La notte dei diavoli

It's always nice to find an obscure gem like this. This film is VERY good. Don't let the other reviews here fool you. An intelligent viewer who actually WATCHES and takes in all the atmosphere built up will find a lot to reward them. One should not go into this with the typical 2 second attention span so prevalent today. The film is intelligently made and builds slowly but surely. You have to take this as an Italian horror movie from the 70's to appreciate. All the conventions of this style of film-making are present. The weird dubbing zooms and creepy vocal music are all their and are very effective in creating the proper Euro Horror feel. The director Ferroni was very competent in this genre. It starts off with a bang of weird gore and settles into a slowly building story with a Wizz bang finale, with some of the most off the wall goofines I have ever seen in one of these types of films. It is Definitely worth the wait for the gore and mayhem at the end. The Vurdalak(witch/Vampire) theme is an underdone sub genre and is quite different than the usual Vampire conventions. The very foreign Yugoslavian setting is also a plus.

Gianni Garko is quite effective as the lead and has the requisite chemistry to pull off his central role. He also creates sympathy which helps make this better than the average Italian gore movie. The children are also REALLY creepy and effective. Special kudos to Carlo Rambaldi(ET) for his effective 70's gore effects. This is available form Midnight Video in a Good quality widescreen transfer with slightly annoying Japanese subs. If you are a fan of atmospheric Euro horror this is a must have. A proper DVD release in the Future? I hope so.

Considering that I only acquired a major affinity for "Euro-Cult" fare following my attendance of the "Italian Kings Of The B" retrospective first held during the 2004 Venice Film Festival, it is small wonder that I had been largely underwhelmed by what I sampled from this particular fount of movie lore beforehand; curiously enough, among these had been two distinct adaptations of Tolstoy's "The Wurdulak", namely an episode in Mario Bava's omnibus BLACK SABBATH (1963) and the picture under review!

Being about to revisit the former on account of Bava's recent centenary, I opted to re-acquaint myself with Ferroni's feature-length version as well – having already done similar duty with two films based on the same tale (also Russian in origin) which had inspired Bava's BLACK Sunday (1960). Incidentally, in my comments relating to the Maestro's take on "I Wurdulak", I had surmised about how padded Ferroni's rendition would be in comparison: however, he works around this factor, so to speak, admirably by updating the plot to our times (while retaining the essential Gothic feel and, thus, accentuating its inherent eeriness!) and bookending it with scenes inside a clinic, to where the disoriented protagonist (in this case, Gianni Garko) had been taken after barely escaping with his life from the clutches of the undead family unit at the core of the narrative.

There is no doubt that Ferroni had watched Bava's version – as its numerous shots of characters peering ominously through windows can attest – yet he opts to dilate what is perhaps its most chilling moment (the 'afflicted' child pleading with his mother to be sheltered from the cold, dark night and the woman being unable to resist her instincts lets him in, despite knowing full well that her offspring had just been laid down into the ground!) by having the mother merely go out to look for her in this case!! Other elements which tend not to work here are: the personification of the witch (who is the cause of the hero's getting stranded in the quasi-deserted Yugoslavian village to begin with!) and her face-off with the patriarch (himself – though reasonably authoritative – clearly no match for horror icon Boris Karloff, his counterpart in BLACK SABBATH) whose resolution is, thankfully, still left ambiguous; also, the fact that the family members get all giggly when, as vampires, they descend en masse upon the beleaguered Garko. That said, his somewhat hysterical characterization is poles apart from that of Mark Damon in the original – who remains decidedly (and, perhaps, unrealistically) cool throughout his ordeal! Even so, while there is a poignancy to Garko's murder of Agostina Belli – who he had thought had joined the vampiric ranks and was now seeking to add the hero to their fold in view of her feelings towards him (and suggesting how psychologically scarred he had been by the whole experience) – the sequence is rather clumsily handled overall, as the girl should have made it immediately apparent to him that she had not 'turned'!

The passage of nearly a decade between versions allowed for greater emphasis this time around on gory make-up effects; indeed, I recall having counted the film's entire ghoulish vibe (appropriate though it may be) as a drawback upon first viewing! Incidentally, even if I had long bemoaned my erasing of that preliminary copy, I realize now – via a side-by-side comparison of two prints floating about (another one, which I also own, is English-dubbed, subtitled in Japanese and has its few moments of nudity digitally-covered!) – that it was missing a surreal nightmare sequence at the very start!! By the way, director Ferroni – whose penultimate work this proved to be and whom I learned, from the accompanying Gianni Garko interview, was virtually deaf! – had previously helmed a key entry in the Italian Gothic Horror canon, i.e. MILL OF THE STONE WOMEN (1960). Interestingly, too, he died on my 5th birthday (17th August) in 1981…a date also shared by the original Italian release of BLACK SABBATH itself!

