Great gothic giallo horror, and I just love Spanish genre films from
this Golden era, the spanish 1970's.
The film is a Spain-Italy co-production but the crew and the actors
are spanish and the film, even if a
B one, just reeks of that magic Iberian atmosphere. Yes, the location
is spanish too.
I feel lucky to just have had a chance watching this delightful and
a bit trashy film. Please, open the
floodgates and release every horror, thriller-giallo and exploitation
movie ever made in Spain in the 70's,
and also the 1960's and 1980's one's that fit the description of the
genre.
Eight people driving in the spanish
mountains somehow get lost and as night is approaching all of them
seek refuge in an old mansion. The house is situated next to a graveyard
and an abandoned village.
They are Elsa (Analía Gadé), Ernest (Alberto Dalbes) her
husband, Ellen (Ingrid Garbo, Ernest lover),
Porter (Franco Fantasia), the lawyer señor Tremont (Eduardo Fajardo)
and his wife señora Tremont
(Yelena Samarina) and two bikers, Fred (Andrés Resino) and Laura
(Lisa Leonardi /Anna Lisa Nardi)
.
Above: Sleeve with the FSK censor board sticker
A ghostly couple, an old lady and her chauffeur driving
a Rolls Royce has terrorized and frightened
some of them. There's a lady of the mansion too, Martha (played by one
of the gialli genre queens,
Evelyn Stewart AKA Ida
Galli) and she offers her unlucky visitors to stay the night
until the mountain
fog goes away. She also says that the villagers fled the village due
to vampires killing them and, if that
wasn't enough, that her aunt Julie was a witch who died 30 years ago
in a car accident with her driver.
Let the killing begin ...
The blu-ray presents the film in 1.78:1
widescreen and with english audio DD 2.0 (the spanish audio
only has german subtitles). A trailer only as extra. Region all probably,
or B
Marcello Giombini made the soundtrack and cinematography by Guglielmo
Mancori
The B sleeve is limited to 500 copies - 184/500
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This was the debut feature film from director Francisco
Lara Polop (1932-2008) and he didn't evolve
into a A director but stayed strictly B level and mostly directed exploitation
movies. I've seen four of
his films: This one, and even though a B movie it's the best of them,
and the 1974 "Cebo para una
adolescente" a drama-sex-comedy with an 18 year old Ornella Muti
and with a fine performance from
Philippe Leroy (read more about this film on my Cult Classics film page
2) was pretty OK too.
The third film from Popop i've seen was the very crappy
1981 action thriller "La patria del rata" and
the fourth was the delightfully bad "Christina" exploitation
drama comedy with the lovely Jewel
Shepard (read a lot more about this trashy delight on my Cult and Classics
page 2