Mill of the Stone Women (1960)

Taking place in Holland in the late 1800s, our film immediately zeros in on our protagonist, Hans von Arnam, who is currently waiting for a ferry along some fog enshrouded canals. His destination: the windmill abode of Professor Gregorius Wahl, which also houses the eccentric artists' Carousel of Stone Women.

Kind of a morbid, screwed-up version of Walt Disney's It's a Small, Small World attraction, the Carousel is an intricate array of massive gears and pulleys that operate a macabre animated display of famous and infamous women -- and only women, he typed ominously -- posed at the moment of their demise: Joan of Arc at the stake; Marie Antoinette on the chopping block etc. etc. (Showtimes at 4:00 and 4:30, and 2:00 matinees on Saturdays. Senior Citizens half-price. Kids under five admitted for free.)

Now, the actual purpose of Arnam's visit is a little murky, but I believe he's there to write an article about this quirky landmark, which is set for a grand re-opening after some extensive renovations. And after meeting with Wahl (Preiss), who graciously offers all kinds of background material for this exposé, Arnam (Price) gets to work.

However, as he tries to put pen to paper, he is constantly distracted by a beautiful girl, whom he keeps catching fleeting glimpses of ever since he arrived. 

Turns out this terminally shy girl is Elfie (Gabel), Wahl's daughter; but as Arnam tries to learn more about her, he is gently told "hands off" by Wahl, and then not-so-gently told "hands off" by Dr. Bolem (Böhme), her in-house physician.

You see, Elfie has inherited a strange condition where any kind of emotional distress can prove lethal. Seems this very same malady claimed her mother, Dr. Wahl's late wife, and that's why the girl can never leave the mill; and under no circumstances can Elfie be ... well, aroused.

Already trying to salvage a relationship with his current girlfriend, Liselette Kornheim, needless to say, things are getting pretty complicated for poor Arnam as he's completely smitten with the mysterious and fragile girl. 

And then things get even more complicated when Elfie sneaks in a few visits with him; for it appears she's equally smitten with him, and they clandestinely arrange a late night rendezvous -- if you know what I mean, and as a wise man once said, I think you do.

Thus, when Elfie survives this illicit encounter intact, it makes Arnam wonder if Wahl's story about her condition is a load of cock ‘n’ bull; and extrapolating from there, he begins to suspect that Elfie is being held in the mill against her will. 

But before he can investigate any further, Liselette (Carrel) and his best friend, Raab (Guglielmi), both art students of Wahl's at the local university, stop by for a visit.

Here, Arnam realizes that Liselette is the one he truly loves and wants to marry. But how does he break this news to the fragile Elfie? Well, we’re about to find out. And it does not go well. At all. 

Given the bad news during another one of her late night visits, this jilting definitely qualifies as emotional distress for Elfie. Turning a deathly shade of pale, her condition rapidly deteriorates into spasms, then a full seizure, and then total collapse.

Meanwhile, Arnam -- who really is kind of a turd for a hero -- panics, scoops her up, and takes the limp form back to her bedroom.

Laying her on the bed, he notices her face landed near a hand mirror -- that's not fogging up, meaning she's not breathing, which means Elfie is dead. And so, our "hero" panics, again, and then clears off the premises as fast as his feet will take him. Like I said, what a turd… 

As the legend goes, once upon a time Italian filmmaker Riccardo Freda made a deal with Titanus Studio to back a low budget horror film he had in mind. Freda would then collaborate with his friend and cinematographer Mario Bava to pound out a story into a tape recorder for said film, complete with sound effects, in just one day. He then presented this tape to his potential producers, convincing them he could have it filmed and wrapped in just 12 days.

For historical context, horror films were never really a going concern in Italian cinema up to that point. Which is why it was somewhat surprising that the net result of these machinations was I Vampiri (alias Lust of the Vampire, alias The Devil’s Commandment, 1957), a film shot in glorious black ‘n’ white by Bava. The plot sees a journalist investigate a series of grisly murders, where the victims were completely drained of blood. (Completely drained of blood?!? Yes. Completely drained of blood.) On the trail of the “Vampire Killer,” this leads our hero to a sprawling castle and a mad scientist searching for the secrets of eternal youth for his mistress.

Now, the plot of I Vampiri comes off a trifle convoluted, which can be traced to / blamed on its rushed and harried production history. Freda would walk off the unfinished picture on the 12th day, or was fired, depending on who was telling the tale, leaving it to Bava to step in and salvage the production with an additional two days of filming, where he essentially threw the plot into the air and let it play where it laid.

Things got even more muddled with some additional inserts shot by the Releasing Corporation of Independent Producers for its American release of the film. And according to Bava guru Tim Lucas, there was an even bawdier version of the film that incorporated some nude inserts.

