The Italian-Spanish co-production La mansión de la niebla / Maniac Mansion was the directorial debut
of Spanish filmmaker Francisco Lara Polop,
who had been previously working as a unit production manager for about ten
years. He would also produce the Paul
Naschy classics The Hunchback of the
Morgue (1973) and Count Dracula’s
Great Love (1973).
Made at the height of the Spanish horror boom, Maniac Mansion really is quite the
fanciful gothic horror film with enough giallo and murder mystery influences to
make it appealing to all Eurocult fans.
The fiery intro credit sequence is hypnotic
and a nice mood setter, featuring a killer theme and a couple of
chilling evil-witch cackles. The beginning of the story is a lot more grounded
in reality with a somewhat unremarkable setup involving numerous shady characters,
among which are a few familiar faces including Jess Franco regular Alberto
Dalbés, before derailing into a foggy nightmare world, where things get a
lot more interesting. Initially, you might start feeling better off just
reading an Agatha Christie novel instead, but it does start to get good when all of the
characters seemingly enter what feels like Silent
Hill all of a sudden.
With Spirits of
Death, I’m reminded of how pleasing it is to keep discovering new
worthwhile Eurocult movies of the vintage variety. Years ago I thought that I
might have been coming close to exhausting my selection of every notable Eurohorror / giallo / surreal-art-house-drama
film. However, that notion seems to become more and more untrue with time,
which is counterintuitive, as it would seem that the more movies of this type you
see the closer you would be to seeing them all, but it nonetheless keeps
opening up a world that always seems bigger the further you go in.
Spirits of Death is one of those arty,
Eurohorror, giallo movies of a particular brand that I can’t believe I went so
long without knowing (let’s see if we can coin the term “Sleeping Eurocult” –
in winking reference to Agatha Christie’s
Sleeping Murder). Spirits of Death is directed and
cinematographed by Romano Scavolini,
who many may know as the director of an infamous Video Nasty from the early
‘80s, Nightmares in a Damaged Brain.
He is also the brother of Sauro Scavolini,
director of another marvelous “Sleeping Eurocult” Love and Death in the Garden of the Gods.
The film is essentially a
gathering of colorful guests, who have been invited by one of the proprietors,
Marialé (Ida Galli aka Evelyn Stewart), with mysterious
motives, to a spooky old castle. It might sound familiar, and it is, but the
gathering turns into a fascinating, candlelit journey into the underground
caverns of the castle as well as a delirious entertaining descent into a batshit
crazy Fellini-esque masquerade dinner
party before things turn over to a more traditional murder mystery, as party
guests start getting knocked off by an unseen assailant in the latter half.
David, Ray Lovelock, is riding free with the wind in his hair and the beautiful ocean in the background. He is an eloper of society looking for freedom in a new world. What he ends up finding is more or less an exaggeration of what his free spirit has always desired in this rarely seen but marvelous film.
Following the music-video-like intro-credits, night falls and a shot of the lead character riding down a pitch black foggy highway in the middle of nowhere gives off a dark and uneasy feeling as he stops to help a stranded older looking gentleman, Gianni Santuccio, with a flat tire. A conversation of conflicting beliefs ensues, and while still expressing appreciation for the help, this older man lights a cigar and takes no time to criticize David’s long hair, hippie clothes, and free-love ideals (Remind you of a similar moment with lovelock in THE LIVING DEAD AT MANCHESTER MORGUE?), which are a strong contrast to the older man’s short grey hair, suit-and-tie, and enthusiasm for matrimony.
Nonetheless, David holds onto his pride while the well kempt man, who hasn’t given his name (he’s known as L’uomo/Il diavolo on the IMDB which is Italian for Man/The Devil), attempts to provoke him to ‘betray his ideals’ by making suggestions that are a forecast to a very provocative situation that David later finds himself in. The old man’s drawn-out advice feels too premeditated to not raise the suspicion that he may’ve been planning on meeting David all along. It doesn’t help that he stuck a nail in David’s
motorcycle tire while he was working either.
