Exorcisme tragique - Les monstres se mettent à table

I've rarely been as disappointed as I was after watching this "A White Dress for Marialé". I spent years looking for a decent copy of this film, and all this time remained under the assumption that it was one of the last great gialli that I hadn't seen yet. Alas, after the derivative but nevertheless atmospheric and promising opening sequences, the film turns into a bizarre smorgasbord of trash, sleaze and murder, but ... not the good kind! Six people are invited into the remote gothic castle of a married couple, much against the will of the husband and the eerie house servant. The oppressed wife - Marialé - takes them to the cellars where she has an odd collection of mannequin dolls with medieval costumes, and shortly after, the whole group indulges into an extended and dreadfully boring orgy without sex but with crazy role-plays instead. These masquerade sequences are overlong, implausible and utterly senseless. Only in the last half hour, the guests are being murdered one by one and shortly after another, but the outcome (as in: the identity of the culprit) is so incredibly obvious that you wonder what the point of the whole masquerade was. The murders are unimaginative and as good as bloodless, with the notable exception of one person being bludgeoned to death in a pool. To finish off with at least a few positive words, the soundtrack is sublime, the women are beautiful, and there are some good performances by respectable Italian genre veterans (Ivan Rassimov, Luigi Pastili, ...)

This is one of those gialli I probably wouldn't recommend to those unfamiliar with the Italian genre, but committed giallo fans will certainly enjoy it. A young girl witnesses her father shotgun her mother ( Evelyn Stewart) and male lover to death before turning the gun on himself. The little girl naturally grows into a pretty maladjusted adult (also played by Stewart) who is kept drugged and isolated in a remote castle by her over-protective husband (Luigi Pistilli) and his brutish butler. Still she manages to invite a group of her decadent bourgeois "friends" to the castle for a kind of weird masked orgy. It's a bad sign though when the hostess herself comes dressed in the white gown in which her mother was killed (which you would would think would be covered in blood and riddled with buckshot, but oh well). Naturally, it isn't long before the guests are dropping off like flies.

It takes a little time for the murders to get going, but they come fast and thick when they do. And the early going is spent with lots of surreal Gothic touches. A great eerie setting and superb visual style and music make this film similar to other heavy-duty bizarro gialli like "Sex of the Witch" and "Crazy Desires of a Murderer", even if--like with those--the plot rarely makes a lick of sense. There are only really two possible perpetrators of the killings, but even by the end of the movie I wasn't sure which of them was responsible. The victims are certainly worthy though. There is a bickering young, interracial couple--the guy derides the girl as a "slave" while she belittles him by calling him "white master" (yet another sensitive, politically correct portrayal of black people in Italian genre films). Spanish actress Pilar Velasquez plays a character after my own heart--a raving nympho who responds to nearly getting raped by a male guest by going to the black woman's room and (for no apparent reason beyond the obvious) stripping off for some hot, interracial lesbian action! I was quite impressed with Velasquez--not just her body (which can also be seen in "Naked Girl killed in Park"), but also her acting--it can't be easy to play such a preposterously motivated character. The real acting honors, however, go to the two great character actors, Luigi Pistilli and Ivan Rassimov. It's a sublime joy to watch these two devour scenery together.

Director Roman Scavoli was later responsible for the film "Nightmare in a Damaged Brain", one of those films that was banned in Britain, but completely ignored in America. I haven't seen that one yet, but it's probably safe to say this is better. Newcomers to the giallo genre will probably be left scratching their heads, but long-time fans will definitely enjoy this.

Romano Scavolini would go on to make the disappointing Video Nasty 'Nightmares in a Damaged Brain', but before that he made this film. Spirits of the Dead is a psychological drama come Giallo and focuses in the bizarre happenings inside a large mansion during a party. The film has shades of Mario Bava, though despite the grandeur of the setting and the strange costumes worn during the partygoers in the main part of the movie; Romano Scavolini is no Mario Bava and the film remains only an imitation of the Italian master. The plot has two sides to it and we begin at a setting in the past as a young girl named Mariale witnesses her father murder two lovers before shooting himself in the head. We then fast forward some years and a grown up Mariale is living in a mansion with her husband Paolo. She has mental problems and is often given drugs to quell the problem. She invites a group of friends to stay at the house with her and her husband, but the party soon degenerates into an orgy and it's not long before the guests are being picked off one by one.