The Grand Island Independent (April 2, 1965).  

Freda would fare much better with The Horrible Dr. Hichcock (alias L'orribile segreto del Dr. Hichcock, 1962), a morbid tale of necrophilia and mad science. And while I Vampira might’ve been the first sound Italian horror film, it kind of fizzled at the domestic box office. And the genre might’ve suffered a premature death right then and there if not for Bava’s efforts on his own feature, Black Sunday (alias La maschera del demonio, 1960), a bewitching tale of dark magic and possession from beyond the grave. 

For while Bava’s film didn’t exactly light it up at the Italian box-office either, it did gangbusters in America once American International imported it, opening the floodgates to fill this new niche, which is why Black Sunday deserves the official nod for kicking off Italy’s Golden Age of horror films even though Freda's film predates it.

Meanwhile, Giorgio Ferroni began his filmmaking career with several documentary shorts in the mid-1930s. He then graduated to an assistant director for the likes of Gennaro Righelli on a screwball comedy called Al buio insieme (alias Together in the Dark, 1933), which kicks off when a woman under the influence returns to a hotel and winds up in the wrong bed, shenanigans ensue; and Carmine Gallone on the historical epic Scipione l'africano (1937), which dealt with the Second Punic War between Rome and Carthage, which climaxed with the Battle of Zama, pitting Scipione and his chariots against Hannibal and his armored elephants.

Ferroni’s first feature from the director’s chair was I tre desideri (1937), another romantic comedy. Then in 1942 he would helm Il fanciullo del West (1942), another comedy set in the American wild west, which some could technically argue to be the first ever Spaghetti Western. When World War II ended, Ferroni then dabbled in the neo-realist movement of Roberto Rossellini and Luchino Visconti with Pian delle stele (1946) and Tombolo, paradiso ner (alias Tombolo, 1947) set in the ruins of a war torn Italy.

Giorgio Ferroni. 

The 1950s would see a return to shorts and documentary filmmaking, including Vertigine bianca (1956), which covered the ‘56 Winter Olympiad from Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy. But then Ferroni sort of disappeared for a couple of years. However, he would soon come back with a vengeance.

For the very same year Bava unleashed the seminal Black Sunday, Ferroni would put his own stamp on the burgeoning genre -- only he would eschew the usual monochrome shocks, shadows and fog, for a palette of blazing Technicolor in Mill of the Stone Women (alias Il mulino delle donne di pietra, 1960).

“It’s one of the pioneering works of the Italian horror genre,” noted film historian Fabio Melelli in the featurette Turned to Stone on Arrow Video’s 2021 release. “A film that doesn’t seem to be influenced by anyone else’s work and that manages to combine genre tropes with a more personal auteur touch.”

A French and Italian co-production for Galatea Studio, most likely backed by German money, the film would be scripted by an uncredited Ferroni with an assist from Ugo Liberatore and Giorgio Stegani. Now, according to the lore, these men based their film on a short story by Dutch author Pieter Van Weigen called The Windmill that was published in a collected anthology called Flemish Tales. The film’s press material called the author a combination of Edgar Alan Poe and Jules Verne, and the macabre tale in question centered around a haunted mill as a metaphorical representation of the three realms of Heaven, Earth and Hell.

However, these origins have come under fire recently as being nothing more than a fabrication by the film's producer, Giampaolo Bigazzi, as a shameless grope at those other famous authors’ coattails, as no copy of this book has ever been found and no other trace of a Van Weigen publication has yet to surface.

Regardless of the inspiration, Ferroni’s film proves a dark and twisted fairy tale, with Elfie appearing to be a cursed princess stuck in a tower by her dubious patrons. (Wait. Appearing? Relax, we’re getting there.) And Ferroni, along with his cinematographer Pier Ludovico Pavoni and production designer Arrigo Equini, really captured something unique here -- something both eerily beautiful and completely demented.

See, while it was shot in Technicolor, Ferroni used this process strategically and to great effect. His palette is very muted and subdued, but this allowed him to punctuate certain narrative elements with bright splashes of color or lighting, drawing the viewer’s eye all over the place. Long on mood and atmosphere, with plenty of strange characters and morbid plot twists to keep things humming right along until a real whiz-banger of a climax, makes it a masterclass in both style and substance.

