Macabre

Macabre (Macabro, Frozen Terror) Directed by Lamberto Bava (LamBava) starring Bernice Stegers, Stanko Molnar, Veronica Zinny, Roberto Posse, Ferdinando Orlandi (1980)

-Reviewed by Richard Glenn Schmidt

Mom Of The Year/Wife Of The Year for 1980 runner-up Jane Baker (Bernice Stegers) waits until her husband leaves for work so that she can abandon her two kids and meet up with her lover in his apartment. I don’t know if this is normal or not because this story -“inspired by actual events”- takes place in New Orleans; that could just be how they roll there. What Jane doesn’t know is that her daughter Lucy (Veronica Zinny) is a complete wacko. In a desperate plea for attention she fucking drowns her little brother! Dang, those tween years are murder!

When she gets the call that her son is dead, Jane and her lover Fred (Roberto Posse) -fresh from making the sex act- jump in his VW Bug and head for the house. Because she’s having a nervous breakdown in the passenger seat, Fred loses control of the car and is killed in the ensuing crash. Jane has to spend some time recovering in the loony bin. Once she gets out, Jane heads home to patch things up with her long-suffering husband and deal with the clearly insane Lucy. Just kidding, she heads right to Fred’s apartment to be even more of an asshole than she’s already been thus far.

This is not about Hurricane Katrina.

Enter Robert Duval. No, not Robert Duvall (with two L’s), Robert Duval (Stanko Molnar), the blind son of the former landlord who lives alone in the same building as Dead Fred -not Drop Dead Fred. Stop distracting me, IMDB. I’m trying to write about Macabre! He has always had a crush on Jane and now that she’s single, he’s ready to make his move. But is she single? Robert immediately notices that Jane is acting rather strange. She has nightly rendezvous with someone she calls “Fred” and is having about a thousand loud orgasms during these encounters.

Never date anyone with anything less than a Passat.

Skip this paragraph if you don’t want the film spoiled for you. But if you’ve seen the completely unsubtle VHS art for this film under its Frozen Terror title, then you know what I’m about to say. Somehow Jane has managed to save Fred’s severed head in a freezer and has been making love to it since she got out of the nuthouse. How the hell she managed to score this little trophy is beyond me. Robert and Lucy figure out the truth at the same time. He wants to help Jane and presumably hook up when she gets back from a possible second trip to the place with padded walls. Lucy decides to use her knowledge of the severed head of Fred to torture her mother for reasons unknown. I’m telling you. Tweens, man.

The doctors dilated my pupils years ago, I kept the glasses.

In case you ever wondered if British actress Bernice Stegers (of Xtro) is batshit insane, Macabre can answer that one for you. Her performance in this is completely unhinged and ludicrously over-the-top. I love it! Of course, it doesn’t hurt that she’s voluptuous as hell and her character is dangerously horny with a slightly (sarcasm) unhealthy dose of sexual obsession and necrophilia to boot. If her half-assed altar to the memory of her deceased lover doesn’t make you snicker, then I don’t know my business.

You can never wash off the Stanko.

A huge part of what makes this all so brilliant is Jane’s epic cockteasing of poor Robert. And for reals, part of me wants to think that she’s genuinely interested in Robert but she’s so damn bonkers that she can’t let Fred go, even in the face of a seemingly normal encounter. Robert repairs brass musical instruments for a living so you know he’s good with his hands! Give the guy a chance, lady.

Possessing one of the finest names in history -second only to Fabio Testi- is Croatian born Stanko Molnar. He’s really good in this one and I wish he’d done more Italian horror and giallo. Of course, the real MVP of Macabre is Veronica Zinny. Her portrayal of the diabolical and unintentionally hilarious Lucy really carries the movie when Bernice Stegers isn’t chewing giant sexy holes in the scenery. I wish that this wasn’t her only screen credit. I would have liked to have seen those constantly narrowing, sneaky eyes in more Italian horror flicks.

No one plays Minecraft anymore.

I kept misremembering this film as having a 100 minute or longer running time but no, it just feels like it does. While the same can be said to a lesser degree of his follow-up, the hilarious giallo A Blade in the Dark (1983, see review here), LamBava’s feature film debut is disastrously methodical in its pacing. Add a couple of megaton bomb level annoying brats and a one note mystery to the mix and you’ve got a film that I find tough to recommend but enjoyable enough for seasoned Italian horror fans. Just don’t expect anything remotely insane like the director’s own Demons (1985). This is the un-Demons.

Tastes like Fabio Testi.

