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Argento remembers the opening in Suspiria, the maiden from Paris (Yvonne Monlaur) headed for the Lang School for Girls rides through the blue-mist woods of Transylvania, "home of magic and deviltry." She's invited to the castle by the Baroness (Martita Hunt), whose son (David Peel) is kept chained in his chamber. The lad resembles one of Visconti's Teutonic scions (The Damned, Ludwig) and turns out to be a rapacious vampire, the young teacher frees him like Pandora and later welcomes his courtship. (A fellow instructor voices her jealousy, and a giant bat promptly swoops into her boudoir.) "A sickness, partly physical, partly spiritual," Van Helsing (Peter Cushing) is on the case, wooden stake in hand. A new decade's sensuality coursing under Terence Fisher's lushly detailed frames, a thin civilized veneer over primordial urges. The undead noblewoman is a remorseful matriarch, "the peace of death" is a rare gift, her servant (Freda Jackson) carries on the bloodthirsty cult. (This female Renfield caresses the ground at the local graveyard and murmurs encouragingly as if to a beloved sprout, a pale hand reaches out of the coffin and a fanged smile follows.) Van Helsing confronts the fiend and collapses, afterwards he feels his own punctured neck and cauterizes the wound with a searing iron and a flask of holy water. Christopher Lee doesn't return but Miles Malleson does as another figure of fun, a doctor who washes down his hypochondria with glass after glass of liquor. "I always laugh at these ridiculous legends." "I wouldn't, if I were you." The climax at the rotting windmill set ablaze cements the connection to Universal horror with direct reference to Whale's Frankenstein. With Henry Oscar, Mona Washbourne, Andrée Melly, Victor Brooks, Fred Johnson, and Michael Ripper.
--- Fernando F. Croce |