“Dutch and Lowland fantasy has a very particular flavor that is hard to define, but is somehow a combination of the ethereal and the earthy,” observed Cathal Tohill and Pete Tombs in their book Immoral Tales: European Sex & Horror Movies (1994). “The atmosphere of turn-of-the-century Holland is beautifully captured through minute detail [in Mill of the Stone Women]. Everything looks old and lived in. You can almost smell the ancient dust of the mill, almost taste the flagons of ale in the tavern and feel the damp air of the canals in your lungs … The unique setting of the film, its gorgeous but subdued colors -- like a painting by Rembrandt -- and the meticulously worked out plot, all contribute to what is generally acknowledged as one of the masterpieces of 1960s horror cinema.”

Rembrandt's Judas Returning the 30 Pieces of Silver (1629). 

And David Del Valle would echo these sentiments in his essay for Fear without Frontiers: Horror Cinema Across the Globe (2003), saying, “Ferroni imbues these proceedings with a weirdly poetic delirium. He has granted equal parts beauty, terror and madness to his film. Its magic lies within its imagery creating genuinely nightmarish set-pieces lit with brooding colors and Rembrandtesque shadows: the poetic language of horror typified by the lyrical image of Elfie standing in an alcove of the mill holding a single red rose longing for her lover, while Professor Wahl works nearby in a makeshift laboratory littered with severed limbs and mutilated corpses, an unholy mixture of eroticism and sadistic surgery.”

Thus, “We have a film that deviates from typical Hammer Film tropes as well as those of nascent Italian horror canon of Mario Bava’s work, to instead create moods that are decidedly Nordic in nature, with that unmistakable Dutch atmosphere,” said Melelli (Arrow Films, 2021). “Ferroni borrowed from Flemish painters even when it came to the film’s composition, as he is not only influenced by them in terms of thematic consciousness but also visually, in the way the frame is constructed. The shots feature multiple openings within the frames, blurring the line between them as if he wanted to suggest that there was no defined space, that it was an antithesis to claustrophobia. It’s a multifaceted reality you can’t really grasp.”

Roger Corman's Poe cycle, which also debuted that same year with The House of Usher (1960), received a lot of accolades for its similar production design, use of color, and art direction. Mill of the Stone Women was definitely in the same vein -- only less Gothic and a lot screwier. And I mean AH-lot.

For as Ferroni’s film plays out after Arnam flees the mill after Elfie dies, Mill of the Stone Women abruptly switches gears from overtly expressionistic -- where sex and death are erotically intertwined -- to full bore, completely unadulterated, pants on fire, maniacal mad science gone amuck melodrama, where distressed damsels are menaced while the heroes try to piece it all together -- hopefully in time to save them. So, hold onto your butts, Boils and Ghouls, things are about to go off the rails, and in the best way possible. 

Yeah, as the guilt gnaws away at our so-called hero, a regretful Arnam clandestinely returns to the mill and slinks back into Elfie's bedroom -- only she's not there. In fact, judging by all the dust and cobwebs, the room appears to have been unoccupied for a very long time.

Baffled by this, Arnam tries to sort this out and looks for some answers. When he confronts Bolem, the doctor sees the young man is terribly upset about something and offers a sedative to calm him down so they can talk rationally. But! Things only get even more and more irrational as Bolem's 'sedative' triggers a long, phantasmagorical nightmare sequence for Arnam:

As the ghost of Elfie haunts and taunts him, Wahl berates him for not listening and heaps on the blame for causing his daughter's demise. This night-terror concludes with Arnam running about the mill, in a futile attempt to escape his guilt, and eventually, into the family crypt, where he desecrates Elfie's grave by opening it up.

Sure enough, her body's in there. Our boy then quickly retreats; and as a dazed and drugged Arnam continues to wander aimlessly around the mill, he hears a woman's haunted screams.

Following the cries down into the mill's sub-levels, through an open door, he spies Amilore (Orfei), a model, who poses for Wahl's art classes, tied to a chair. But the door slams shut before he can get to her and it won't budge. 

As he pounds on the door, trying to get in, Bolem comes on scene wanting to know what all the ruckus is about. Told what the boy saw, Bolem is incredulous but unlocks the door anyway. The room is empty.

Fearing he's losing his sanity, Arnam demands to speak to Wahl. Bolem complies, and when the boy spills his guts and confesses to killing Elfie, Wahl doesn't seem too shocked by this news -- no, he thinks it's a pretty sick joke. You see, Bolem assures Elfie is fine, despite Arnam insisting he just saw her entombed and how she was most definitely dead.

Worried about the lad's mental state, the elder men say that's nonsense; and to prove it, Wahl calls for Elfie, who appears at the top of the steps alive and well.

Obviously, Arnam's mental circuits are a little fried by this development. Wahl, meanwhile, says he's willing to forget the whole thing but Arnam will have to pack-up and clear-out immediately -- never to come back again. And as he’s escorted off the premises, Wahl strongly urges the vanquished Arnam to seek some professional psychiatric help.