The music by composer Ubaldo Continello (Trauma, Play Motel) is spare when it’s not ramming a saxophone, harmonica, or wildly heavy handed percussion and strings up your ass. I really think this film would have benefited from some synthesizer freak-outs to fill in the long stretches without music. Hey LamBava, I know you probably thought that less is more but it’s not true. Less is just less, duder. Do I really think that blogs speak directly to all them fancy directors in Hollywood?  How long has LamBava lived in Hollywood anyway? Eh, probably since Body Puzzle (1992) came out.

So yeah, I have mixed feelings about Macabre. There’s quite a bit of atmosphere, lavish set decorations, great locations, unexplained plot weirdness, mind-melting histrionics, and abrupt, comedic violence. The director admits that the idea for the film started as a joke and/or is based on a real case. I’m thinking it’s the former but you know what, why not? New Orleans doesn’t have laws against this kind of thing happening. Just like Ft. Pierce, Florida, anything goes. The aforementioned slowness of the plot is kind of a deal breaker but I might give Macabre another viewing someday. Or not. The music score certainly doesn’t do the film any favors because let’s be honest, the harmonica is the butthole of musical instruments.

Can you necro-feel me, dawg?

Nekromantik 2

Nekromantik 2. Directed By Jorg Buttgereit, Starring Monika M. (1991).

There are a couple of things I noticed first hand while watching this film after successfully avoiding it for years. It's downright classy and yet all the scum and filth is now under a microscope for you to masturbate too--ahem--I mean see clearly, no longer is it able to hide in the grime of super 8 blown up to the next film stock level. There's more women this time around and even thought they perform repulsive, vomit inducing acts, they all look stunning. Monika M. takes over for the previous corpse fornicator Beatrice, whom we see for a few minutes but she doesn't want to be a third wheel and bails.

It's over, you laid a rancid beefncheeser after that Arby's pig out session!

I liked how in this film there's a lot of thrift store nic nacs (like a 60's Fred Flintstone bank, a naked lady toilet paper holder), it's kitschy and the same kind of garbage I collect. Buttgereit is injecting humor this time around, (even though I still found that cum squirting papier mache suicide penis from the previous movie pretty hilarious, but I'm in the minority).

Available at the finer Ross Dress for Less establishments.

There's an emphasis on the Rom part as opposed to the Nekro, but rotting corpse fans still have lots of eye candy to chew on. Monika M. is the main protagonist wrestling with her revolting obsession to grind the rigor mortis out of the excruciatingly green, slimy dead body of Rob, (Daktari Lorenz's character from the 1st film). She is a major fan of his and even has his suicide headline tacked on her wall!

Mark (Mark Reeder), a dude who does noises for porn flix crosses paths with Monika at a movie premiere, which even has a Hitchcockian cameo by Jorg himself! There's a wacky parody of My Dinner With Andre that was on a Mighty Boosh level of goofiness. Reeder directed a Berlin punk documentary called B-Movie: Lust & Sound in West Berlin, which has a cavalcade of stars, including Blixa Bargeld, Nick Cave, David Hasselhoff and even the late David Bowie!

Holy Shit, Ladies and Gentlemen here comes "The Hoff" to sing this Einsturzen cover of "Dah Dah Dah"!

The new found couple have a fun time eating soft boiled eggs, riding a Ferris wheel-- you know typical date stuff! Critics have bitched about the pacing, and by that, I mean people on IMDb who can't figure out how to spell properly! Sheesh! R.I.P. film criticism!

So, Monika gets out her baby saw, yellow kitchen gloves and starts cutting up the dead corpse of Rob. I guess she already got her rocks off and wants this used up sex toy out of the apartment, I mean it's embarrassing already!

God! For a nurse, she seems to be pulling in a lot of hard work off the clock at least the girl in the first film had time to relax with a nice "Countess Bathory style red bath! "Calgon, Take Me Away!" I mean just watching her saw off that pustule, decomposing head looks like grudge work, that's the part on Dexter they make look effortless! My favorite part is how she actually puts Cling wrap on the stumpy, shriveled black rotten penis (what is she saving it for later--why not, it's the weekend)!

I just can't quit you Miles Davis and I hope these spaghetti sauce stains come out.

When Slayer wrote "Necrophiliac", I highly doubt they imagined a foxy babe that's dissatisfied with fucking the living. I was thinking this could be the subject of the next "50 Shades" movie, I mean isn't that what this new scary version of mainstream America wants?

