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It opens with strangulated dotage and closes with scampering childhood, in between there's the jolly liquidation of humanity. "The sickle of death" works overtime, the aged Contessa (Isa Miranda) meets the noose as her tumbled wheelchair slowly stops spinning (cf. Melville's Les Enfants Terribles), the culprit is promptly stabbed after fabricating a suicide note. Various integers in the construction, the illegitimate son (Claudio Camaso) and the real estate agent (Chris Avram) and the ruthless heiress (Claudine Auger) vie for the property. Giochi del sangue, "the least I could do for my family." Misers and hedonists and mystics and scholars, the peace of Mario Bava upon them. The sun-dappled forest darkens luxuriantly, the bathing beauty (Brigitte Skay) is accosted by a sodden cadaver, the camera chases her with machete in hand. (Prowling subjective shots are prevalent, a choice one approaches the lovemaking couple in bed until a spear enters the frame to skewer both writhing figures with a single thrust.) The fussy entomologist (Leopoldo Trieste) professes to love his specimens, "sure, but the squirming little creatures still end up under your microscope," the director's position. His wife is another sardonic visionary, the fortune-teller (Laura Betti) whose prophecy of the bloodbath doesn't include her own decapitation. Slaughter here is an aesthetic matter, a severed noggin is rhymed with a smashed vase, hatchets and shotguns and pots of boiling water have a role to play. A certain Chabrolian gloss (La Décade Prodigieuse is concurrent, octopus and all), Castle's House on Haunted Hill also receives ample tribute. "Ah, you live in a much saner world than mine." Bava ends on a perverse note of lyrical mischief, the little monsters have the Garden all to themselves. With Luigi Pistilli, Anna Maria Rosati, Paola Montenero, Guido Boccaccini, Roberto Bonanni, Giovanni Nuvoletti, and Nicoletta Elmi.
--- Fernando F. Croce |