While the giallo is the form most associated with horror films from Italy, Italian goth has given us almost as many classics as that subgenre. And even though most horror fans are probably familiar with groundbreaking works like Mario Bava’s Black Sunday, there is a rich vein of Italian goths rarely seen outside the borders of their homeland. Enter Gothic Fantastico from Arrow Video collection, which – often for the first time on Blu-ray – collects four black and white Italian goths of various stripes from the 1960s. Here we find stories reminiscent of Corman’s Technicolor Poe adaptations, stories influenced by Psychoand everything in between.
“I’ve had enough of the dead…” – Lady Morgan’s Revenge (1965)
“I got into the horror genre because I wanted to get out of documentaries,” director Massimo Pupillo wrote of his decision to stop making horror films after taking the helm. Lady Morgan’s Revenge, “I wanted to enter the commercial market. If you make a certain type of film in Italy, you will be labeled and you cannot do anything else. I remember a producer called me one day to make a movie only because the other producers told him to either get Mario Bava or me. When I understood this, I felt dead.”
This may help explain why Lady Morgan’s Revenge was Pupillo’s last horror film, following the more famous ones Creatures of terror from the grave and Bloody pit of horrorboth also released in 1965. Compared to those photos, Lady Morgan’s Revenge is fairly bog-standard goth, complete with just about every trope from the genre’s roots you can think of. There’s plenty of gaslighting, a true love with amnesia, hypnosis, secret passageways, a dungeon beneath a crypt, and plenty of sneaking between tombstones on a dark and stormy night.
Until the denouement, this makes Lady Morgan’s Revenge nice enough but largely unspoken. Write in his book Italian horror film directorsLouis Paul called the picture “a successful attempt to emulate the better gothic horror films of earlier years” but argued that “audiences were tuned in to and expected more from the colorful and violent horror films other filmmakers were making.” Perhaps that is the reason for the hard turn that Lady Morgan’s Revenge takes its last legs, as the fate of everyone involved is told via flashback, and the story introduces vampiric ghosts similar to the ghosts of Carnival of Souls in the mix.
“One is surrounded by grief in these ruins.” – The Blancheville Monster (1963)
Opening with a slow pan in the rain to a drawing of a castle, accompanied by overwrought music, The Blancheville Monster makes it immediately clear that it shares more DNA with Roger Corman’s Technicolor Poe adaptations than with its Italian goth contemporaries. And yet, watching this hard on the heels Lady Morgan’s Revengeit’s impossible not to notice some dramatic similarities beyond the standard Gothic trappings of sinister servants and creaking old castles.
When Miss Eleanor (Helga Line, her best-doing Barbara Steele) is introduced, the dialogue is almost word-for-word the same as in the introduction of the sinister housekeeper in Lady Morgan’s Revenge, and in both films the protagonists are hypnotized in their sleep. However, there are also plenty of differences. For starters, The Blancheville Monster traffic in almost the a classic gothic trope that Lady Morgan’s Revenge not: the deformed family member in the attic. It is also distinguished from Corman’s Gothic for its use of dramatic real-world ruins, including the Monastery of Santa Maria La Real de Valdeiglesias in Spain.
It was directed by Alberto De Martino, who spearheaded a slew of films in various genres, including the MST3K “classic” Cougar manwhile showing similarities with Lady Morgan’s Revenge could be attributed to the fact that the two films share a screenwriter in Giovanni Grimaldi. Martino himself didn’t get much out of this film, calling it “a little film of no consequence”, which is probably a bit harsh considering some of the other titles in his filmography…
“There is always a point where the past meets the future.” – The third eye (1966)
Released just a year later Lady Morgan’s RevengeMino Guerrinis The third eye takes a hard turn from the previous two films in this set. Where those were classic Italian goths in the “women running from a dark castle in their nightgown” vein, this one is emphatically Psycho-inflected and therefore feels much more modern – and not just because it is set in a contemporary age of cars and gas stations.
Of course, but there is still a big, dark house where our tormented protagonist Count Mino lives with his overbearing mother and his scheming housekeeper. (This honestly could have been called the Sinister Housekeeper Collection.) Where the plot seems however, as it goes in the first act isn’t quite where it ends. Franco Nero plays the young count in an early role, where he’s mainly called upon to do goofy eyes, and does it very well. He is in love with a young woman whom he wants to marry, but his mother is against the union. Unfortunately for everyone involved, both mother and fiancée die on the same day, both the result of foul play.
Tragedy drives our count over the edge, and he embarks on his Norman Bates-esque slaughter of several women before everything comes crashing down with the introduction of his fiancée’s sister, who is also played by Erika Blanc. The whole drags on a bit in parts, but the atmosphere of decay and madness is undeniable.
“It must be hard to grow old when you used to be very beautiful.” – The witch (1966)
Released in the United States, simply as The witchthis film is much better represented by a literal translation of the Italian title, The enamored witch. I guess US distributors didn’t think their audiences would flock to a horror movie by that title, let alone one from the unlikely source of a Carlos Fuentes novel.
A dreamy tale of what one Letterboxd user calls “a psychosexual battle of wills,” of creepy doublings and unlucky doublings, The witch feels less like a horror movie than the other pictures in this set, though it certainly descends into gruesome territory before all is said and done, and it’s worth noting that romance is just as much a part of the Gothic blueprint as horror. Instead, it’s a film about the battle of the sexes set in an eternally feverish moment, locked in virtually a single location, a palace of past glory that, in proper Gothic tradition, represents much more than just a building.
It is, perhaps more than any other film, a beautiful film, kept from greater heights than it reaches by its own sexual politics more than anything else. However, whether the film is ultimately misogynistic – and who the real villain of the play is – is largely left to the interpretation of the individual viewer.
In addition to his work as a Monster Ambassador here at Signal Horizon, Orrin Gray is the author of several books about monsters, ghosts, and sometimes the ghosts of monsters, and a byline movie writer on Unwinnable and others. His stories have appeared in dozens of anthologies, including Ellen Datlow’s Best horror of the year and he is the author of two collections of essays on vintage horror film.
