Director: Emilio Miraglia
Writers: Massimo Felisatti, Fabio Pittorru, and Emilio Miraglia
From: Pure Terror
A man haunted by visions of his dead wife invites women who look like her up to his castle to murder them.
Another movie that lost the thread of what it’s about between the beginning and end. We open with Lord Alan Cunningham trying to escape a sanitarium. He’s running across the grounds hallucinating the guards chasing him, and is ultimately caught. Then we cut to Alan driving a prostitute to his castle in the countryside. He stops the car to switch out the license plates because he was using fake ones when he picked her up.
At the castle, he takes her into the dungeon where he starts whipping her. She tells him people know who he is and that’s when he reveals that he used fake plates so that he wouldn’t be found. Then he has a vision of his dead wife Evelyn sleeping with another man, and he stabs the woman he’s with to death.
Okay, this will be a serial killer movie and he’s the bad guy. Got it. He pays off a witness who turns out to be Evelyn’ brother and then has a brief meeting with his psychologist who warns him about having further episodes. So the impression I got was that he’s killed before and people are covering it up.
Things proceed. Alan is obsessed with redheads because Evelyn was one so his cousin sets him up with a stripper in London. Basically a repeat of the first woman ensues except afterwards, when Alan comes to and is removing evidence, he finds the woman’s lighter. He throws it out only to find it again. What could its reappearance mean? Don’t ask that question because it’s not going to matter for another 45 minutes!
Alan meets a third woman, Gladys, who he immediately marries. They move into the castle and she starts investigating the strange events happening around Evelyn—she seems to be haunting the place. There’s also the looming threat of Alan murdering her the way he’s murdered other women.
Gladys investigates and learns that Alan became delusional and started to believe Evelyn was cheating on him. He was pursuing a divorce, but she was trying to keep the marriage together so went through with a dangerous pregnancy. She died as a result. So Alan’s delusions literally led to Evelyn’s death.
Things escalate, people related to Evelyn and Alan get murdered, and finally it seems Evelyn has risen from her grave. This leads to Alan having a final breakdown and being committed. The not insubstantial estate is split between Gladys and Alan’s cousin. Get ready for a Shyamalaan twist, though—Gladys and the cousin had been working together the whole time! It was all a plot to drive Alan mad and steal everything he owned. He was the victim. You know, the murderer.
We’re not done, though! Oh no, not with a film like this. Gladys goes to a chalet with the cousin and gets poisoned! The cousin betrays her and has secretly been working with the second woman who hadn’t actually died. Double twist! Before she dies, Gladys manages to stab the woman, leaving the cousin the only one alive. He leaves the chalet.
And runs into Alan! Triple twist! He wasn’t committed at all! His psychologist had cured him and his breakdown was faked to lure the plotters out in the open. Alan and the cousin fight, knocking some chemicals into a swimming pool which the cousin then falls into. The final scene is the cousin being taken away by police screaming about how he’s on fire. THE END
Movies don’t have to depict a moral universe, but they are made by moral actors, which raises the question of what is this movie’s about. What’s the message? We open with Alan as a serial killer protected by his money and position. The close should address that. That doesn’t mean the movie can’t have the ending it has, but it has to address its starting point. Since we’re introduced to Alan as a sadistic murderer and have that vision of him reinforced throughout the movie, that needs to be addressed by the end. Close on him laughing maniacally or a close-up of his face as the psychologist says, “You’re cured,” while the face says he’s anything but. End, essentially, on Alan indicating that the story was about him and his arc.
Instead, we freeze on the cousin screaming, signifying that justice has been done and everything set right in the world. Not only will he face criminal prosecution, but, with his insistence that he’s burning, justice in the afterlife as well. That was never a concern of the film.
The movie’s at its best when it’s focused on Gladys trying to sort out the mystery of Evelyn and how she died. In that portion—and it takes way too long to get to it—you have a movie that’s introducing legitimately creepy elements, a real mystery, and a rising sense of threat from Alan. Remember, we’ve seen him kill before. Now there’s a woman living in the castle trying to find out the fate of wife #1 whose body is no longer in her grave.
Other people get murdered along the way: Evelyn’s brother and Alan’s aunt, who apparently were having a relationship or plotting against Alan in some way. It doesn’t matter because they both die and serves as the weakest red herring.
I think I’m disappointed by this movie, which, surprise, is not a recommend, because of the narrative and moral confusion at its core. Alan’s the threat. He’s the monster. Now, characters plotting against him or his situation being engineered by the other characters is a nice twist, but you can’t throw it in and play him up as some kind of victim. At best you can play it as the inevitable victim had outsmarted the monster and won the day. I’d like that movie and twist. This movie, though, missed the mark. It’s not as grim as a lot of the lesser serial killer features I’ve watched, but ultimately comes out dull. The movie takes too long to bring us Gladys, the real main character, and doesn’t know what story it’s actually telling. So give it a pass and find something a little more entertaining for the Hallo-weekend.
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