‘It’s quite funny having a great man like you for a pimp.’
After being expelled from convent school, a young woman arrives at her aunt’s castle to meet up with her mother. That night, she finds a secret passage in her room leading to a basement and a corpse partially eaten by rats…
Intriguing Giallo mystery from director Antonio Margheriti, appearing under his usual pseudonym of Anthony M Dawson. Financing from Italy, France and West Germany predicates a multi-national cast, but the production was shot around Rome with an Italian crew.
A visit to Lady Mary MacGrieff (Françoise Christophe) at her castle seems like a good move for her niece, Corringa (Jane Birkin), after messing around with boys gets her thrown out of convent school. Already visiting is her mother, Lady Alicia (Dana Ghia), who is turning a deaf ear to Christophe’s pleas for the financial assistance needed to keep the castle in the family. Also on hand is live-in physician Dr Franz (Anton Diffring) and sexy French tutor Suzanne (Doris Kunstmann), who are both ministering to the needs of Christophe’s handsome but reclusive son James (Hiram Keller).
At first, Birkin is glad to be there, bringing a ray of sunshine into the gloomy old pile, but Keller’s surprise attendance at dinner puts a damper on things. Rude and arrogant, he insults local priest Father Robertson (Venantino Venantini) and hints at the family’s dark history and stories of vampirism. That night, a black-gloved killer smothers Ghia in her bed while the house cat looks on.
Margheriti goes all-in with the Gothic in this twisted tale of murder and family relations. Despite the apparent contemporary setting, this might easily be the 18th Century, with the action mostly restricted to the spooky castle’s candle-lit corridors and shadowy bedchambers. The walls are hung with old family portraits, the obligatory secret passage, and Birkin arrives in a horse-drawn carriage driven by family retainer Angus (Luciano Pigozzi). Everyone seems to have raided the costume department of Hammer Studios for their clothes, and the most recent piece of technology is a gramophone with a trumpet.
There’s clearly more than a touch of the ‘old dark house’ formula to proceedings, although Margheriti leans far more heavily into the horror of it all and embraces it. It’s a murder mystery with more than a hint of Poe; the coffin broke open in the crypt, the full-grown ape kept as a pet by Keller, and the cat who prowls the darkness and turns up as the sole witness to each killing. The action is supposed to be set in Scotland (check out the bagpipers at Ghia’s funeral!), but it’s more like the strange mid-European neverland of Universal’s classic horror cycle.
The mystery itself is pretty involving, and even if the solution is underwhelming and leaves some minor threads hanging, it’s still hard to see it coming. The performances are also solid across the board, with Diffring in particular scoring as the cold-blooded, manipulative physician. Birkin’s character is also a nice mixture of the usual damsel in distress and a more proactive, gutsy heroine, and the combination helps ground the drama and divert the audience from the more outlandish aspects of the plot.
Riz Ortolani’s musical score includes cues from his previous work with Margheriti, and it is somewhat overblown at the big, dramatic moments. However, it feels suitable as part of the film’s commitment to its grandiose approach. The story was allegedly based on a novel by Peter Bryan, but there’s no evidence of its existence, and it was not uncommon to invent such a credit to give a film a touch of literary credibility. There was a British screenwriter of that name who worked for Hammer on a few projects, such as ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959) and ‘The Plague of the Zombies (1966) and had died around the time that the film was shooting, so the credit may have been a tribute to him, but it’s just as possible that it was a name plucked out of thin air.
Birkin was an English actress who had appeared in a few minor roles before an eye-catching appearance in Michelangelo Antonioni’s celebrated ‘Blow-Up’ (1966). She began a personal and professional relationship with French actor-musician Serge Gainsbourg in 1968, and a year later, they recorded the song ‘Je t’aime… moi non plus’, which he had written for then-girlfriend Brigitte Bardot. The single was a huge international hit but was banned in several countries for its sexual content. Margheriti gave Birkin a small role as the Police Inspector in this film when he turned up on set to visit her. Birkin went on a highly successful screen career, including appearances in ‘Death on the Nile’ (1978) and ‘A Soldier’s Daughter Never Cries’ (1998). She has been nominated for several international acting awards.
No world beater, but an enjoyably ripe slice of the Gothic.
Mark David Welsh 