But after he's gone, things take another sinister turn as Bolem insists they should have just killed the interloper because Elfie has fallen in love with the boy. But Wahl assures that over time, she will forget all about Arnam and how he is no longer a threat: their little drug-induced acid trip has seen to that.

Still, Bolem worries that Arnam might come back and find out the truth: that Elfie's been dying for years, and how they must constantly restore her to life!

Here, Wahl and Bolem reveal the true nature of their treachery. You see, Elfie really does have a sickness: a rare blood disorder that essentially requires a full-body transfusion. And Bolem has perfected a procedure to accomplish this and keep her alive. Of course, to also accomplish this, they need a live donor. Lots of donors, actually, due to the high volume of blood needed.

And so, down into the bowels of the mill we go, where we find a bona fide mad scientist lair. And while Bolem prepares Elfie for the next transfusion, Wahl straps the struggling Amilore to a gurney. 

Hooking up both women to some kind of fancy Rube Goldberg contraption, it first drains all the bad blood out of Elfie, then sucks all the good blood out of the unwilling Amilore, which then transfers it into Elfie. Of course, the donor kind of gets the short shrift here.

And if you're thinking what I'm thinking, that all those gruesome displays on the Carousel are actually concealing the bodies of all the previous donors, explaining those 'renovations,' well, congratulations, Boils and Ghouls, you get a free plot cookie.

Thus, once the procedure is completed, while Elfie recovers, Wahl sets to work converting Amilore's body into another one of his macabre display pieces. Seems he's got some kind of serum that freezes the body in rigor, but with a little effort, is still malleable to pose. (Snap. Crackle. Pop.) Creepy.

Meanwhile, Bolem is already hard at work looking for their next donor. (I gather it has to be a certain blood type.) Taking a sample of Liselette's blood -- taken from Wahl's handkerchief that she used after accidentally cutting herself at the mill earlier, the doctor makes a startling discovery: turns out Liselette's blood composition is so close to Elfie's that the cure would be permanent once the transfusion is done. Good news for the Wahls -- bad news for Liselette.

Speaking of Liselette, with her help, Arnam has made a full recovery from his psychotic episode at the mill and now considers it all just a bad dream. But when he and Raab return to her apartment, they find her gone -- under some mysterious circumstances, according to the landlady.

Spying a picture of Liselette with Amilore on the dresser, Arnam only recognizes her as the girl he saw trapped in Wahl's basement. But Raab knows who it is: he and Liselette had drawn her hundreds of times; and he wants to know where Arnam saw her since the girl's been missing for the past few days.

As the circumstances pile up, Arnam finally comes clean on everything that happened to him at the mill. After taking all this in, Raab, who has -- make that had -- a crush on Amilore, isn't quite sold, but feels it's worth investigating. 

First, they check out the crypt and find it open, but the coffin is empty. Nearby, they spot a mannequin poorly hidden in an alcove that looks just like Elfie. (Obviously one of Wahl's sculptures.)

Meanwhile, any sympathy for Elfie's plight is quickly lost in the next scene as she gloats over the helpless Liselette, gleefully telling the bound captive how Arnam will be all hers after she's gone. Nearby, Bolem is also gloating, spouting some gobledy-gook on how his new super-serum, when combined with Liselette's blood, will be a permanent fix. 

But this permanent fix has a hefty price tag: for all his years of service, the doctor wants the bewitching Elfie for himself after she's finally cured.

Meantime, Arnam and Raab sneak into the mill just as a thunderstorm starts raging. And the howling winds of said storm overwhelm the brakes and triggers the Carousel. After it wheezes to life, when the revolving display gets to the last figure, Raab recognizes the fiery red hair and tells Arnam to stop the infernal contraption. But when he reengages the brakes, the display comes to such a screeching halt the head snaps off the figure in question, due to the momentum, and rolls to Raab's feet. 

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He then reluctantly picks it up for a closer look, but I think he knows the answer already before confirming it is Anilore.

But before this grisly revelation can even sink in, the men hear Liselette screaming and head for the basement, where Wahl is currently wrassling the captive’s gag back on (-- and we can't help but notice Carrel's exposed left breast that's bursting out of her corset.) 

However, with the preparations for the last transfusion almost complete, one also can’t help but notice how the two conspirators aren't really cooperating anymore. In fact, Wahl, none too happy about Bolem's lecherous demands, stabs the other man to death: Elfie belongs to him and him alone, you see.

Thus, as Arnam and Raab break through barricade after barricade, slowly making their way to the basement lab, Wahl hooks up both girls to the infernal exsanguination / infuser machine and cranks it up. 

