MovieChat Forums > La notte che Evelyn uscì dalla tomba (1972) Discussion > Fun cross-genre mystery

Fun cross-genre mystery

posted 21 days ago by DoctorThirteen (14056)
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The Night Evelyn Came Out of the Grave (AKA The Night She Rose From The Tomb, AKA Evelyn Raises the Dead ~ 1971)

Italian hybrid giallo/gothic horror, directed by Emilio Miraglia, and starring Anthony Steffen, Marina Malfatti, and Erika Blanc. Lord Alan Cunningham (Steffen) is released from a mental institution after suffering a breakdown following the death of his wife, Evelyn. On his release, to help cope with his loss, he entices strippers and prostitutes to his castle and murders them. This novel therapy isn't enough, so on the advice of friends he remarries. But as Cunningham and new wife Gladys (Malfatti) adjust to married life, strange occurrences soon have Alan suspecting that Evelyn may have returned from the grave, angry at his remarriage. At the same time, members of Alan's family who live on the estate start to be murdered by an unseen killer. However, Alan's fragile mental state leaves him in no condition to deal with either situation, and events both natural and seemingly supernatural escalate.

Bizarrely, around the half-way mark the film asks us to start rooting for a guy who we know murders prostitutes. The normal response would be 'well, he's got it coming', but here they try to paint him in a sympathetic light - as though his belief that his late wife was having an affair (never confirmed) somehow justifies what he later did. Still, it's a fun film. It really leans into the gothic aspect - although set in then present-day 'England' (but clearly actually Italy), it has neglected castles, storm-lashed graveyards, cobwebby family crypts, a seance, creeping shadows, a haunting portrait, and ghostly figures at the windows. However, Miraglia's crafty inclusion of strippers and hookers ensures the requisite amount of sex/nudity for the giallo side of things (shoutout to jaw-dropping genre favourite Erika Blank as the top-of-the-bill 'exotic dancer')! Absolutely worth a watch. 7/10

[–] agentalbert (3105) 4 days ago

I didn't really think the fact his wife had an affair was ever in doubt. Since that information comes from Dr. Timberlane who it turns out is on the up and up, it seems safe to say the sequence of events he describes (Chamberlain wants to divorce Evelyn after finding out she had an affair, she gets pregnant against advice to try and keep him from leaving her, and dies in childbirth) is all true. And Lord Armstrong during his episodes seems to recall that he caught her and her lover in the garden. So I think that is all true.

We only actually know of one prostitute he kills, the first girl Polly (Maria Teresa Toffano), as the second supposed kill turns out not to have happened. But maybe he's been doing it for awhile. It is still an interesting aspect that he's presented as doing this and at the end of the movie is another victim.

The movie is fun, though its not exactly tightly paced and does seem a bit slow. I enjoyed the visual aspects - the beautiful women, the castle and interior with those great large paintings and murals, the quintet of maids with identical blonde curly perms, etc. And Erika Blanc's fantastic sexy rising from the casket striptease! Also have to like the kill of Aunt Agatha to then have her body eaten up in the pen of foxes.