There's a super tripped out piano song that's just what I was thinking "Love Me Deadly" needed!

The relationship dynamics are pretty intelligent, even if they are hardly noticed by Mondo snuff, Faces of Death fanatics craving their next shock value injection. 

One vile scene, which Skunkape explained to me, shows adorable seals that were butchered and mutilated, but apparently they were about to die and Buttgereit used this for shock value as he did with the skinned rabbits from the original film. During this part I'd image Crazy Ernie, the seal clubbing car salesmen from UHF would jerk off to this scene. This horrendous tape is used as a passive aggressive jab at us the audience and the boyfriend character, it's forcing us to come to terms with what we find arousing versus repugnant. It's mean spirited but necessary, especially aimed at gorehounds who connect snuff, porn and typical slashers as all in the same league.

I give Jorg all the credit, he does a great job and this is a lot better sequel than I expected. I think this one was worth the wait. The first time I became aware of this film was through Deep Red Alert #1, which came out the summer I entered high school and yes, I was attracted to the naked babe sitting atop of the grisly fetid looking dead fucker. It's the same reaction I'd imagine the grindhouse going crowd watched the 40s exploitation Kroger Bab flick Mom and Dad and focused on the vagina erupting a human baby and ignored the spewing liquids and shrieking mouth, they just zoomed in on the surrounding pubic area. OK now I'm officially disgusted with myself thanks a lot Jorg! I'm confident that's the reaction he was driving for, nice work!

SHAMELESS PROMOTION ALERT! Graham Rae was kind enough to mention TOG in the Nekromantik comic book, which is available from https://www.facebook.com/weissblechcomics/. All you have to do is message them and paypal the money, it's totally easy, go order one now.

NEKRO 2 IS STOMACH CHURNING AND THOUGHT PROVOKING AT THE SAME TIME. I'M GLAD, IT'S NOT PRESENTED IN ODORAMA!

Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things

Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things (Zombie Graveyard, Things from the Grave) Starring Alan Ormsby Directed By Bob Clark (1972).

Alan Ormsby and his theater buddies as themselves perform a Satanic ritual in a graveyard and pay for their idiotic mischief. I know Ormsby as the guy who used peanut butter in his stage blood recipe and worked with Tom Savini on Death Dream, he wrote and co-directed the brilliant Ed Gein biopic Deranged. I've successfully avoided this film until it showed up in HD quality format on Youtube and god damn it, if I'm not gonna check it out and review it for you faithful readers so those in the minority who haven't seen it yet can decide if it's worth watching this cult item. ((Spoiler Alert)) it's not, don't waste your time, it's a dreadful mind numbing experience--get out while you still can! Ok now that the more sensitive members of my audience are busy crocheting, what a bunch of chickens right? Now the truth about this film can be told, read on to find out.

Are We Not Devo, Nope We are A Shitty Santana cover band

If this movie hadn't involved Bob Clark and Ormsby didn't write one of the coolest Monster make-up books that I bought one year in Kindergarten at a book fair, then I wouldn't have subjected myself to this level of dullness. I thought it was great how in that book they talked about lighting and facial expressions when transforming into Jeckyll and Hyde by using red lights, shadows and Orange and Black Cherry soda as a potion-- it was inspiring. Ormsby was also the mad genius behind Hugo: Man of a Thousand Faces, the Kenner puppet that comes with a million disguises, was featured on the Uncle Floyd Show and allegedly inspired The Love Butcher.

an exerpt from Ormsby's Monster make-up book. 

This film, which flows at a draining, agonizingly slow pace has some of the cheesiest hippies imaginable to boot. Alan Ormsby with his van dyke beard, wizard cape and stripey pants looks like Gallagher's second cousin. The cast, who all appear as themselves, resemble a less scary version of the Satanic cult from I Drink Your Blood or Last House on Dead End Street for the family friendly neutered set. If you think about those two aforementioned films and the way they manage to deliver so much deep seated terror and creepiness with little to no budget, it's fascinating to me how they accomplish it. CSPWDT tackles similar situations involving evil hippies and it came out at the same time period, so why does it all add up to a lackluster and dull effort, I don't know. Ormsby is no slouch by any means and he wrote one of the best coming of age bully drama's My Bodyguard (1980) and I even enjoyed Popcorn (1991), which he was an uncredited director of. In fact this may be the lowest point of his career, but what's so perplexing to me is how it's so widely known. Another strange coincidence that makes perfect sense now that I think about it is Jeff Gillen the chubby guy with Larry Fine hair played the scary Santa Claus in A Christmas Story. 