A great, obscure Italian gem from the 70's, directed by Giorgio Ferroni, "Mill of the Stone Women". It's based on the same story as the "Wurdalack" segment of Mario Bava's "Black Sabbath", and I consider to be about on the same level of the latter. It's much more mean-spirited and darker than Bava's version, and while it may not be as elegant and subtly creepy, this one is quite frightening and suffocatingly atmospheric in it's own right, with some surprisingly haunting and disturbing set pieces. The characters and the story were much better developed, and unlike "Black Sabbath", I actually cared for them. The actors also did a pretty good job, with some solid performances. Still, I thought the violence and nudity came off as gratuitous and were not really necessary, and Carlo Rambaldi's special effects didn't age very well, specially compared to his other works. Nevertheless, Ferroni's stylish direction and Georgio Gaslini's eerie, melancholic score more than make up for it's flaws. I also loved how the film is slow paced, but never gets boring, always keeping the viewers on the edge of their seats.

Never heard of this one! Gianni Garko, scratched, bloody, and having crazy visions, stumbles out of the woods and collapses. He is found and taken to the nearest nut house, where Dr Umberto Raho starts performing tests on him. Gianni is unresponsive and doesn't even seem to know his name, and only comes alive at night, where the darkness makes him really nervous. He REALLY comes alive when a mysterious woman shows up at the hospital, causing him to go completely insane and ends up wearing a nice comfy straightjacket while we witness a lengthy flashback.

You see Gianni was merely driving through the Yugoslavian countryside when a freak accident forced his car off the road. He eventually finds his way to a country house (not noticing the two men burying a corpse in a bloodied sheet), and finds himself in the company of a very frightened family indeed.

What we have here is another Italian film version of the Tosltoy novella The Family of the Vourdalak, and despite the other version being directed by Mario Bava and being great, this version holds it's own too. Basically there's a witch running around the woods who has turned that guy they just buried into a vampire and now the head of the family must go out and kill her. He warns everyone that if he returns after six o'clock, he must be killed on the spot, so naturally he comes back at that time...and all hell breaks loose in the family household.

This version takes its time to get to the chills, but still manages to convey the tension and horror that's needed. Those creepy kids help too, as does Gianni's mounting terror of what's unfolding around him. There's a thick atmosphere about the film too, with the animal skulls lying around and the reluctance of the family to explain to Gianni what's going on.

There's also a nice ambiguous ending too, just for kicks. Some gore and boobs for those that thought that was missing from Bava's version. Melting faces too, and who can hate a film where someone's face explodes?

Not I....not....I...

Giorgio Ferroni's Night of the Devils (not to be confused with the 1971 film of the same title) is an extremely rare little horror film; but in spite of that, any self respecting fan of Eurohorror will recognise the plot line instantly as it was also used to great effect in the longest segment of the Mario Bava masterpiece 'Black Sabbath'. While this film is not as good as the middle of Bava's film, and does feel a little stretched at times; it managed to hold my interest throughout and I'd rate it as a success overall. The film begins with an unknown man stumbling into hospital. He doesn't make any attempt to identify himself, but soon after an unknown woman turns up and he begins to panic. From there we go back in time as the man remembers the events that lead up to him stumbling into the hospital. It emerges that he had a break down and was forced to stay with a family out in the woods. They are clearly hiding something right from the start and we soon find out that there's a witch in the woods who has taken their father.

Director Giorgio Ferroni is best known for his excellent Gothic horror film Mill of the Stone Women which he made twelve years previously. Overall, I'd have to say that the earlier film is the more successful; but there are shades of the macabre atmosphere that made Mill of the Stone Women a success in this film. It has to be said that the film is rather slow and there are times when it is not very exciting; but this time is used well in building up the atmosphere and it pays off towards the end. The plot line follows basically the same narrative as the one we saw in Bava's earlier film so the story won't be much of a surprise to anyone who has seen Black Sabbath. The setting is very well used also and the director ensures that the isolation of it is always at the forefront. The film is not very gory but this is made up for with some memorably disturbing scenes. It all boils down to a very effective ending that certainly justifies the slow build featured throughout the film. Overall, Night of the Devils is a very solid little horror film and is well worth seeing if you can find it!