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Category: Giuseppe Ferranti

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Plot: philandering historian is beguiled by a woman who might, or might not, be a witch.

La strega in amore (or The Witch In Love, released in the Anglo-Saxon world as simply The Witch) is something of a minor entry in the Italian gothic horror canon that marks an interesting stylistic turning point despite its relative but enduring obscurity. Based on the 1962 novel Aura by Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes and not nearly as kitschy/camp as Italian horror was wont to be around this time perhaps the greatest thing that The Witch In Love has going for it is its minimalism approach. At heart more of a film noir (a troubled, philandering man is seduced by a mysterious femme fatale) with a gothic bend rather than a full-on horror there’s much to be had if you know where to look. Just like The Demon (1963) (with Daliah Lavi) before it The Witch In Love is more of a reflection of then-contemporary times and values rather than a contemplation upon it. And just like that film it was one of the many Italian gothics to inspire Anna Bilder’s The Love Witch (2016). The Witch In Love is an elegant fusion of genres, is beautifully multi-faceted and like Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (1970) it becomes that what you want it to be. It’s all here, carefully and seamlessly weaved together into a quiet genre piece.

Damiano Damiani got his start as a cartoonist, illustrator and scriptwriter in comics before eventually moving to screenwriting. Film critic Paolo Mereghetti described him as, "the most American of Italian directors" whereas Pier Paolo Pasolini was less kind in his assessment calling him, "a bitter moralist hungry for old purity." Damiani experienced his personal golden age during the sixties when he alternated between spaghetti westerns, socio-political Mafia crime epics and poliziottesco. While not as remembered as some of his contemporaries he has his share of classics in the form of A Complicated Girl (1968) (with Florinda Bolkan), The Most Beautiful Wife (1970) (with Ornella Muti), Confessions of a Police Captain (1971), and The Devil Is A Woman (1974). North American audiences might remember him from Amityville II: The Possession (1982) that he directed for producer Dino de Laurentiis. Back at home in Italy he famously directed the first season of the long-running Mafia series The Octopus (1984-2001). The Witch In Love was one of those rare instances where Damiani ventured into horror. As always it is photographed beautifully, scored unobtrusively and Damiani permeates it with his impeccable style and atmosphere.

Forty-something historian Sergio Logan (Richard Johnson) is intrigued by a mysterious white-cloaked figure that he keeps seeing wherever he goes. After a number of personal setbacks his girlfriend Marta (Elisabetta Wilding) is content that Logan has given up on his philandering ways. Or so she thinks. One day he sees an ad in the newspaper and talks to his artist friend Lorna (Margherita Guzzinati) about this potential employer. On his way to the interview he asks a local antique dealer (Ester Carloni) about the identity of the figure but answers remain cryptic and elusive. The figure leads him to an aging decrepit palatial mansion hidden deeply in the bowels of Rome. The white-cloaked figure introduces herself as Consuelo Lorente (Sarah Ferrati), the middle-aged matron of an ancient noble bloodline. Within the nighted halls of the mansion the silhouette of another woman appears seemingly out of nowhere. Aura (Rosanna Schiaffino) is the withdrawn and world-weary granddaughter of the domineering Consuelo and she has Sergio instantly beguiled. Consuelo informs him that as a live-in librarian he’ll be expected to clean and organize their dusty, rat-infested and long neglected private library. He’ll be cataloguing manuscripts and compile a personal collection of erotic literature penned by the late family patriarch. Apropos of nothing, Consuelo conveys to him that Aura’s husband Fabrizio (Gian Maria Volontè) volunteered for the job before him but grew slightly mad from isolation in the dark halls and having two seductive women around distracting him. It seems Sergio is in need of an assistant librarian (Ivan Rassimov) to complete the task. As Sergio embarks on a steamy affair with Aura he realizes he’s been lured into a web of seduction and deception on the promise of untold pleasure and fortune. What terrible secret dwells within the ancient library and the halls of their sarcophagal abode?

