Riti, magie nere e segrete orge nel Trecento...

A group of people are having a party in a castle one of them (Mickey Hargitay) has just bought. The castle is haunted by the malignant presence of a witch who was burned 500 years earlier and who, not surprisingly, looks just like one of the guests (Rita Calderoni). Yet another rip-off of Mario Bava's "Black Sunday"?--of course, but this movie is much, much more than that. All the male guests are either reincarnations of the earlier historical figures or vampires who have been living for centuries waiting for the opportunity to reincarnate the witch, Isabel. The women meanwhile are all virgins because, not only are virgins necessary for the ceremony, but as one character eloquently puts it, "Vampires need blood uncontaminated by human semen." (This leads one dumb girl in a particularly hilarious scene to give up her virginity to her nymphomaniac friend and a fat, ugly guy with a severe facial twitch).

Obviously, the main appeal of this movie is sex and nudity, but anyone watching it SOLELY for that purpose might be a little frustrated as this a Renato Polselli film, a man whose directorial style can best be described as completely deranged. While there are acres of flesh on display here, Polselli often seems more interested in the bizarro camera angles, the staccato editing sequences, and the pulse-pounding score than he is in lingering on the action like some of his hack contemporaries (or more modern-day "erotic" filmmakers) would have done. All the actors and actresses from Polselli's more famous film "Delerio Caldo" show up again here, and while the latter are even more naked than they were in "Delerio Caldo", some of them turn out to be pretty untalented as thespians(and Polselli doesn't have the good sense to kill them off quickly like he did in the other film). Meanwhile, the stronger actors like Hargitay, Calderoni, and Krysta Barrymore are pretty much wasted in the incomprehensible chaos the film quickly descends into.

Regardless of whether you like this film or not, however, I GUARANTEE you'll never see anything else like it.

Jack Nelson (Mickey Hargitay) arrives a gloomy looking castle with his fiancé Laureen (Rita Calderoni) and strange things start to happen immediately. Why? The hell if I know but it is somehow related to Laureen being the reincarnation of Isabella, a witch who was staked and burned alive 500 years ago. Oh, and there are some vampires wandering around too. This is my second Renato Polselli flick (after the previous year's DELIRIUM, also with Hargitay) and I'm not quite sure what to make of it. It is great in spots (moody lighting and an interesting editing technique) and completely lousy in others (totally fake rubber bats and easily exposed black backdrops outside of set windows). The biggest problem is it runs way too long (1 hour and 49 minutes) and doesn't make a lick of sense. Worth seeing once just for the 70s feel and the abundance of nudity.

In terms of the plot, acting, and especially the directing, it's quite difficult to know what to make of this film.

At one level, it's a familiar set of nonsense featuring a spooky castle, long-undead characters, gratuitous nudity, very cheap "special" effects and *very* variable levels of acting. However, what makes it stand out for me is the increasing apparent randomness of the scenes - just as if the director had decided to shoot "a bunch of stuff" and then assemble them in some sort of sequence while editing. (e.g. "this spooky guy in the cloak looks good on the battlements against the setting sun - let's drop that in a few times" and "we've got these girls tied up on crosses - let's keep flashing back to that to keep the audience awake", etc...)

Utterly bonkers and quite entertaining if you like this sort of thing, but not a good film!

Renato Polselli's "Riti, Magie Nere e Segrete Orge Nel Trecento..." aka. Rites, Black Magic and Secret Orgies in the Fourteenth Century aka. "The Reincarnation of Isabel" (1973) is a clear case of style over substance that might well appeal to my fellow fans of bizarre Italian Horror / Exploitation productions whereas others are probably better advised to skip it. Polselli is probably best known for his 1972 Giallo "Delirio Caldo", whereas this film remains relatively obscure. This is understandable, since the weirdness, confusion and lack of logic presented in "The Reincarnation of Isabel" simply cannot appeal to everybody. Nonetheless, this film is recommendable to my fellow Italo-Horror buffs as a particularly bizarre and unusual production.

The plot centers around a witch burning in the 14th century, when Isabel (played by the stunning Rita Calderoni) is accused of witchcraft and burned; centuries later, people who seem to be (reincarnations of?) the accusers and the accused gather at a party in an old castle, and mysterious events begin to occur... or something.

The films wonderful visual style and elegant presentation of sleaze almost make it forgivable that the plot is utterly confusing and lacking any structure whatsoever. Visually, Polselli's film ranks only slightly below the works of masters such as Mario Bava and Antonio Margheriti - and this is a comparison I do not make frivolously. The cinematography is gorgeous, as are the ravishing actresses (Rita Calderoni above all). The film is as wonderfully sleazy as it may be expected from an Italian Occult Horror / Exploitation flick from the early 70s, and neither does it scant with the gore. However, there is simply no coherent storyline, but simply a collection of elegant, sleazy sequences attached to one another by a thin yet confusing plot. Apart from Rita Calderoni and a bunch of other beauties in the female cast, the film stars bodybuilder Mickey Hargitay. Once the husband of Jayne Mansfield, Hargitay spent most of his acting career in Italian Cult productions, including director Polselli's own "Delirio Caldo", "La Figlia Di Frankenstein" ("Lady Frankenstein", 1971) and the unintentionally hilarious "Il Boia Scarlatto" ("The Crimson Executionner", 1964).

"The Reincarnation of Isabel" is, simply put, weird, weird, WEIRD, and while some people (myself included) will have a great time watching it, others will roll their eyes. Personally, I enjoyed the film; however, the film's plotlessness manifested in my drink consumption while watching it - when the film began, I opened a beer which I thought was the only one I'd drink that night, but once the film was over I was drinking my fifth.

This movie makes no sense (like most Italian horror films I've seen), but has enough sleazy nudity, blood and weirdness going on that it doesn't really matter. What made the film work for me was the haunting, erotic soundtrack! I liked this about as much as the similarly ridiculous NUDE FOR SATAN (also from Redemption/Image). Worth a rental if you enjoy this type of nonsense, but I can't see anyone buying the disk and watching it more than once.