I can't believe you tried to blame that fart on the corpse

One stand out seen in Dead Things has two gay positive characters, which was shocking for the offensive 70's when society was still very ignorant and homophobic. One of them wears a zombie mask and pops out of a coffin to scare Jeff the fat guy, causing him to piss his pants! They find a real corpse named Orville (played by Seth Sklarey) and put a hanky on his head to perform a Satanic ritual, sounds like a generic Friday night--am I right? Check out this hilarious interview with Orville the corpse from http://www.badmovies.org/interviews/sklarey/

Do you mind, I'm trying to masturbate!

Anya, Ormsby's real wife at the time, chickens out (I'm not sure why they'd exhume a corpse anyhow, perhaps they want to go all Nekromantik style on the rotting carcass). Anya hams it up like nobodies business and makes everything tense for this gaggle of artsy types. For a group of hippies there's a serious lack of beer or weed, maybe these are straight edge highbrow dweebs. As dull as this film is, it's still mildly enjoyable and I'll take these flesh eaters over the current trend of sad sack WWZ or "Walking Dull" moronic zombie trends any day. The trailer for this film which I've seen on the Mad Ron's Prevues tape is more exciting than the finished product, I'm sorry to say. The high light of the movie which doesn't really get going almost towards the end is when the corpses finally show up, their make-up is very good and they all have that cruddy Thing Maker style effects that I love.

Remember Kids, Count Chocula Cereal may cause dysentery 

Ormsby handled most of the undead effects along with Lee J. O' Donnell who also worked on Zaat (aka MST3K's Blood Waters of Dr. Z), that flick is so abysmal without Mike and the Bots goofing on it. Dead Things was filmed in Miami Florida which means it was probably sweltering but as someone who grew up in South Fl, you could never really tell on camera. If anything Bob Clark (going by Ben Clark) should get most of the blame since he wrote and directed it, but he's had such a prolific career that I just can't do it. I'm thinking this film is a 70's horror rite of passage, you see it once and that's it--you got it out of the way pat yourself on the back. I just watched Let's Scare Jessica To Death which is infinitely worse than this film and also another super famous cult item. Both Clark and Ormsby would work on better projects later considering this was what they slapped together in college, I gotta give them some credit, but yeah it's pretty lame.

No Don't make me watch it again not enough Beer on the planet!

NOT WORTH THE HYPE, VERY SLOW AND BORING!

Entrails of a Virgin

Entrails Of A Virgin  Directed By Kazuo "Gaira" Komizu, starring Saeko Kizuki (1986)

Two years ago, I mentioned this director when I reviewed his dull and nearly bloodless Battlegirl. I hoped for better action with a more coherent storyline, but all I got was an aimless, confusing fetish slasher film with more gore (which was the good part and no guts as advertised, which burned me up)! That being said, this film is entertaining for sure and makes fun of slasher movies with a clever plot twist toward the end.

I've heard about this one for a long time but have never actually sat down and watched it, thankfully Fandor bought the Synapse version and is streaming it. It's in the Pink genre of Japanese S&M films, but it's nothing like quality depraved trash that's in the vein of Star Of David: Hunting for Beautiful Girls or School of the Holy Beast. I've heard a theory, that the film maker was intentionally over the top and outlandishly hammy, which to me sounds like a cover-up. I mean sure, Samurai Cop and The Room can pretend all they want that they knew what they were doing the whole time, but there's serious noway that they were self aware! There are some wildly grotesque images in GUTS, like a woman masturbating with a severed arm and tree-fellatio (which should've made its way into Evil Dead 2 as a form of rape retaliation).

I followed a leprechaun over to a pot of gold and found this lethargic Asian stripper instead  

  This film came out in the days of underground trading, hardly anyone saw it during its initial run and often in the 90's the Japanese tape arrived without subtitles. Entrails, just like Guinea Pig (which at the time, you could only order from Chas Balun) was only available on a second generation dub with those irritating japanese characters at the bottom. Video lunatics had to suffer through tons of migraines in order to be disgusted or sometimes bored by what was flickering on the cathode ray. GUTS is basically a slasher film with gratuitous penis shots and actual hardcore sex (with optical fog over the pubic hair parts). It's also a tale of model exploitation in the demanding world of a photo shoot.

I love the imported taste of white trash American swill

This film gets the shock out early with an adorable girl's crotch thrusting into the screen as each model is introduced on film, they show them engaged in optically blurred sex. Some women's private parts are shown as long as they hold their hands over where its approved by the Japanese censorship board, this film is extremely gynecological sandwiched in by some perverts and Friday the 13th goes to Osaka type elements, it's very strange but not all that great.

