Rating: 0.5/5
Hooptober 6.0 | 5/32 | film from before 1966 5/6
CW // Blood, Misogyny
Cyro arrives in Rome on a flight from Beirut. Marco meets him, and they go looking for Carlo. They believe Carlo is trying to blackmail them, even though Carlo insists Alma stole the incriminating documents from him.
They find Carlo and shoot him in the shoulder before he escapes down an alley and into a monastery. There, Carlo explains the situation to Father Pejo Renigio while the Father tends to Carlo’s bullet wound.
Carlo believes Alma intends to blackmail Cryo and ruin his life and his daughter Jenny’s marriage with Gugo. Carlo will kill her before she can.
Cut to a restaurant with song and dance during the meals. After two unrelated numbers, we get Alma Del Rio, who does a low-effort dance number. After her performance, she meets Father Renigio in her dressing room. He begs her to return the documents. When she refuses, the Father tells her why he became a monk.
Pejo and Frija ride together, doing street races. Gianni, the gang leader, was in another car. He rode with Maga, aka Scatterbrains. In the third car is Jenny with her fiance, Gugo.
— Whisky! Whiskey! — Drugs! Drugs! Drugs!
They forced people off the road and beat them to a pulp. They stray from the road, arriving at an old castle at night. Intoxicated, they loudly call for someone to appear, yet the castle remains silent. So, they break in to look around.
“A castle to drink in,” sings one girl.
Despite the cobwebs and silence, they find a large hall with lit candelabras and a table of food and liquor. They gorge themselves. Pejo lights the fireplace, and they dance to Gugo playing drums.
An ageless figure emerges from the shadows to watch them dance. He sits by the fire, watching it rage.
Finally, at fifteen minutes to midnight, the figure stops the dance. He tells the group about a woman whose hair is like water and how he sold his soul to the Devil so that they could live forever. But she didn’t want it, so her spirit lives on, begging for a proper burial. At midnight, he will lose his soul forever, so he begs the group to help him find her. If they agree, they will possess the castle and its riches.
The group mocks him, but the idea of getting rich motivates them.
It only took 45 minutes, but we got to a plot! The movie won’t resolve these plotlines, I’m afraid.
The flashback surpasses the framing story, which only exists to fill time. Its camera work is much better, and the acting performances are… slightly better.
Overall, this is quite an inept piece of filmmaking. I don’t think a living soul would have seen it if Christopher Lee wasn’t in it for a few minutes.
** Stray Thoughts / Spoilers **
- The kid staring at the camera.
- The actor glancing at the camera! More than once!
- Cut to a dinner show 10 minutes into the movie.
- Sonia, an Argentinian singer, does a number — awful lip-syncing between the recorded voice and the actress.
- All the Italian cars are quite nice.
- Pejo struggles to get his wallet out of his pocket — rather than cut, the camera sits for 30 seconds while he digs into his pocket.
- Poor Bella Cortez has a visible camel toe — it doesn’t seem intentional.
- Bella Cortez spends ten minutes getting her pants back on once Christopher Lee goes off about his dead lover.
- A tarantula with googly eyes!!
- Oh, look, the cameraman’s shadow.
- Not quite a hall of mirrors — a hall of glass?
- I guess they’re all going mad? Lots of laughing and screaming in front of an out-of-focus camera.
- A DRUMROLL OVER AN OUT-OF-FOCUS CAMERA SHARPENING INTO FOCUS. Hello, David Lynch!
- Okay, that’s it? Never mind about the riches, I guess?