Rating: 2.5/5
Cult Movie Challenge 2017 | 14/52 | Joe D’Amato
1906 Greta’s dead eyes gaze at the vacant ceiling. Franz von Holstein, her brother and lover, stares into the eyes from which life once came. He remembers SAing her, her begging them to leave together, her promising to be his servant if he caught her, and her falling for Doctor Herbert von Ravensbrück.
Three years pass. Cut to a black carriage carried by black horses. Walter, Herbert’s adult son and his wife Eva witness the carriage overturn, and the coachman dies. Inside, they find Greta. They call Dr. Sturges, who checks on her. Sturges finds no heartbeat, though she breathes and moves. She has amnesia, not even knowing her name. Around her neck is a medallion reading “Greta 1906.” On the back are vague symbols that disturb Sturges.
A maid, Gertrud, recognizes Greta and watches, curious and horrified. She runs back to her room and has a waking nightmare of Franz cutting her neck open. But when she checks on it, the wound has disappeared. Instead, it appears on Greta. Sturges pierces her retina with a needle—she does not flinch. Still, Sturges reports to Walter and Eva that Greta will need some time to recover her memory and that nothing is wrong with her.
What the hell is going on? No, really, what’s going on?
This film is Gothic horror on steroids. It discards every iota of subtlety, keeping only the dread and mystery. It’s magnetic and unusual.
Did Klaus Kinski sign up for every movie where he gets to be a sex pest? What a piece of shit. A good portion of his time in this movie is spent pouring vials of different colored liquids into each other.
I like the movie’s surreal, dreamy quality. However, I wish the “mystery” felt more like a mystery and less like, “We need something crazy to happen here.”
The score has some nice, haunted synth textures.
Overall, I appreciate how weird and horny this is, but I can’t say I connected with it. I wanted to love it more, but I guess I never got on its wavelength.
** Stray Thoughts / Spoilers ** This movie goes beyond Dutch angles to dick angles — the camera is staring up at us from right between his legs. During the hunting scene, they’re just throwing dead birds from off-screen. Walter is falling in love with Greta, who I presume is his dead mother. Of course, Sturges is a pseudo-Frankenstein. A lot of face trauma. Oh, now Eva is in love with Greta! That quickly turned into a Black Cat Greta shows up at the masquerade ball. Are we now doing The Masque of the Red Death? I am glad we have an Incan historian to explain everything at the end. Or, you know, nothing.