Foggy sex is the safest kind

It reminds me of some of the weird and disturbing Japanese films that Skunkape would tape me from Todd Tjersland's Threat Theatre catalog, which were half gross porns and extreme horror (one scat film called THE JAPANESE COMEDY TORTURE HOUR had two people dressed like turtles, I guess you might say it's 2 Turtles One Cup years before that viral video stunned the world).

that other VHS catalog

 I definitely do not fondly remember those kinds of tape trading days and glad that we no longer have to deal with shitty-o in the age of high grade quality trash. I love how I can stream this on Fandor along with Arthouse Criterion films in pristine condition, it makes it almost respectable.

The model shoot is taken next to a cardboard rainbow backdrop and seems like it will wind up in a porno mag. More awkward blurred out sex happens as the gang drink Bud and talk about how Indians shared cocaine. There's a lot of useless dialogue that's really superfluous and kinda dumb.

Out in the creepy forest, a mud man pops up from beneath the leaves and hurls a body at their window. The crew seems to be broke, their sleazy manager refuses to spring for a hotel and they shack up in a rickety cabin. They actually blame it on the thick fog, which makes it too difficult to drive. One extremely repugnant character with a mustache and clunky glasses can't wait to

screw the various models--unbeknownst to the girls of course.

no one wants your happiness

A male and female participate in underwear wrestling to appease the group, which ends in the girl pissing herself full on into the camera. So for those with yellow fever and a pee fetish, this movie's got both fixes covered, Oh boy! BARF! This event pisses off one photographer, who tells his coworkers to fuck off and he even leaves the house, maybe he forgot the scary mud man is still lurking outside.

He should've kept his feelings to himself, because just stepping outside ends with him getting brained by a meat tenderizing mallet that pops his eyeball out!

Asian Randy from Pee Wee's Playhouse

The set up for the film is vaguely patterned on all those American slasher movies that were cluttering up the horror genre at the time. There's a killer outside and all the characters are horn dogs, the film maker is poking fun at it, but the major flaw is that it's not very amusing and it doesn't get really insane till the last few minutes, which to be is a sign of a great film. GUTS however, is to busy trying to titillate and be an effective gore film and it can't successfully pull off both.

There's a pile driver blowjob scene, which didn't surprise me, I mean I've seen Rick Flair pull that move on Super Fly Snuka numerous times!

Footlong, who ordered the Footlong!

The mud man pulls his pecker out and after assaulting a girl, in a coitus silhouette (to avoid the optical foggy of their genitals), he then decapitates her--classy move right?

The mustachioed fellow with the glasses gets impaled by a javelin, which was cool he was my least favorite character.

The craziest part of GUTS has a woman blowing a tree and then making out with a bloody severed head, she loses control in a sexual frenzy, which I'm guessing is a statement against the behavior of teens in American horror films, or they just wanted to show the most bat-shit crazy naked gyrating they could accomplish for the screen.

I always go to the morgue for sex toys, is that weird?

The last 20 mins get all Nekromantik Japanese style as this crazy bitch starts humping all the dead victims and even masturbates with a chopped off severed hand.The mud man shows up and pulls out her guts by reaching into her birth canal, but she definitely ain't no virgin!

I thought it was clever how the last living female victim in most slasher movies is the pure one whose kept her virginity, but in this film the killer actually impregnates her. Just imagine if Jason Voorhees instead of planting an axe in the final victim's head, drops his maggoty pants and does the deed, now that would shock everyone!
I feel as if I made this film sound better than it actually is, it's not, but I can't stop you from watching this dopey flick and I'm not even going to try, it's so conveniently available to stream on Fandor that you might as well.

This is one of those great provocative titles that might be better than the film itself. Napalm Death's old drummer Mick Harris, Bill Laswell and John Zorn "supergroup" Painkiller, named their first album after this film. Komizu's unrelated sequel Entrails of a Beautiful Women should be reviewed next in a few months, so stay tuned for more greasy guts.

AVAILABLE ON FANDOR

Raptus: The Horrible Secret of Dr. Hichcock

RAPTUS: THE HORRIBLE DR. HICHCOCK (Frightening Secret of Dr. Hichcock, El terrible secreto del Dr. Hichcock) Directed By Riccardo Freda, Starring Barbara Steele (1962).

