Mortals, can we acknowledge how much I've been leaning on YouTube for movies to review lately? I don't think it's a problem necessarily, but if I would be remiss if I didn't acknowledge the volume of weird, old movies Amazon Prime has been amassing lately, particularly in the giallo subgenre -- movies like Black Belly of the Tarantula, Don't Torture a Duckling, and What Have You Done to Solange?, all loaded up with beautiful, gratuitously naked women and erotically charged violence.
It's time to brush up on your Italian or learn how to enable subtitles because this week's Thursday Thriller is my new favorite giallo, The Night Evelyn Came Out of the Grave.
Emilio Miraglia directed this 1971 film.
Wealthy widower Lord Alan Cunningham (Anthony Steffen) has a habit of hiring prostitutes, taking them back to his castle, telling them to put on a pair of black, thigh-high boots and murdering them in his dungeon. If that sounds kinky to you, you might consider his brother-in-law Albert (Roberto Maldera), who likes to lurk in the shadows and watch, them demand hush money from Cunningham the next morning.
Alan has a type -- curvy redheads. They remind him of his dead wife Evelyn, who once cheated on him in the garden in slow motion while he watched. She later died in childbirth.
Alan metes out his punishment on expensive hookers and his doctor, Richard Timberlane (Giacomo Rossi Stuart) thinks that's unhealthy. He tells Cunningham to forget about Evelyn and re-marry.
But that ass, though...
Cunningham goes to a party with his cousin George (Enzo Tarascio), who's been hooking him up with prostitutes and doesn't seem to think anything strange when they go missing. There, Cunningham finds himself immediately smitten with a blonde named Gladys (Marina Malfatti). They go back to her place, have sex, and he proposes marriage.
Dr. Timberlane sees nothing wrong with a marriage proposal after a three-hour courtship, and is proud of Alan for finally moving on.
Maybe Gladys is good for Alan, because he turns over a whole new leaf. He's able to have sex without breaking out the branding iron, and you hardly ever see the bullwhip for the rest of the movie, which, I admit, is pretty disappointing.
Just as it all seems to be going so well, Gladys tells Alan she saw one of the maids, a redhead, in the kitchen. That's weird, because he refuses to hire redheads as servants. What's weirder, we learn, is Evelyn's tomb is empty. Then people start getting murdered. Someone feeds Aunt Agatha (Joan C. Davis) to the family's prize hunting foxes.
Just as it all seems to be going so well, Gladys tells Alan she saw one of the maids, a redhead, in the kitchen. That's weird, because he refuses to hire redheads as servants. What's weirder, we learn, is Evelyn's tomb is empty. Then people start getting murdered. Someone feeds Aunt Agatha (Joan C. Davis) to the family's prize hunting foxes.
The Night Evelyn Came Out of the Grave is a twisty, sexy, fetishistic mystery-thriller with a smattering of the supernatural. It streams on Amazon Prime and YouTube.
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