Richard Johnson was one of those classically trained British actors who never ascended to the level of stardom that they probably deserved. Johnson was a consummate professional who effortlessly alternated between serious fare and high camp. He honed his craft as a cornerstone member and Associate Artist of the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC). Johnson was director Terence Young's preferred choice for the role of James Bond in Dr. No (1962). Johnson intended to play the role as a straight, hard-boiled man of action but had to decline the part due to his contract with MGM. Young then offered the role to a young Scotsman by the name of Sean Connery who played up the innate camp of the role and material. His first foray into horror came with The Haunting (1963) and his second billing in The Amorous Adventures of Moll Flanders (1965) would culminate in his marriage to headlining star Kim Novak. Johnson shared the screen with Charlton Heston and Laurence Olivier in Khartoum (1966) and from there portrayed British special agents Bulldog Drummond in Deadlier Than the Male (1967) (opposite of Elke Sommer and Sylva Koscina) and Jonas Wilde in Danger Route (1967). He crossed paths with Schiaffino again in the Terence Young swashbuckling adventure The Rover (1967) before reprising his Drummond role in Some Girls Do (1969). He continued to work in Italy with The Exorcist (1973) imitations Beyond the Door (1974) and The Night Child (1975) before his legendary turn in Lucio Fulci’s Zombie (1979). Johnson was married a handful of times with Françoise Pascal as his fourth partner. Pascal had parts in Pete Walker’s School for Sex (1969) and became a cult icon of her own thanks to her association with Jean Rollin and roles in The Iron Rose (1973) and the pandemic shocker (and first French gore film) The Grapes Of Death (1978).

Rosanna Schiaffino was one of the classic beauties from the Golden Age of Italian cinema. While she was off to a promising start in post-neorealist cinema of the 1950s with Piece of the Sky (1958) (where she shared the screen with Marcello Mastroianni) from producer Franco Cristaldi. He cast both again in The Challenge (1958) that won the Jury Prize on the 1958 Venice Film Festival. As the crème de la crème of leading ladies she was positioned as the "Italian Hedy Lamarr" albeit she had more in common with Gina Lollobrigida and Sophia Loren. She relinquished said title to Claudia Cardinale at the dawn of the sixties. Schiaffino’s other more remembered roles are in the peplum spoof The Rape of the Sabines (1961) and the giallo The Killer Reserved Nine Seats (1974). For reasons largely unknown to us Schiaffino never ascended to the international sex symbol status of her contemporaries Monica Vitti, Stefania Sandrelli, or Virna Lisi.

Ivan Rassimov was seemingly part of every major cinematic innovation and genre in Italy. As a character actor he – like Gabriele Tinti and George Eastman – was an irrepressible, immovable pillar that adamantly refused to go away. His appearance here came after his role in the Mario Bava sci-fi epic The Planet Of the Vampires (1965) and before before his enshrining as a leading man in spaghetti western, in giallo during the seventies, and cannibal gutmunchers in the eighties. Rassimov was everywhere and did it all. As such he could be seen in Sergio Martino’s The Strange Vice of Mrs. Wardh (1971), and All Colors Of the Dark (1972) (both with Edwige Fenech); the Me Me Lai cannibal triptych Man From Deep River (1972), The Last Cannibal World (1977), and Eaten Alive! (1980), the amusing The Exorcist (1973) imitation Enter the Devil (1974) (with Stella Carnacina), as well as the Star Wars (1978) knock-off The Humanoid (1979), and Ruggero Deodato’s very enjoyable sci-fi/action romp The Raiders Of Atlantis (1983). Gian Maria Volontè was a peplum veteran known mostly for appearing in Sergio Leone’s A Fistful Of Dollars (1964) and For A Few Dollars More (1965).

While not true to the letter of the short novel The Witch In Love stays true to it in spirit. It follows the general outline but isn’t afraid to take aristic liberties (some more drastic than others) with the source material either. Compared to Hammer and some other Italian gothics from around this time The Witch In Love is brazenly post-modern. For starters it completely excises the supernatural elements and medievalism by setting it in then-contemporary times. Compared to other gothic horrors of the day it’s quite minimalist in both setting and story. It does not nearly have the pomp of, say, Antonio Margheriti’s Castle of Blood (1964) and The Long Hair of Death (1964) or the ornate production design of Mario Bava’s The Mask Of Satan (1960). Like Camillo Mastrocinque’s Terror In the Crypt (1964) and An Angel For Satan (1966) its overflowing with atmosphere and its never afraid to turn up the heat, especially when Schiaffino engages in her alluring dance of seduction. In fact the affair that Johnson and Schiaffino’s characters embark on must have been fairly scandalous for the time. Despite being painted as a bitter moralist Damiani wasn’t afraid to push the envelope when and where he could. A lot of the times, less is more. The Witch In Love understands this and while it has no reason to work, it actually does. Perhaps there’s a reason why The Witch In Love is overlooked but quality is certainly not it.