In London 1885 graves are being defiled in this strange Victorian era tale of necrophilia, erotic medical experiments and ghostly revenge. This film has some nice blueish hues mixed with pasty faced actors and drab color schemes. It sort of reminds me of Antonio Margheriti's "Virgin of Nuremberg" which had that unmistakable mix of Italian horror dread and atmospheric cinematography. But this time its a director we've never featured at ToG, Riccardo Freda who seemed to exclusively work with Mario Bava. There's a couple of Freda titles in the catalog that will be reviewed soon.

Hey baby . . . come here often?

   Margaret, a piano playing redhead is repeatedly shot up with a mysterious hypodermic needle by Dr. Bernard Hichcock (Robert Flemying), who looks kind of like a young Jim "Mr. Magoo" Backus with a crewcut. The injections are used for their oddball sexual kicks, somehow the Dr. makes a fatal error and kills her, after she is quickly buried in the backyard crypt. Once she has died, the Doc. cannot stand to be around anything that reminds him of his beloved and he skips town.

I learned how to be a professional necrophile on Gilligan's Island

   The lunkhead returns to his mansion with his new wife (man, those Italians get over things fast)! His newest bride Cynthia is played of course by the radiant Goth beauty Barbara Steele, who just two years prior appeared in her iconic role as the resurrected witch from Mario Bava's classic Black Sunday.

   Evil is lurking in the mansion, we're talking haunted cats and weird screams from the caretaker's sister who just escaped an asylum. A perfect time to turn in and get a restful goodnight's rest (Yeah Right)!

I sure hope a hairy hand doesn't press my face into the window like in Suspiria

   Steele is just cinematic eye-candy and looks adorable in this role as the frightened wife being visited by creaky phantoms in the dead of night. Martha the twisted old caretaker and Dr. Hichcock are working together to victimize poor Cynthia.

   I like how one of Bernard's colleagues mentions that he's worked with Freud in Vienna and Cynthia says she's never heard of ole' Siggy! The presence of the dead wife is everywhere in the house, even in a gaudy giant sized portrait with her cat Jezebel.

Just a friendly reminder to spay and neuter your evil pets

   Bernie it turns out has a boner for cold stiff women and fondles a random corpse in the morgue. Luckily a doctor catches him in the act and he stops. For 1962 a film about corpse fucking was unheard of (in the Deep Red catalog it's called a tender moving tribute to necrophilia)! In reality, you had Ed Gein ransacking his kitchen looking for that damn nipple belt!

   Steele walks down so many cryptic hallways carrying a candelabra and always looks beautiful. Bernie should stop pining for dead flesh and start humping his current wife, but that's what makes him so "horrible"!

I found a way to inject Wonka's fizzy lifting drinks

   In the dead of night during a thunderstorm, Dr. Hichcock dons a hideous red mask (that looks like the ones used in that famous Twilight Zone episode set in New Orleans) and tries to terrify Cynthia. It's debatable whether that creepy mask is made of rubber or was the true face of the doctor, it's not explained why he would wear an ugly mask for a split second. There's a lot of implied subtext that your mind fits together concerning the doctors sexual depravity.

You can find this cheapo mask at most Dollar Tree stores

  He finally seals Cynthia up in a coffin, after trying to drug her numerous times. She manages to escape, but it gets worse as Bernie's dead wife has risen from the grave and is pissed off that her husband has replaced her. Does Cynthia make it out in time, I'm not spoiling the end, so you'll have to find out for yourself!

What? No I wasn't falling asleep

   The Whip and The Body has the same kind of weird overtly taboo sexual nature of Raptus, early 60s audiences were not ready for it. Director Riccardo Freda (apparently a reluctant horror maker) is featured many times in the pages of Deep Red and in the VHS catalog. During a few movies, Mario Bava ghost directed for Freda on I, Vampiri and Caltiki-The Immortal Monster after Riccardo decided to bail on the set. Some sources mention how Bava considered Freda a mentor and his cinematic technicolor style seems to be a major influence.

   According to David Del Valle of kinoeye.org, there are tons of actual Alfred Hitchcock references throughout the film, wait you mean Freda wasn't trying to cash in like every other Italian Horror director in existence? Ernesto Gastaldi the screenwriter took elements of Vertigo (The portrait and haunted wife), Martha the housekeeper is patterned after Mrs. Danvers in Rebecca, glass of poison milk (Suspicion) and the Hitchcock theme of wives in fear of their husband's devious obsessions. Worth checking out for Gothic Horror fans who wanna a little kinkiness with their scares.    

WATCH HERE 

   

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