely used GIF someday. I’m baffled every time I see it. (What kind of off-screen spinning contraption was the actress affixed to?) It’s a truly remarkable sequence (one of many) that hypnotizes and creeps me out every time. I absolutely love it.

 

Just as she was in her past life, Maddalena is still a prisoner today, with it being alluded to that she may not deserve her imprisonment. As her criminal psychiatrist, Davide ends up becoming her advocate, feeling she may need help, not prison, and perhaps that is why he is here for her now, as he was then. Davide may hope he can "save" her and be with her again, but at what cost? 

Maddalena can be thought of as both a potential threat and a source of happiness and love for Davide (a blessing or a curse?). There’s a tenderness between the two. It feels like they belong together, but everything in the universe is making it complicated for them to find that love again. He may have loved her in a previous life, and now their paths have crossed again in unfortunate circumstances. (I love the way she just pops into scenes when he is thinking of her, like she is a ghost.)

 

What is intriguing is that like the lead I too felt the same level of concern, fascination, and emotional attachment to Maddalena. It’s a familiar depiction of what it’s like to think you are under someone’s spell, and Davide finds himself enamored; every time he stares at her, he looks impressed. The guy is drunk with love. She's imprisoned in both timelines, and he can't stop thinking of her. It's quite surreal when he hallucinates seeing her (15th century edition) locked in a cage, literally outside his top story window, so close but fatally out of reach, and freeing her from it seems impossible.

 

Davide does happen to be married, but that doesn’t seem to stop the allurement. He even gives “the witch” his wedding ring when she asks for it, an uncontrollable impulse of switching over his fidelity. In a way, by carrying his wedding ring, she carries his love with her. 

Davide’s wife does love him, but her tears suggest that she can feel he is switching on her. Honestly, there’s really nothing wrong with his wife; she (Touzet) looks great, but she ends up coming off as a shunned goddess in favor of “the witch” who has re-entered Davide’s life.

 

The big showstopper set piece that most will remember this film by happens when Davide appears to find himself at some kind of nexus between past and present (where everyone can get their freak on), and a mass of witchlike peasants accost him. I believe this is the witches’ sabbath the title alludes to. (I want to say they represent a hedonistic world that Maddalena is a part of.) 

Eventually, the wall of witches slowly encroaches upon him, emerging from the fog and lightning, almost as if they are about to attack, but Davide seems to show no fear and is happy to come off just as crazy as them. It kind of reminds me of being in a nightmare, and instead of getting scared or bewildered you decide to play along and have fun in the moment, maybe even try to overpower it; and eventually the nightmare turns playful. By doing this, it’s like he’s allowed himself to enter a society he otherwise wouldn’t really belong to in order to better stay connected with Maddalena and the foreign world she inhabits. Maybe they also represent all of the crazy patients he has to deal with as a psychiatrist.

 

This part plays out for a while, feeling like interpretive dance. It’s like Ezralow and all the extras and actors involved successfully got in touch with their inner witch. Everyone seems to lose themselves in the moment, and the outcome to the spectacle is marvelously spellbinding, creative, and original. Something about it feels impromptu, where everyone is giving it their all and just running with it. The film kind of enters and exits this part as if it was a dream.

 

I like the complementary past and present settings in the film. Both feel very authentic. The separation between the timelines seems to become irrelevant after a while, as the past emits an energy that melds with the present. I eventually found myself not concerned if we were in the present, past, or some other realm. That all of the old buildings (I’m mostly talking about the marvelous external view of the buildings of Pitigliano) in the present setting haven’t changed in centuries also contributes to the feeling of being in some kind of timeless realm.

 

When all is said and done, you can’t help but ask yourself if it’s all just Davide’s fancy, but it’s better to accept that Maddalena is an immortal witch, and it was always Davide’s fate to dance with the witches.  

The Witches’ Sabbath is kind of a dense film that I also found enjoyable watching in segments. It feels like you can attempt to watch it all together or focus in on individual sections to savor and even rewatch to get the most out of the film. I feel it’s an unfairly shunned worthwhile Italian/French horror/drama that too many are oblivious of. Like many others, it doesn’t deserve to be forgotten. 

© At the Mansion of Madness

La lunga notte di Veronique / But You Were Dead (1966)

“There are two kinds of taste, the taste for emotions of surprise and the taste for emotions of recognition.” – Henry James 

Even with its familiar look (that darkly romantic title and poster art baiting me in), I could still sense La lunga notte de Veronique was going to be a little bit different than the ‘60s/’70s Italian gothic horrors I’m accustomed to (and still a big fan of). No obvious Poe, Le Fanu, Stoker, Lovecraft, Shelley, or Sade influences. No witches, black masses, zombies, blood countesses, demons, masked killers, sadistic crimson executioners, or satanic love interests, just an effective, tragic ghost romance, without much in the way of ambiguity. 

