The Red Queen Kills Seven Times (1972)

dir. Emilio Miraglia cast Barbara Bouchet, Ugo Pagliai, Marina Malfatti, Pia Giancaro, Sybil Danning

In contemporary Germany, the aristocratic Wildenbruck family is under a curse. Every 100 years, the "Red Queen", their evil ancestor, takes possession of one of the women in the family and murders seven victims, the last her own sister. Now, its been a century since the last murder spree and when a figure in a red cloak sneaks into the bedroom of the family patriarch brandishing an antique dagger and frightens the old man to death, it seems to be happening again. The new spate of murders centers around the friends and co-workers of Kitty Wildenbruck, a beautiful young woman who works as a fashion photographer. Eyewitness accounts seem to point toward Kitty's sister Eveline as the murderer, but there's just one problem. Years before, Kitty accidentally killed Eveline and covered up the unfortunate incident with the help of her other sister Franziska (Malfatti), telling everyone that her sibling had severed all ties with the family and moved to the US. Is Evenline back from the grave for supernatural revenge?

Giallo (Italian for "yellow") novels were cheap, sensational paperback crime novels, often with yellow covers, popular in Italy beginning in the 1930's.  When Italian directors began to adapt the same style to film in the 1960s, giallo began to be used to denote a cinematic genre. Half crime/suspense films and half horror thrillers, giallo films usually featured twisty, at times nearly incomprehensible, plots, abundant eroticism, and bloody, disturbing murders.  Dozens of these films were made in the late 1960s and early 1970s, usually with an eye to the export market, which meant they featured international casts incorporating continental European, English, and American actors.

The Red Queen Kills Seven Times is a good example of the genre. Like many gialli it has a contemporary setting, but is careful to include numerous Gothic trappings as well. Kitty spends her 
days surrounded by glamorous people in ultra-modern offices and studios, but the climax of the film is set in the crumbling dungeons of the Wildenbrucks' ancestral castle, and the red-cloaked killer, wielding an ancient-looking dagger, is a figure straight from the Gothic past. The murders are disturbing, including stabbing, a fence-post impalement, and one character dragged to death behind a car. The eroticism is also present with Danning, who later became a star of much cheaper and sillier American exploitation firms, providing the major nude scenes. Women are front and center as the major characters, yet there are disturbingly misogynist touches, including one completely unnecessary rape scene, which at least is suggested more than shown, but should have been removed altogether. It has practically no affect on the plot or the characters.

As for the plot, it was made well enough to keep me interested in the solution to the mystery, though the dialogue is often silly and the acting is frequently over the top. Bouchet is acceptable in the major role. I had only seen her in the comic version of Casino Royale (1967), as Miss Moneypenny, so it was fun to see her in a more serious role. The film is flawed, but I didn't find any of the flaws fatal and, for the most part, enjoyed it.

IMDB says that this film is rated PG. They must be referring to a cut US version, because the version I saw had plenty of blood and nudity and was definitely an R. Since it was in unsubtitled Italian (I streamed it on Amazon and had to turn on the closed captioning feature), I'm assuming it was the original Italian version. In a way, it was ludicrous to hear characters with German names speaking Italian while all the signs, documents, etc. were in German, but then American movies do that all the time.  
 

The Devil's Wedding Night (1973)

dir. Luigi Batzella  cast Mark Damon, Rosalba Neri, Esmerelda Barros, Xiro Papas, Gengher Gatti

Karl Schiller (Damon), a scholar of the occult, announces to his twin brother Franz (also Damon), his plans to travel to Castle Dracula in Transylvania to secure the ring of the Nibelungen, which holds great power for evil. His motive is altruistic, to deposit the ring in the "Karnstein Museum of Archaeology" thus keeping it out of circulation. However, Franz needs the money a sale of the ring would bring to pay his gambling debt and beats his brother to Transylvania. There, he seduces an inkeeper's beautiful daughter, Tania, who tells him that every fifty years on the "full moon of the virgins" (the literal translation of the film's original Italian title), five virgins are mysteriously compelled to go to Castle Dracula and are never seen again.

At the Castle, Franz meets the Contessa Dolingen de Vries (Neri), the current owner of the castle, who explains that she was able to buy it cheaply because she is a member of the Dracula family. During sex with the gorgeous Countess, Franz notices that she wears the ring, but he is quickly overcome by her supernatural powers. Soon after, Karl arrives looking for his brother. Can he defeat the Countess, save his brother and Tania (who has been kidnapped by the Countess' servants) and recover the ring?

This is a silly, but entertaining film that amusingly works hard to throw in references to just about every trope of Gothic horror. Franz is introduced reciting lines from Poe's The Raven, the name of the museum is a reference to Sheridan LeFanu's classic vampire tale Carmilla, the Countess' name is from the Stoker short story Dracula's Guest, the Countess bathes in the blood of virgins, just like Elizabeth Bathory, and Dracula features prominently in the story. None of this really hangs together and the script is uneven. The screenwriters have strange ideas about history. The dialogue indicates that Poe is still alive, while at the same time referencing Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen, which did not debut until 20 years after Poe's death.

Like many continental horror films of the time, this is at least as much of a softcore sex movie as a horror movie, with as much nudity shorehorned in as possible. For instance, at the climactic satanic ritual, the Countess' henchmen are careful to begin by tearing open the tunics of the virgins who have been hypnotically summoned to Castle Dracula, giving viewers a good view of their breasts. It's a film that's hard to take seriously, but, again like many other European films, it does benefit from being filmed on location, rather than a cheap set. It's also a good showcase for Neri, one of the most beautiful of the many sexy actresses who graced Euro-horror in its heyday. The more well-known Lady Frankenstein was a larger role for Neri, but a much inferior film.