Then, as it begins to drain away the bad blood from Elfie, he looks for the syringe with Bolem's miracle additive -- but it's not on the tray where it should be. And as its location remains stubbornly elusive, Wahl loses it and trashes the lab in an ultimately futile gesture to find it.

Now fully enraged, he lashes out at Bolem’s corpse. And as he furiously shakes the body by the lapels of the lab coat, Wahl finally gets his answer: the serum was in Bolem’s pocket the whole time, which shattered and dispersed when he fell on it after being stabbed.

Here, a defeated Wahl realizes all is now lost and Elfie is truly doomed to die for good. With that, he sets the lab on fire, takes up Elfie's body, and then slinks away, leaving the restrained Liselette to burn. 

Meanwhile, Arnam and Raab finally manage to get the last door broken down and rescue her in the nick of time. But the fire is now completely out of control and the trio barely makes it back outside to safety.

Back inside, Wahl carries Elfie up as high as they can go, but the flames aren't that far behind them. But I don't think he cares, unable to live on without his daughter. We then cut to several shots of the carousel burning -- each disintegrating figure revealing and confirming what was hidden underneath the facade all along. Yuck.

Then, as Wahl raves and strokes his daughter's hair, the flames finally catch up to them. Outside, Arnam and Liselette, safely embraced in each other's arms, watch solemnly as the mill burns to the ground, taking all of its horrors with it and reducing them to ash. Which brings our fractured fairy tale to...

And so, Mill of the Stone Women is another important cog in the cinematic tradition of corpses being displayed as works of art for an unwitting audience.

Now, the seeds of this particular sub-genre were first planted and popularized by Paul Leni’s silent film Waxworks (alias Das Wachsfigurenkabineet, 1923), an anthology film, where one of the wax displays of Jack the Ripper come to life in the final segment and menaces the protagonists. Sort of.

But this morbid notion really solidified with Michael Curtiz’s Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933), which borrowed elements of Phantom of the Opera, too, where a mad sculptor, horribly disfigured in a fire that claimed his masterpieces by an unscrupulous partner in an insurance scam, hides behind a mask as he takes a short-cut to rebuild his menagerie: using corpses dipped in wax -- even going so far as to murder the perfect models for his replacement sculptures.

But these notions didn’t really take root or hit the popular zeitgeist until House of Wax (1953), Andre de Toth’s 3D remake of the Curtiz film, where Vincent Price replaced Lionel Atwill as the doomed sculptor, whose mission was more of a revenge scheme against those who wronged him. But like with the original film, he is ultimately undone with his obsession to replace his masterpiece, an effigy of Marie Antoinette, which eventually uncovers his dastardly secret.

Even Corman would get in on the act with A Bucket of Blood (1959), a comedic parable on the art scene shot on a shoe-string, where a bumbling schlub played by Dick Miller comes to prominence at the local beatnik hangout after producing a series of grotesque sculptures, made from his murder victims covered in clay and plaster instead of wax.

1960 also saw the release of Georges Franju’s Eyes without a Face (alias Les yeux sans visage, 1960), where a guilt-ridden surgeon will stop at nothing to restore the face of his beloved daughter, who was horribly disfigured in a car accident he caused. And to those ends, he abducts several young women for some dubious face-transplant procedures to restore her beauty but he can’t quite make it stick. And yet, he keeps on trying.

There’s also a whiff on the lore of Elizabeth Bathory, a Hungarian noble woman, who allegedly murdered over 100 peasant girls to bathe in their blood to maintain her youth -- which has been translated to film several times, perhaps most notably by Hammer Films with Countess Dracula (1971). And visually, one cannot discount the visual delirium of Carl Theodor Dreyer’s Vampyre (1932), with its eerie and dreamlike atmosphere.  

Thus, Ferroni would draw inspiration from many legit sources, resulting in “an obsessively romantic homage to the expressionistic horror films of the silent era,” according to Del Valle (2003). “Its bravura set-piece -- a life size musical clock of historic statues in strange poses -- creates a compelling dialectic of the animate / inanimate … The windmill itself stands as a hideously beautiful music box filled with the corpses of beautiful women -- a shrine to the altar of death and decay.” And as the film ends in fire, it provides “the final strain on the mill, groaning under the pressure of Professor Wahl’s sins.”

Moving at a very deliberate pace, it doesn't take the viewer very long to surmise that all the missing women are now encased in wax on the carousel -- or whatever the hell that is Wahl injects them with to arrest decomposition and turn them into “stone.” The scene where he's prepping Annelore’s body, with the sound of her joints cracking as he breaks them out of rigor while moving them around, posing her, is the most disturbing scene in a film chock full of disturbing scenes.