Currently, it doesn’t seem to have much of a fanbase, but the film is lowkey intriguing. I only just came across it recently, and it is somewhat of a pleasant surprise and a nice addition to the ever-growing collection of underseen Eurocult that will hopefully see a restored release someday. 

Marquis (1989)

“Only Marquis’ literature can give me a taste for living.” –Justine (Isabelle Wolfe) 

Marquis is quite the creation. I never knew of its existence until recently. It’s a little like the movie Quills (2000) but with anthropomorphic characters who look like they’ve escaped from Alice in Wonderland. It is set in 1789, shortly before the Storming of the Bastille, in Paris France. The lead character (Francois Marthouret) is an inmate of the Bastille, who is referred to as Marquis and is a talented writer of erotic, violent, and depraved manuscripts. He is not necessarily alone, for his sizeable member who goes by Colin (Valerie Kling) is his close companion, consultant, and conversationalist. In between writing various pieces of salacious stories, Marquis finds himself participating in a ploy to help free a political prisoner, Lupino (Roger Crouzet), for the sake of the Revolution. Another imprisoned woman, Justine (Isabelle Wolfe), who was raped and impregnated by the king, is eventually thrown into the same cell as the Marquis, as a corrupt priest, Dom Pompero (Vicky Messica), intends to divert the blame on to him and cover up the king’s misdeed, but Justine instead finds the Marquis to be a gentleman and an enthralling storyteller. 

Justine and the Whip (1979)

Around the late ‘70s, Joe D’Amato got his paws on three Jess Franco films and, with editing help from Bruno Mattei, combined separate footage from each film into a single film called Justine and the Whip, starring Lina Romay, with Alice Arno receiving top billing. The dialogue from the original films was changed and redubbed in Italian, and the soundtrack was reworked. 

The reasons for why a patchwork movie like Justine and the Whip exists aren’t clear. Some have said that it was because D’Amato was salvaging an unfinished film from Franco that was originally intended to be another version of De Sade’s Justine. But I read in Stephen Thrower’s The Delirious Cinema of Jesus Franco: Volume Two that the original film was called Julietta 69 and was completed and actually had a 1976 French cinema release before becoming inaccessible.* It’s speculated that Jess Franco sold Julietta 69 to an Italian production company, and D’Amato and Mattei were eventually commissioned by Franco Gaudenzi to make the mashup Justine and the Whip. Thrower also points out that D’Amato claimed in an interview from Joe D'Amato Totally Uncut (1999) that they were trying to make Franco’s films more “usable”,* but the result here is an incoherent mess that seems quite unusable, at least by comparison to what the completed Julietta 69 must have been like. Maybe by “usable” D’Amato meant more commercially appealing for the time by possibly increasing the number and frequency of love scenes in the film.

Marta (1971)

Austrian actor Marisa Mell (born Marlies Theres Moitzi) is remembered by most as a sexy ‘60s cult icon, particularly as Diabolik’s girlfriend/partner-in-crime, Eva, in Mario Bava’s comic adaptation Danger: Diabolik (1968), but Mell also starred in a fine line of Euro-thriller dramas, usually playing the seductive swindler-murderess type – Death will Have your Eyes (1974) and Diary of an Erotic Murderess (1975) to name a couple. Her particular attention-grabbing, statuesque presence could make the most routine mystery plot a delight to sit through. However, she was underutilized in her movie career in certain respects; considering her demigoddess-like physiognomy, it’s unfortunate that she didn’t play more fantastical or otherworldly characters in fantasy or horror films; and along with Margaret Lee, I thought of her as a Eurospy girl that should’ve eventually been a real Bond girl.

A number of Marisa Mell starring vehicles currently suffer from not having proper releases, such as a little seen Spanish/Italian mystery thriller, directed and co-written by Jose Antonio Nieves Conde, called Marta aka …dopo di che, uccide il maschio e lo divora. I had been interested in checking it out for a while, and when a reader mentioned the film to me, I was finally driven to track down a copy and watch it. The version I first watched didn’t have the best image quality, but even worse was that it had all of Marisa Mell’s nude scenes edited out (the nerve), but I liked it enough to buy a DVD-R of the uncut version, which, sadly, was of even lower image quality; Marta is obviously in need of proper restoration.

Night of the Walking Dead / El extraño amor de los vampiros (1975)

"The sun shining in my dreams / The light is getting hot / Saved by eternity / I have seen death so close / Away, awhile the angels crossed the sky / But I'm condemned to stay here." -- Heavenly  

In his memoirs, Paul Naschy said he had referred Argentine film directing stalwart Leon Klimovsky to be director of his seminal Spanish horror classic La noche de Walpurgis, AKA The Werewolf Versus the Vampire Woman (1971), because one of the film’s financers wanted a quick and reliable director.

It would seem that Klimovsky was known for his fast shooting and workmanlike skills, and yet he managed to direct some real atmospheric classics of Spanish horror, often on low budgets and high pressured shooting schedules, and he introduced an oft-imitated technique of filming vampires and zombies in slow-motion, capturing a uniquely nightmarish plane of existence in the process.
  
