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Swirling chiaroscuro, viscous rhapsody. The prologue is justly famous, a nightmare of medieval barbarism in the holy name of purification: Misty woods, musclebound inquisitors, a lizard's grimace on a bronze mask, gory spurts as the Malleus Maleficarum sledgehammer is literalized and brought down on the sorceress (Barbara Steele). A smashed crucifix and a few drops of blood bring her back to life centuries later, her devoted brother/lover (Arturo Dominici) helps her vengefully bring "a beautiful life of evil and hate" to her descendants' Moldovan manor. While the callow assistant (John Richardson) courts the witch's virginal doppelgänger, the seasoned man of reason (Andrea Checchi) favors the original sinner, drawn to the mausoleum where ooze pulsates within a mannequin's hollow eye-sockets. The crypt trembles and explodes, and there's Steele moaning for flesh, her eyes flaming and her cheekbones decorated with gaping punctures, the frisson of all frissons. (Max von Sydow and Ingrid Thulin reenact the sequence for Bergman in Hour of the Wolf as an explicit portrait of unsettled artist and taunting muse.) Spiraling from gnarled trees to cavernous dungeons, Mario Bava is an alchemic picturalist serving up Murnau compositions in clammy sound stages. The camera is a palpable, malevolent presence throughout, knocking over furniture as it sweeps across rooms and then crosscutting between a burning and a resurrection for a double Dreyer citation. The only thing the cinematography can't engulf is Steele herself, who, with her regal perversity and ghoulish eroticism, commands her own space as a newly minted horror icon. Corman's Poe series is an eight-film tribute, Fellini in Casanova remembers the cloaked cleavage giving way to a decomposing ribcage. With Ivo Garrani, Enrico Olivieri, Antonio Pierfederici, Tino Bianchi, Mario Passante, and Germana Dominici. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |