A locket and an ancient Inca ritual give Franz (Luciano Rossi) the opportunity to bring back to life his sister Greta (Ewa Aulin) with whom he is bound by a morbid sexual relationship that results in incest.
Year 1909: after a carriage accident and related death of the coachman, Greta is housed inside a villa, attracting the attention first of her husband, Walter von Ravensbrück (Sergio Doria) then of his wife herself, Eva von Ravensbrück (Angela Bo).
Meanwhile, a series of mysterious deaths, including those of pathologist Sturges (Klaus Kinski) begin to bedevil the festive environment of the estate...
After being walled up alive by the enamored and jealous Eva, Greta reappears in ghostly form and continues the trail of blood, on whose trail a helpless inspector (Attilio Dottesio) is placed...
Massaccesi's directorial debut, after a very long apprenticeship as a handyman in the film industry, and the only film signed with his real name (as opposed to an incalculable number of pseudonyms, about the number of which doubt still reigns today)...
This is a gothic horror film, with very strong moments of graphic violence (considering the era) such as a face disfigured by a knife, a disemboweled corpse, a shotgun blast to the face, and on and on splattering...
A rather convoluted and confusing plot does not preclude the director from bringing good sequences of tension and eroticism to the screen, as later occurs in all subsequent cinema made (as a director or as a producer) by Massaccesi...
"Cinema Sign," in a fact sheet devoted to the film, describes it as an early "splatter-gothic," although basically the film's progression is very relaxed.
Definitely interesting appears, however, the last half hour, when it shows, in addition to Greta's ghostly appearances (with her rotting body), imaginative and graphically well-presented murders.
Good musical accompaniment-dated and typical of the time-which, after a "cult" incipt on the film's opening titles, effectively underscores the central and final sequences of the entire story.
However, contained in nuce are all the elements that characterize the director's three subsequent (and hard-hitting) splatter works (Anthropophagus, Dark Omega and Blood Red): sex, violence and blood.
To be remembered as significant moments are Greta's evocative masonry sequence (evidently inspired by Allan Poe's The Black Cat), Greta's eerie apparitions in cadaverous form, and a "chilling" masquerade ball...
Review by Undying1
