THE NIGHT EVELYN CAME OUT OF THE GRAVE (1971)
aka La notte che Evelyn usci dalla tomba
Article 3826 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 1-25-2012
Posting Date: 2-4-2012
Directed by Emilio Miraglia
Featuring Anthony Steffen, Marina Malfatti, Erika Blanc
Country: Italy
What it is: Horror story with twists and turns

A troubled Lord, haunted by the death of his wife, picks up red-headed prostitutes and kills them. Eventually he decides that he can escape the haunting if he marries again. But this starts a whole new chain of horror…

I’ll give this movie a certain amount of credit for continually managing to get more complex as it goes along without giving the game away early on. It starts out looking like it’s going to be like a sixties-style Italian horror movie (only with more nudity than they could get away with earlier), but it doesn’t stop there, eventually having as many twists and turns as a giallo. Still, though I admire the structure somewhat, I’m afraid I really didn’t find the whole journey a lot of fun, and once I think back on the plot as a whole, I start wondering about the purpose or necessity of certain scenes; for one thing, I’m not sure I can find a really good reason for the lord’s second wife trying to establish whether his first wife is still in her tomb. In the end, it’s a movie I more admire than like.