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Plot: aunt Marta will kill to see her estranged family – or are they already dead?

Don't Be Afraid Of Aunt Marta (released domestically as Non aver paura della zia Marta and for some reason released in North America as either The Murder Secret or The Broken Mirror) is part of I maestri del thriller (what the English-speaking world knows as Lucio Fulcio Presents), a nine-part television and home video series wherein producers Antonio Lucidi and Luigi Nannerini envisioned bringing Italian horror to the small screen with the help of ailing and over-the-hill horror master Lucio Fulci. Don't Be Afraid Of Aunt Marta is late-stage 80s Italian erotic thriller dirge masquerading as either a very lethargic giallo or a hugely ineffective suburban gothic. If it’s remembered for anything it’s that it pretty much was the last straight-up thriller Mario Bianchi would direct before his focus shifted entirely towards hardcore porn in 1989. Don't Be Afraid Of Aunt Marta is a sobering eulogy for the once-formidable Italian gothic. Twenty years after the innovations of Riccardo Freda and Mario Bava this is where the gothic dies. What other reason to check out Don't Be Afraid Of Aunt Marta than to see Maurice Poli hamming it up, a truly emaciated Gabriele Tinti a mere three years before he would succumb to cancer, and Luciana Ottaviani flaunting her delicious shapes and forms?

To keep costs as low as possible and make most of crew and locations this was filmed in between Reflections Of Light (1988) and The Ghosts Of Sodom (1988) retaining much of the principal cast with only the leads rotating. Mario Bianchi was a consummate professional who could be trusted to routinely direct whatever was doing well at the box office within the alloted budgets and time. As such Bianchi has directed spaghetti westerns, peplum, poliziottesco, sex comedies, and the occassional horror. After Satan’s Baby Doll (1982) he retired his long-time exploitation alias Alan W. Cools and like so many (Joe D’Amato, Jess Franco, Jean Rollin, et al) he focused almost exclusively on filming hardcore pornography (usually under his trusty nom de plume Martin White and frequently with Marina Hedman and Ilona Staller sucking a wholly different way) from 1983 onward.

Written by Bianchi and photographed by Silvano Tessicini there’s no way Don't Be Afraid Of Aunt Marta could in any way compete with Fulci’s classic tenure with director of photography Sergio Salvati or his giallo with Luigi Kuveiller and Sergio D'Offizi. Don't Be Afraid of Aunt Marta not only looks cheap the way only a television movie can the cast reflected just how impoverished of a production this was. Tinti and Poli ostensibly were the draw here with Russo and Ottaviani as elder and younger stars. Them excepted the remainder of the warm bodies were, for all intents and purposes, nobodies. If there wasn’t for the inclusion of brief flashes of nudity and extreme gore this could’ve been passed off as a failed 90-minute pilot to an unproduced television series. Here Fulci acted as co-producer and oversaw the gore effects with special effects technician Giuseppe Ferranti. Even in the Ottaviani/Moore canon this (and the two other titles that Luciana/Jessica appeared in) is but a curious and forgotten footnote.

In 1958 Richard Hamilton (Gabriele Tinti) was witness to his mother (Anna Maria Placido) confining her sister (and his aunt) Marta (Sacha Darwin, as Sacha M. Darwin) - who up to that point had acted as his guardian - to a psychiatric ward to get access to her fortune. Not helping is that his mother flung herself out of a window of the house later. Thirty years pass and one day Richard receives a letter from Aunt Marta. She cordially invites Richard and his family to come visit her at the old family seat in the sticks now that she has been released from the clinic. Coming along for the visit are Richard’s wife Nora (Adriana Russo), his daughter Giorgia (Luciana Ottaviani, as Jessica Moore), and his son Maurice (Edoardo Massimi). Also arranged to come over for the getaway at the estate is Richard’s son from a previous marriage, Charles (Massimiliano Massimi). At the estate they are welcomed by administrator (and groundskeeper) Thomas (Maurice Poli) who informs them that Marta has been delayed on some pressing business and will rejoin them the next morning. Richard spents the night in sweat-drenched panic upon receiving a silent phone call. When Marta fails to materialize in the days that follow tensions within the family start to mount. All of this prompts Richard to do some investigating of his own. As long-buried family secrets come to surface members of the family start dying… or were they already dead to begin with?

