The Devil with Seven Faces (Il diavolo a sette facce) (1971)
Grade: C+
Stylish but muddled thriller about a woman living in the Netherlands and working as a translator for an airline. Sounds like a nice life, but problem is that Julie (Carroll Baker), à la Rockwell, always has the feeling that somebody's watching her.
As it turns out, Julie's identical twin sister, Mary, was involved in a London jewel heist that went wrong. And now a bevy of nefarious characters have Julie in their crosshairs: either they think she is Mary, or want to use her to get to Mary, neither option being good for Julie.
And soon enough, the police -- and other meddlesome types -- start sniffing around too.
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| "I'm doin' detective stuff. I'm dee-tect-ing." |
To whom can she turn? Well, she does have two handsome men good-naturedly competing for her affections. One is her attorney, Dave Barton, played by Steven Boyd, who looks like an upscale version of Kurt Loder. The other is the mysterious Tony Shane (George Hilton), a race car driver and friend of Dave's.
If anything, the plot is overburdened with multiple threads that don't really go anywhere. Jump scares turn out to be subtly-cued dream sequences, with no further relevance; characters emerge from the woodwork, then disappear, with no lingering sense of purpose or personality.
And speaking of multiple threads, check this specimen out:
Seldom has a film employed its wigs so gratuitously as The Devil with Seven Faces. A character will have one hair color and style in one scene --
-- and then, with no explanation, sport a completely different look in a second --
-- only to later re-emerge with yet another hairstyle.
Again, the makers of The Devil with Seven Faces show some wise self-awareness and hang a lampshade on it: as Carroll Baker notes when reminiscing about her childhood antics with her twin, "Often, we used to swap wigs."
But we're still not sure whether the movie intends to play some Italianate game with narrative and identity...or is just the work of a trichophiliac mourning what he's lost.
The print Mill Creek uses for the Drive-In Movie Classics box set looks uncharacteristically nice, and The Devil with Seven Faces is certainly easy on the eyes and ears. But it amounts to little more than a confection, pleasant enough to watch but not especially satisfying on a narrative or aesthetic level.
One Frightened Night (1935)
Grade: C-
Cantankerous old man (Charley Grapewin) plans to give away most of his fortune to friends and family right before a new inheritance tax takes effect. Naturally, they're overjoyed.
Oh, and just for reference, he wouldn't have given them a dime if only his granddaughter were there. And look who shows up on this stormy night, just in time!
Bye-bye, dollars. And right about now you're expecting someone to try to kill the granddaughter, right? You're probably imagining the rest already: after a hair's-breadth escape or two for the protagonista, and some collateral damage over whom no 1930s cinematic tears are shed -- maids, butlers, minorities, that sort of thing -- we find out who the real killer is.
But no, that's not how things play out, at least not right away. Instead we get...
...a second, very-similar-looking-but-not-the-same-actress granddaughter? OK, didn't see that coming. So now the operative question of the day becomes "Who's the impostor?" first, "Whodunit?" second.
Still, you've seen this movie before, in one of its countless guises, so don't expect anything particularly novel from One Frightened Night: it's standard fare from Poverty Row, with your comic relief, bumbling cops, greedy relatives, ne'er-do-wells with a heart of Bakelite, etc.
But what we can say is that what The Devil with Seven Faces is to wigs, One Frightened Night is to candles and candelabras. Sometimes it seems as if there's one in every shot...
...maybe it's the same one in every shot, at that.
So if you like natural lighting and interchangeable blondes, then One Frightened Night is your cup of poisoned tea. Drink up!
The Vampire's Night Orgy (1974)
Grade: C-
Tour bus takes wrong turn, ends up in creepy village with a countess and a meat shortage, where all is not as it seems. And it doesn't seem that great to begin with.
Between that and the title, do we really need to tell you the rest?
One or two unexpected twists in Vampire's Night Orgy help enliven the (otherwise turgid and labored) proceedings. But this kind of film isn't really in our wheelhouse; while some will credit it with "atmosphere" and so forth, we'd rather watch Terror at the Red Wolf Inn again, frankly.
It's always nice to find a movie that does something for the kids, though. You know, like Jurassic Park.