So we know the ‘what’ and ‘who’ right away, but then the film takes its own sweet time showing us the ‘how’ and the ‘why.’ And I'll admit that I was encouraging the film to hurry up in a few spots, the tedium doesn't last long as the film starts to unravel the mystery, plot wise, right about the time Arnam cracks-up after his acid trip; a truly remarkable scene. 

In his relevant Trailers from Hell commentaries, director Brian Trenchard-Smith -- The Man from Hong Kong (1975), Dead End Drive-In (1986) -- referred to films like Mill of the Stone Women as a case of “Euro-Pudding." Basically, Trenchard-Smith explains, a co-production between Italy and France and sometimes Spain, backed with German money, with an international cast to boost the marquees across the Continent.

Pierre Brice (Arnam) was a French actor, who was probably most famous for playing Winnetou in a series of Euro-Westerns based on the novels of German author Karl May, whose box-office success led to the films of Sergio Leone and Sergio Carbucci. Scilla Gabellini (Elfi) was Italian, who began her career as a stand-in for Sophia Loren. Dani Carrel (Liselette) hailed from French Indochina.

Liana Orfei (Annelore), meanwhile, was a performer in her father’s circus as a clown, acrobat and animal trainer before transitioning to films, where she would play Delilah in one of my all time favorite peplums, Hercules, Samson and Ulysses (alias Ercole sfida Sansone, 1963).

“I was never really trained as an actress,” confessed Orfei (Arrow Films, 2021), who was officially discovered by Frederico Fellini. “Evidently, I could instinctively portray the kinds of characters the directors wanted me to play.”

As for working on Mill of the Stone Women, “I really have fond memories of this film,” said Orfei. “With Ferroni I could feel at ease, I felt protected. I could trust him, and that his decision was the right one. The atmosphere on the set was quite serious and professional.” And she loved the character she played, saying, “Annelore was a young lady full of dreams and with a lease on life, which makes her ultimate demise all the more tragic; because Annelore represented life, the joy of life, the energy of youth and love itself.”

As for filming her big death scene: “It was pretty dramatic because I had to act while being all tied-up, gagged, and wearing an all-too-tight corset; because while it was a treacherous scene, you still had to look beautiful at the same time. So the waist-cincher was unbearably tight, but it wasn’t only that. I like to act with my whole body: my eyes, mouth, nose, ears, hair, hands, my grit. Acting with the camera right in your face, and having to convey horror with your face all tied-up, because all I could use were my eyes and I couldn’t even move that much, made for quite the remarkable experience.”

As for our villains, both Herbert Böhme (Wahl) and Wolfgang Preiss (Bohlem) hailed from Germany. Böhme was mainly a TV actor but would star in a couple of Edgar Wallace krimis like Secret of the Red Orchid (alias Das Rätsel der roten Orchidee, 1962).

Preiss, meanwhile, will probably prove the most recognizable actor in the cast, having starred in a metric-ton of war films playing German officers -- The Longest Day (1962), Is Paris Burning (1966) and Raid on Rommel (1971). But you also might know him for playing the titular master criminal in Fritz Lang’s The 1,000 Eyes of Dr. Mabuse (alias Die 1000 Augen des Dr. Mabuse, 1960). And while Lang would not return for the sequels, Preiss would reprise the role in The Return of Dr. Mabuse (alias Im Stahlnetz des Dr. Mabuse, 1961), The Invisible Dr. Mabuse (alias Die unsichtbaren Krallen des Dr. Mabuse, 1962), both directed by our old pal Harald Reinl, The Terror of Doctor Mabuse (alias Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse, 1962) and Dr. Mabuse vs. Scotland Yard (alias Scotland Yard jagt Dr. Mabuse, 1963).

Both Böhme and Preiss anchor the film solidly as the scheming villains, whose stratagem of unwilling donors definitely qualifies as insane. Everyone else understood the assignment well enough, with a shout-out to Orfei and Carrel as the spunky heroine, who narrowly avoids a rather gruesome fate.

The film was shot in Italy at Cinecitta Studios. Said Orfei (Arrow Films, 2021), working at the storied studio “was a bit like the circus, enchanting and captivating.” At the time, Orfei was tri-lingual, speaking Italian, Spanish and French. (And that's her singing during the pub scene.) As with most Euro-Pudding films, Mill of the Stone Women was shot without sound with each actor speaking their native tongue to be dubbed over later. At least that is how the legend goes, but in her interview for Arrow Video, Orfei shed some light on some industry trade secrets vis-à-vis how the process really worked to prepare the finished film for foreign markets:

“I already spoke Spanish and French ever since I was little, so I had to learn English, of which I didn’t speak a word, because the circus had no English performers. I had to learn English because the first few films I starred in had us say numbers instead of English words. So if the line was, ‘I love you,’ we’d say ‘6-26.’ And then, ‘18-42. 78-95!’ Because that matched the lip-flaps for the English dubbing. I was starting to get annoyed by this idea of shooting a love scene or something tragic as if it were a times table. So, I learned English.”