The first ten minutes made me believe that this one was going to be an interesting little Giallo. The characters are all introduced rather quickly and we are soon made to believe that not everything is as it should be. However, the film then builds into the orgy; which makes up the bulk of it, and it's not long before intrigue turns to tedium. The film tries to put the focus on the characters and this is a problem because, as is the case with many Giallo's, the characters aren't interesting enough in their own right to build a film around. The cast is not bad, however; Giallo regular Evelyn Stewart takes up the lead role well, and gets good back up from the likes of Luigi Pistilli and Ivan Rassimov. The film doesn't really get going until the final twenty minutes; and by then it is unfortunately a case of too little too late. This type of film is famous for over the top and stylish death scenes; but Spirits of Death doesn't really deliver in that respect, with only a single death scene in a swimming pool of any real note. Overall, this is not one of the better known Giallo's and I'm not really surprised. I wouldn't call it one of the worst of the genre; but it's not one of the best either and I'd only recommend this to hardcore Giallo fans.

The enigmatic wife of a moody Marquis invites a motley group of people to their sinister stronghold where a long ago crime is re-lived...

Here's a strange and unsettling giallo that borrows much from the maestro of the macabre, Mario Bava. The film is set entirely on an eerie, isolated estate and, like 5 DOLLS FOR AN AUGUST MOON and BAY OF BLOOD, has an ambiguous plot centering around murder and mayhem which provides director/cinematographer Romano Scavolini with ample opportunity for a number of unusual set-pieces. A pre-credit sequence has a young girl watch as her father finds her mother with a lover (a nude Gianni Dei) and shoots them both before turning the gun on himself. The story shifts to the present with Mariele (the beautiful Evelyn Stewart) inviting a hedonistic, unpleasant assortment of friends (which include Ivan Rassimov and Pilar Velazquez) to her husband's (Luigi Pistilli) crumbling castle for some fun and games ...but she seems to have an ulterior motive. Is she being held prisoner by her husband and his manservant or is she locked up for her own good? For the festivities, Mariele dons the white dress her mother was murdered in and there's some brief nudity, lesbianism, whipping, and bitch-slapping at a Felliniesque feast before the party guests get dispatched in rapid succession. These seemingly senseless killings are brief but brutal and the identity of the killer ultimately depends on which version of events the viewer chooses to believe. It's an unusual and disturbing twist but only part of a "take no prisoners" nihilistic ending which has fate coming full circle. The striking use of color, a somber score by Fiorenzo Carpi & Bruno Nicolai, and a capable genre cast all help to create a decadent atmosphere that gives the movie a near-surreal aura. For example, at one point the cast grabs candelabra and goes down to explore the castle's catacombs (just because they're there) when a veritable windstorm kicks up out of nowhere and goes on for quite a while. This does absolutely nothing to advance the plot but it does make for an eerie tableau. In many ways, the whole film is like that.

This classic "style over substance" thriller from the Golden Age Of The Giallo comes letter-boxed, in Italian with English subtitles, and highly recommended for aficionados of the genre.

(1974) A White Dress For Marialé/ Un bianco vestito per Marialé (In Italian with English subtitles)

Cinematography and directed by Romano Scavolini that opens with a father stopping his car and instructing his little daughter to stay in the car while he goes out and does something. The daughter of course does not listen and follows him anyway, and upon approaching his wife and her lover. He then pulls out a gun and he shoots and kills them both before he turns the gun on to himself. The movie then shows the credits and it is the current time, and apparently several people are offered to stay at a manor/ castle. And as soon as Massimo (Ivan Rassimov) shows up, he is then turned away by the creepy servant, Osvaldo (Gengher Gatti), but he hangs around long enough until others have shown up. We then find out that that Marialé (Ida Galli) was that little girl at the opening and that her husband, Paolo (Luigi Pistilli) is planning something on her viewers are unable to figure out what for it is most likely be her fortune.