Schreie in der Nacht

Just a waste of time. Poor Marianne Koch, after that beautiful role, Marisol in "A Fistful of Dollars", here she has an embarrassing one, the whole movie is embarrassing.

A rich old man and his greedy group of hangers-on get stranded in the middle of nowhere when their car breaks down (in a thunderstorm, of course) and the motley crew make their way to an old dark house where they interrupt a seance that reveals their deadly secrets...

What's basically an Agatha Christie murder mystery set in the Roaring Twenties gets all supernatural in the last ten minutes but it's too little too late for anyone expecting a horror film. Although flashbacks help open things up, it's still a "drawing room whodunit" at heart with nice period detail (except for the hairdos) and a bit more style than usual for this sort of thing. The (brief) sex scenes are lesbian (were they "the unnaturals"?) but not erotic and the movie's nothing to get excited about, either, despite its reputation as one of the director's best.

It's the second time I read this page and I can't understand why Contronatura (aka Schreie in der Nacht aka The Unnaturals)is still waiting for 5 votes! In fact, I think, it's a really good italian horror, a kind of "summa" of all themes of this particular genre. The director, Antonio Margheriti (also writer, in this case) is very skillful and builds his movie around a number of impossible flash-back, that articulate a disquieting narrative of murders, guilty men, strange women...I can't speak english very well, so I can't describe in the right way this movie, but if you like italian horror, you have to see Contronatura!

To be honest, despite my more than fair knowledge of the "Euro-Cult" style of film-making, I only recently became aware of this particular title – where it was even described as possibly Margheriti's best work; having watched THE UNNATURALS for myself now, I would actually be hard-pressed to disagree with that assessment: it certainly ranks among the top three efforts by this major exponent that I am familiar with, along with two other Gothic horror entries i.e. THE LONG HAIR OF DEATH (1964) and SEVEN DEATHS IN THE CAT'S EYE (1973). For the record, this is a German-Italian co-production to which the director himself contributed the script – a highly atmospheric chiller (with a séance figuring prominently throughout) yet boasting an atypical elegance due to its 1920s England setting. Interestingly, the plot more or less harks back to vintage "old dark house"-type pictures (emanating from this very era i.e. the last days of Silent cinema) and which revolved around a gathering at some remote location for the sake of an inheritance that goes terribly wrong, resulting in a murder spree; actually, this takes things a bit further (also taking advantage of the permissiveness of the age with its inclusion of by-now quite mild instances of nudity) – where the vicissitudes of the crime are slowly assembled via multiple flashbacks (unveiling various illicit affairs, both financial and romantic, into the bargain) and the whole set-up ultimately revealed to be an elaborate retribution (incorporating surprisingly neat, i.e. not heavy-handed, apocalyptic connotations) from beyond the grave! Though somewhat undercast, there are still a few familiar faces among the actors recruited for the movie – Joachim (DEAD EYES OF London [1961]) Fuchsberger, Claudio Camaso (a Tomas Milian look-alike but really the younger brother of Gian Maria Volonte' whose life ended in tragedy!), Marianne Koch (from A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS [1964] and exhibiting here lesbian tendencies which prove her undoing in both the past and present time-frames of the narrative), Dominique (FANTASTIC ARGOMAN [1967]) Boschero and, of course, Luciano Pigozzi (distinguished by his uncanny physical resemblance to Peter Lorre) in perhaps the most significant role of his prolific career. For fear of repeating myself (see the concluding statement in my AMUCK! [1972] review elsewhere), the appropriately old-fashioned strains of Carlo Savina's score provides one further reason to enjoy this – for "Euro"-buffs and adventurous movie fans alike; it goes without saying, then, that this is a title that ought to sustain a lot more than the current semi-obscure reputation I alluded to at the start...

The Unnaturals takes place in England circa the roaring '20s (or the late-'60s, judging by the women's hairstyles): after their car gets stuck in mud during a thunderstorm, a group of people take shelter at a nearby house, home to Uriat (Peter Lorre-alike Luciano Pigozzi) and his mother (Marianne Leibl), who is in a trance as a result of a seance being interrupted by the visitors. In order to try and bring the woman back from the 'other dimension', the guests agree to complete the seance, during which their darkest secrets are revealed.

Despite plenty of treachery, murder and a little gratuitous lesbianism (very tame by today's standards), Antonio Margheriti's The Unnaturals is quite a tedious affair, hampered by leaden pacing, a confusing narrative structure (there are quite a number of flashbacks), too much talk, and a predictable ending: my guess that the characters were all ghosts wasn't too wide of the mark. Some say that this film is one of Margheriti's best, but I much preferred Castle of Blood and Cannibal Apocalypse (hell, Killer Fish is preferable to this one).