Orfei would also spend time in the Cinecitta special effects department, getting a life mask made for her conversion into one of the stone women on Dr. Wahl’s cuckoo clock of the damned, and her pivotal severed head, which required her entire face to be covered in latex and would prove even more terrifying than the film itself:

“They completely covered my face, stuffing my nose with cotton swabs, and covering my eyes to protect them, and then covering my face with that material. Imagine how it felt, having my mouth closed, as well as my nose, my eyes, and even my ears! So it was quite shocking because I am terribly claustrophobic.”

So, by now, you’re probably asking if this film was so damned good, Why have I never heard of it before now? Well, as the kids say on the internets, it’s complicated.

The Anderson Daily Bulletin (March 28, 1963). 

To start with, for its American release in 1963, the film was imported by the Paradise Releasing Organization, which was founded by Riley Jackson and Robert Patrick and ran under the banner of Parade Pictures; and, well, Jackson and Patrick were no Nicholson and Arkoff, and Parade Pictures was no AIP when it came to getting these imports into theaters.

“I have been in films, radio and television for many years,” said Jackson in an interview with The San Francisco Chronicle (January 29, 1963). “But Parade Pictures started almost by accident. We had a chance to buy I Bombed Pearl Harbor (alias Taiheiyô no arashi, 1960), a Japanese film. We took it, dubbed it in English, then found that because of the dearth of pictures available to theaters, there was considerable demand for the film. (For more on this vacuum of content, check out our review of Bert I. Gordon's Beginning of the End, 1957).

“But this meant establishing an organization,” Jackson continued. “And once we had an organization, then we in turn had to have movies for our men to sell. You see, many companies cannot afford to handle inexpensive films which will return only a modest profit. Larger organizations are saddled with larger overhead. In fact, many companies have had to retire their experienced field men. We can operate with little real estate and we have hired some of these extremely valuable salesmen.

“So my partner and I see all the pictures we can, and then we dress up those we purchase for American audiences. Mill of the Stone Women is an Italian picture which did well in Europe. It was filmed in color -- the photography is excellent -- and it has an international cast including Pierre Brice, Wolfgang Preiss, who is in The Longest Day, and Scilla Gabel, who was in Sodom and Gomorrah (1962). We re-dubbed one of the voices, for I did not think the voice matched the character when we got the film, and we sweetened the sound effects. I think it’s important that the timbre matches the body in a picture.

 The Pensacola News Journal (January 30, 1963).

“We strive to find what theaters need. We are reissuing five Gene Autry pictures which have never been shown on television. These will not be shown in sophisticated cities like San Francisco, but we believe they will do well in small, rural towns. One time we received a letter from a motion picture exhibitor who complained he wanted no more films in which someone wrote with a feather. He meant costume dramas,” explained Jackson. “Simple American pictures are still in demand. The major producers have abdicated the second feature. We can handle them. We see an awful lot of dogs, but we often get a good one.”

And they did have a good one with Ferroni's film but, unfortunately, their dub job was pretty atrocious and something went wrong at the lab during the duping process, resulting in prints that were completely washed out, short-circuiting everything Ferroni had caught on film. They also cut it down, mostly a couple shots of some nipple slippage during the climax, when Elfie was tormenting poor Liselette, who was strapped to a table and struggling mightily.

Still, despite these shoddy efforts -- Parade Pictures would fold less than a year later in 1964 -- Mill of the Stone Women drew in some crowds thanks to a rather inspired promotional campaign and ad mats, including some truly inspired teasers (-- pictured above).

And when you dig into those press materials, there is evidence that Parade Pictures might’ve been behind the dubious inspiration of the source material, who even added yet another artist to the mix of inspirations.

Christ Breaking Down the Gates of Hell - Hieronymus Bosch. 

“They called him ‘hell haunted’ and ‘the noble inventor of bizarre and fantastic things.’ And if the good people of the Netherlands had any idea that the demonic painting of Hieronymus Bosch would one day spring to life, there would have been another burning in the village square. But come to life they did,” declared a blurb for The Laredo Morning Times (September 8, 1963).

“It took almost five centuries to turn the trick … [but as] curious art viewers gasped in fascination and horror at the demons and devils that danced throughout Bosch’s totally terrifying paintings of Hell, the fertile mind of Pieter Van Weigen was stirred. Taking pen in hand, Van Weigen was in effect collaborating with a dead man. The combined genius of these two masterminds of the nightmare resulted in Mill of the Stone Women, one of the greatest classics of horror and suspense to be screened.”

