Mania

Gone is the Polselli of the elegant vampire features of the early sixties. Welcome AKA Ralph Brown, a sloppy director who misplaces his actresses behind the hanging cables and furniture, as if to show his contempt to proper filmmaking (or bad acting). This one screams TRASH at every possible moment - just as the heroine Eva Spadaro does. She just screams, screams some more, then laughs hysterically, until she screams. Strangely enough she didn't become the new Scream Queen of the screen - Eva Spadaro is seen here in her only film role and basic internet search doesn't render any information about who she was or what became of her.

The film is a complete mismash - mad scientists, evil twins, torture chambers and, of course, a mandatory and totally unmotivated lesbian struggle which might easily be one of the worst of its kind on the silver screen.

Altogether, if you haven't yet guessed it, it's great fun to watch and giggle!

This film won me over when a character says: "With radiation, I managed to stop a bee in mid-air and was able to control it." This unique sentence is uttered during a flashback narrated by a lady in a car being followed by a car being driven by no one. That's how good this one is.

You see, we find out what is happening via main character Lisa screaming at the top of her voice while driving insanely. She's going mad because her ex-husband scientist Brecht died in a fire in his laboratory. Lisa was bored and having an affair with Brecht's twin brother Germano. Brecht threw a wobbly at this and after trying to suffocate his assistant Erina with a plastic bag, ended up perishing in a lab fire, despite Germano's attempts at rescue. Oh, and Lisa could have save him but didn't. Now Lisa has hooked up with Brecht's assistant Lailo, seems to be having a huge meltdown, and there's a car with no one in it trying to kill her.

Lisa's doctor recommends that she goes back to the house where it all happened to purge herself of the guilt. "But what if my brain explodes?" Lisa asks, rather strangely, but still heads off there with sexy assistant Katia in tow. Turns out Germano is now a very angry, wheelchair bound madman, and Erina has now turned mute due to the trauma of having a bag over her head. This is where things start getting weird.

Lisa starts seeing the floating head of Brecht, or his charred body walking about, while Lailo wanders around outside and Germano turns up now and again to ram him with his wheelchair. Both Germano and Lisa do a lot of screaming but at some point Lisa, Erina and Katia all end up naked in Lisa's room where Erina and Katia have a cat fight. Germano makes Lisa chew on his burned fingers and at one point he uses a huge pair of tongs to grab Erina so he can whip her. Also, after being drawn in by a disembodied voice laughing, a net falls on Lisa and she's attacked by eels. You heard me.

This disjointed pile of madness does eventually lead somewhere with some sort of explanation (but not how Katia had a phone conversation with Lailo when he was walking around outside), and there's a nasty neck slashing in store for one of the characters too. The whole thing seems to be stitched together, with scenes and characters jumping all over the place, the acting way over the top (including Germano screaming people's names at the top of his voice), like an attempt at a gothic horror with a giallo vibe. I don't know what it was quite about, but it sure was funny!

Renato Polselli makes a mess of a film here. It's sloppily made and random and very poorly written/acted. This is the kind of film that's begging for RiffTrax to come along and make it entertaining.

It opens with Eva Spadaro having exposition dump flashbacks while she's driving a car. This lasts for about 15 minutes. She is difficult to watch because her acting is no bad. I almost turned the movie off.

Eva Spadaro finally gets to the mansion where the main plot of the movie takes place. She and two other women - Mirella Rossi and Ivana Giordan see mysterious things. They don't know what it real or what is in their imaginations. Brad Euston plays the villain.

There is a lot of screaming and running back and forth from room to room. There is a naked scene. Then, there's more screaming and running back and forth from room to room. It is well over an hour into the film before one of these girls gets killed off.

I recommend you stay far away from this one. It's a whole lot of nothing.

Lisa, the beautiful blonde wife of Professor Brecht (Brad Euston), is psychologically tormented by visions of her late husband, a deranged scientist who died in a laboratory fire. The scientist was conducting some kind of revivification experiments involving electric waves. This remains unclear due to the fact that I have only seen a poor quality Italian language print, which was also missing over 5 minutes of footage. A hyper kinetic mind-games thriller with a typical twist at the end is made unique by director Polselli's artfully frenzied style involving rapid fire editing of dizzying camera angles, close up of actors screaming dialogue and just plain screaming and cross cutting violent scenes to considerable effect. This is very similar to Polselli's 1972, DELIRIO CALDO, and it was partially shot at the same elaborate villa complete with basement torture chambers, secret laboratories and a labyrinth of tunnels. The soundtrack features some 70s acid rock, Gothic style organ music and barking dogs. This has never been on VHS, DVD or had any significant theatrical release. (Written by Robert Monell, 2016)