Long overdue on DVD (then again, it is an MGM property), Elio Petri's ghost story based on Oliver Onions' "The Beckoning Fair One" is not your traditional Italian gothic horror. Franco Nero plays Leonardo, an artist who has hit a creative block and is under pressure from his girlfriend Flavia (Vanessa Redgrave) to produce more work for her clients. Seeking to get away from Milan, he is drawn to an isolated villa where a promiscuous young countess died and whose spirit seems to be haunting the place (though like the ghost in THE CHANGELING it did not seem to have previously made itself known until a receptive tenant happened upon the abandoned but not necessarily haunted location). Doors open and close, art supplies are strewn about, but the real danger does not occur until Flavia comes to visit whereupon more overt supernatural forces seem to be directed at her as if jealous of Leonardo's attentions to her (they've got this twisted sado-masochistic relationship going on so its hard to tell if he at any time really becomes possessed by anything). Leonardo prowls the town and makes a side trip to Venice (in a sequence that looks like it could've been inspired by Carlos Fuentes' novel AURA to which it also might partially owe a plot twist) learning about the countess' apparent nymphomania that is alternately romanticized and condemned. He finds out more from the groundskeeper who fancied himself even closer than any of her other suitors (more than one it seems thought they were more special than the others) and gets closer and closer to discovering the truth behind her death (the story is that she was struck by a hail of gunfire from a passing fighter plane during WWII). Leonardo gathers the "suspects" and Flavia (who endures more supernatural torment) at the scene of the crime for a creepy seance after which it seems that he himself is the real danger to Flavia either possessed by the spirit or wanting to please the ghost by getting rid of the competition just as the apparent killer may have done to one of the countess' suitors.



SPOILER:

Though Nero's flip-out towards the end more obviously anticipates Jack Nicholson's turn in THE SHINING, the crazed/possessed Nero also seems to anticipate the image of the possessed father in THE AMITYVILLE HORROR.

Also, given Redgrave's last line in the film "I almost envy him" as she regards Nero's new surroundings, one wonders if the QUIET PLACE IN THE COUNTRY where Leonardo can work was the villa or this new place where he's much more productive.

END OF SPOILER.


Petri's aggressive nonlinear editing style does not distract from the utterly creepy atmosphere of the film. It merges past and present and reality and fantasy within the same frames. Leonardo hallucinates variations on the sadomasochistic relationship he has with Redgrave, the characters relating in flashback their encounters with the countess step into them without getting younger and are sometimes replaced by Leonardo himself. In one flashback murder scene, Leonardo is alternately the killer and the victim (both lovers of the countess). There are also a couple now-obligatory jump-scares that are all the more effective because they've been surrounded by an actual atmosphere of dread which mixes jarringly yet effectively with the late sixties not-exactly-pop-art decor (and Antonioni-esque bare walls).

Luigi Kuveiller (DEEP RED, NEW YORK RIPPER) shot the film in Technicolor. Bava associate Ubaldo Terzano was the camera operator as he was on several other films shot by Kuveiller - I think Tim Lucas refers to him on more than one occasion as a camera assistant but he's credited as camera operator and judging from all of the revelatory info on Terzano in Lucas' Bava book, Terzano definitely should be associated with more than focus pulling and loading.

The score is, of course, composed by Ennio Morricone but it is an atypical work even in the context of his giallo scores as it was composed in association with an improv musical group. The score is largely made up of unsettling discordant strings with only one slightly playful giallo-like vocal. The score is available on CD in Italy.

The film has been released on DVD in Italy in an anamorphic widescreen transfer but with Italian audio only. MGM had an Amazon.com exclusive cropped videotape (along with an uncut THE BURNING and, less deservingly, THE CURSE II and DANCE MACABRE) - reviewed in Video Watchdog - which is extremely hard to come by these days.

This one needs an English-friendly DVD right away (hopefully MGM doesn't own it in the UK so a release there would be more likely).