The Grand Rapids Press (May 1, 1964). 

Classic or not, contemporary reviews were hard to find as the film was usually relegated to the drive-ins, often paired up with the psycho-thriller Trauma (1962), where a woman’s repressed memories hide the identity of a killer. And there are even a few instances where it showed up as the bottom bill for Herschell Gordon Lewis’ gore-nographic Blood Feast (1963) with some amazing ballyhoo for its Grand Rapids, Michigan, run. 

“Three busty young ladies, two mad scientists, and a priggish goose who resembles the youthful Robert Taylor are involved in some wildly macabre activity in Mill of the Stone Women,” observed Paine Knickerbocker for The San Francisco Chronicle (January 1, 1963). “In this film the mad scientists are at first a trifle reticent. You can spot them as a couple of malicious loonies, but in what direction they will move is not clear at first. The mood is set with clanking chains, screams, and moans.” But, “The photography seems often out of focus, and certain details defy explanation, but it all ends in a Grand Guignol manner.”

The Green Bay Press Gazette (May 22, 1964). 

“Perhaps it is because the blood is bloody red in Technicolor that Mill of the Stone Women turned out to be such a horror of a picture,” noted Edward Frisbie for The San Francisco Examiner (January 1, 1963). “For if it’s horror you want, the Dutch provide it in an overwhelming transfusion in this import … To go into the madness of this film -- the stuff of which a child’s nightmares are made -- means to peruse scenes of petrified corpses encased in a thin layer of wax.” But, "while the Frankenstein Monster returned several times it’s probable this cast will stay buried.”

From there the film slipped into relative obscurity after its initial theatrical run, barely surviving in fleeting memories in the no-man’s-land of The Late, Late, Late Show. And there it stayed until it was rescued by Mondo Macabro, who released a restored and uncut version in 2004, with the option of a brand new dub or subtitles. This was when I first discovered it, and have been singing its praises ever since. As mentioned, Arrow Films have also put out an excellent blu-ray of the film, packed with a crap-ton of extras that they are so famous for.

And thanks to their efforts, one can really appreciate what Ferroni accomplished, and Mill of the Stone Women should take its rightful place as one of the prime examples of the horror film renaissance of the late 1950s and early ‘60s, and should be mentioned in the same breath as Black Sunday, House of Usher, Curse of Frankenstein (1957) and Horror of Dracula (1958).

Sadly, thanks in part to the poor box office performance in the States, Ferroni wouldn’t try his hand at another horror film for over a decade; not until Night of the Devils (alias La notte dei diavoli, 1972), which was loosely based on the same story that inspired the Wurderlak segment in Bava’s Black Sabbath (alias I tre volti della paura, 1963).

In the meantime, he would try his hand at other popular genre fair in Italy -- usually under the alias of Kelvin J. Padget, directing several musclemen / sword and sandal adventures, including The Trojan Horse (alias La guerra di Troia, 1961), Conquest of Mycene (alias Ercole contro Moloch, 1963) and Hero of Rome (Il colosso di Roma, 1964); a couple of Spaghetti Westerns with the likes of Blood for a Silver Dollar (alias Un dollaro bucato, 1965) and Fort Yuma Gold (alias Per pochi dollari ancora, 1966); and one James Bond knock-off, Secret Agent Super Dragon (alias New York chiama Superdrago, 1966).

But nothing really reached the alchemical fever pitch of Mill of the Stone Women. It’s not a perfect film, and not everything is explained away to my full satisfaction before Wahl’s house of horrors goes up in smoke. But the film’s visual payload is more than enough to gloss -- more like carpet bombs -- over these quibbles.

So, fair warning and all that. But I would encourage any casual viewer to stick with the film -- at least until the abrupt, 180-degree turn from doomed glacial Gothic-romance to maniacal mad-science. It's truly a very, very strange and weird, and yet, wonderful movie. 

Trust me. You won't regret it.

Originally published on March 25, 2005, at 3B Theater.

Mill of the Stone Women (1960) Galatea Film :: Parade Releasing Organization / P: Giampaolo Bigazzi, Riley Jackson, Robert Patrick / D: Giorgio Ferroni / W: Remigio Del Grosso, Giorgio Ferroni, Ugo Liberatore, Giorgio Stegani, Pieter van Weigen (Short Story) / C: Pier Ludovico Pavoni / E: Antonietta Zita / M: Carlo Innocenzi / S: Pierre Brice, Scilla Gabel, Dany Carrel, Herbert Böhme, Wolfgang Preiss, Liana Orfei, Marco Guglielmi