Arguably the last of the great Italian screamqueens (together with Florence Guérin, Lara Wendel, and Margie Newton) we have warmed up considerably to Luciana Ottaviani over the years. Ottaviani had both the curls and the curves and she was never afraid about flaunting either when and where it mattered. In a blitz career that lasted only four years and 9 movies (three of which were made-for-television bilge) luscious Luciana hid behind 3 different aliases (Jessica Moore being her most widely known) and worked with the likes of Bruno Corbucci, Joe D'Amato, and Mario Bianchi. If there’s one way to describe Luciana’s career it’s that she was the figurehead in lamentable late-stage abortions of once-great Italian exploitation subgenres. While mostly identified with her role as escort-turned-journalist Sarah Asproon in Eleven Days Eleven Nights (1987) and Top Model (1988) Ottaviani debuted in the nunsploitationer Convent Of Sinners (1986) and just before being typecast as the latest softcore sex sensation with the turgid Reflections Of Light (1988) (where she starred alongside Pamela Prati, Loredana Romito, and Laura Gemser) she took on the ghost horror with our current subject, a mild il sadiconazista with The Ghosts Of Sodom (1988), and a light giallo murder mystery with Escape From Death (1989). Suffice to say, in each and without fault Ottaviani was reduced to tits requiring nothing more from her than her usual routine of smiling pretty, flaunting her curls and curves, and getting horrendously murdered for her trouble. Ottaviani was pretty much forced into an early retirement the moment she stopped accepting erotic roles at behest of her partner. No doubt miss Ottaviani could have made a fortune in Spain’s Cine-S and it’s a question for the ages why we were forever denied a Tinto Brass feature with her.

Don't Be Afraid of Aunt Marta was the second in the nine-part I maestri del thriller (or Lucio Fulci presents in the English-speaking world) series of made-for-television and home video horror. As legend has it was cinematographer Silvano Tessicini who got Fulci involved with the operation. Old Lucio had just returned after his Zombi 3 (1988) ran into production woes on the Philippines. With his health deteriorating and cranky the project being overtaken by hired hands Claudio Fragasso and Bruno Mattei (with none of whom Fulci got along), Tessicini figured that this was the distraction Fulci needed. The main series comprises of The Curse (1987), Don't Be Afraid of Aunt Marta, The Red Monks (1988), Massacre (1989), Bloody Psycho (1989), Escape from Death (1989), and Hansel and Gretel (1989). Initially attracted as supervisor Fulci ended up directing two features - Touch of Death (1988) and The Ghosts Of Sodom (1988) – from scripts he had penned earlier with Carlo Alberto Alfieri years before all the same. Even under the most optimistic circumstances Fulci’s involvement throughout was tenuous at best and completely hands-off at worst. Whatever his feelings on the subject Fulci and producers Antonio Lucidi and Luigi Nannerini mined six of these features for special effects footage for the supreme cut-and-paste hackjob A Cat in the Brain (1990).

You know just how impoverished a production is when pulp veteran Gabriele Tinti, Euroshock pillar Maurice Poli from Cross Mission (1988), Adriana Russo (the lesser known sister of comedy evergreen Carmen Russo), and Luciana Ottaviani retroactively can be considered the marquee stars. Tinti and Poli were old hands at this sort of thing and by 1988 both Russo and Ottaviani had carved out enough of a niche for themselves to be considered semi-stars. Sacha Darwin and Anna Maria Placido both were nobodies with mostly indistinct filmographies. To be charitable, Darwin was the daughter of Austrian Golden Age actors Wolf Albach-Retty and Trude Marlen and she was the younger half-sister of Romy Schneider – which probably accounts for how she parlayed her world-famous pedigree into a modest acting career. Placido on the other hand had none such luck – and she was no Mariangela Giordano, Dagmar Lassander, Daria Nicolodi, or Franca Stoppi either. Not even Tinti (who starred in his fair amount of dreck during the wicked and wild seventies) nor Poli deserved ending up in something as lamentable as this. Tinti had at least the good fortune of sharing the sheets with miss Laura Gemser. For a television movie this is quite explicit (Ottaviani has an extended soapy shower scene straight out of the Gloria Guida playbook) and the gore is off the charts when and where it appears. As a sort-of-but-not-really hybrid of Psycho (1960) and Carnival of Souls (1962) it is deadly dull in parts and only sort of gains a faint pulse whenever Poli or Ottaviani enliven proceedings with their hams. Unfortunately there’s more of the former than of the latter. After all, not even luscious Luciana’s ever so inviting tits and ass could save something this dreadful.