Klimovsky’s vampire films are exceptional and interestingly varied, and they belong alongside the best of Jess Franco and Jean Rollin. The aforementioned The Werewolf Versus the Vampire Woman was a record breaking box office success that revived the Spanish horror fantasy genre. The other Klimovsky directed vampire films that followed were the epic The Dracula Saga (1973), the more grindhouse flavored The Vampires’ Night Orgy (1974), and the romantic, adventurous, and somewhat eclectic Night of the Walking Dead / The Strange Love of the Vampires, the topic for tonight

The Other Side of the Mirror / Al otro lado del espejo (1973)

Jess Franco could film movies faster than I can write reviews for them. His films can sometimes have an overwhelming low quality feel to them, making them difficult to digest for the majority. The natural location shots, haunting tone, memorable and well-chosen female actors (Franco definitely had an eye for female leads that just seemed to resonate with the camera lens), and Franco’s brand of bizarre surrealism and eroticism don’t seem to be enough to save the films for many, but they are nonetheless a huge hit for others. Al otro lado del espejo contains all of the aforementioned elements and yet has a higher-than-usual quality feel to it, most likely due to the terrific acting and screen presence from its leading lady (Emma Cohen of Horror Rises from the Tomb and Night of the Walking Dead) and a believable tragic story.

Jazz pianist/singer Ana (Cohen) is profoundly affected by her father’s (Howard Vernon) suicide shortly after her engagement. After calling off the wedding, Ana leaves her homeland on Madeira Island only to undergo several failed relations when she intermittently becomes hypnotically driven to kill any man that becomes close to her.

It isn’t just enough to say that Ana is haunted by images of her dead father in the mirror. She doesn’t just see him, but she finds herself at times in the mirror, in Franco’s looking glass world. It can also be viewed as Ana’s mental reflection on her emotional trauma. The memory of her father’s suicide driven by his stubborn disapproval of her marrying and leaving him is intertwined with Ana’s psyche, manifesting itself when she murders any man that shows any sexual interest in her. Ana’s traumatization, spurned the moment of her outcry into the mirror, yields a malediction that could either be viewed as some sort of curse or spell from her father’s ghost or played off as the result of a kind of posttraumatic stress disorder. If taken at face value, the goose bumps inducing ending, made more dramatic with church bells signifying the wedding that never was, reveals which one happens to be the case.

Morgiana (1972)

Morgiana, by Slovak director Juraj Herz, is a seldom spoken of curio from the Czechoslovak New Wave that’s heavily stylized with regards to its visuals and mood but is straightforward with its story and might feel a little influenced by the ‘Grand Dame Guignol’ horror of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?. Much like Poe’s The Black Cat, there is an escalating sense of guilt in its protagonist, aristocratic villainess Viktorie (Iva Janzurová), that’s not particularly out of remorse or regret for her crime, but from paranoia, constant annoying reminders of her misdeed, and fear of being found out, which is where I think a lot of the suspense comes from.

I like that there is a lot of appeal to its detestable, unsympathetic villain. Viktorie (Viki) is probably one of my new favorite villains. She emanates a wicked aura, primarily due to her excessively evil gothic look that pretty much gives away the nature of her game at first glance. Janzurová's performance is frightening, stellar, and versatile. I say versatile because she also plays Viki’s sister, Klára. The personalities and appearances between the sisters are like night and day, and I don’t know if I was a bit naïve at the time, but after watching the whole movie for the first time, I had no idea the same actress played both sisters.

Love and Death in the Garden of the Gods (1972)

Being a conversation heavy drama mystery with a bit of a dreamy languor about it, Love and Death in the Garden of the Gods may require a little focus from viewers if they hope to get absorbed in its compelling story, beautiful scenery, and tragic characters, but it is worth it. The plot is more or less structured to be an exploration of a hazy backstory that slowly crystalizes before eventually catching up with the present.

The film is directed by Sauro Scavolini, a prolific screenwriter (All the Colors of the Dark, amongst many others) with few directing credits. He is the brother of director Romano Scavolini (Nightmares in a Damaged Brain), who also helmed cinematography for Love and Death in the Garden of the Gods.

The story is fed to us in fragmented bits and pieces from an inquisitive Professor of ornithology (Franz von Treuberg), restoring and listening to a heap of tangled audio recording tape he discovered in the forest outside the villa he’s rented to study the non-indigenous birds of the region. As the Professor listens to the tape recordings, the film cuts to flashbacks of the previous inhabitants of the villa, making the place seem haunted by a past that is both alarming and fascinating. While the past is the primary setting of the story, the film still emphases events in the present, particularly the relation between the professor and the seedy estate administrator, Dominici (Vittorio Duse), giving the Professor dimension and making him more than just an avenue of backstory disclosure.