This was followed up by two crime films -- Frame Up (alias Quella carogna dell'ispettore Sterling, 1968) and The Vatican Affair (alias A qualsiasi prezzo, 1968). Then, Miraglia switched gears with The Night Evelyn Came Out of the Grave (alias La notte che Evelyn uscì dalla tomba, 1971) and The Red Queen Kills Seven Times (alias La dama rossa uccide sette volte, 1972).
Serving as writer and director on both of those films, Miraglia’s end result were a quasi mash-up of a gialli and Gothic melodrama with serpentine plots that are nigh impossible to unravel as they try to devour their own tails, which are then almost completely undone by one (or two or six) plot twist(s) too many.
To be fair, The Night Evelyn Came Out of the Grave only has one twist, but it’s a real slobber-knocker that is saved for the climax where things get a bit … messy.
Before we spill that milk, we begin with a wealthy English aristocrat named Alan (Steffen), who has recently been released from an asylum after a lengthy stay after suffering a nervous breakdown when he caught his wife, Evelyn (Natale), having sex with another man.
Seems Evelyn has now passed on, and Alan’s doctor (Stuart) feels his patient is ready to be integrated back into society. But the high-strung Alan is still obsessed with his wife, holding seance after seance to try and contact her spirit (-- that appear to be working), and bringing hookers and strippers, who are all dead ringers and surrogates for his late, red-haired wife, back to his palatial estate for his own private therapy sessions.
And while giving them the nickel tour, they always end up in the old ancestral dungeon, where the host kinda Mr. Hydes-out, whipping his victims before restraining and killing them -- or does he?
See, we always cut away before Alan
puts the final exclamation point on these interludes, with him waking up
later, alone, somewhere on the grounds, suffering from a seeming
lycanthropic hangover with no real memory of what he’s done and no
evidence of his deeds to be found.
Despite all of this odd behavior (-- some might even call it psychotic), his doctor insists Alan is fine; and with the encouragement of his cousin Farley (Raho), Alan decides to get married again, taking Gladys (Malfatti), another *ahem* ‘exotic dancer’ as his wife. And while this seems to calm Alan down considerably, sinister forces seem to be conspiring against poor Gladys.
And once the hired help is ruled out,
husband and wife begin to suspect the rumors of Evelyn’s death might’ve
been greatly exaggerated. And then these suspicions take us by the hand
and lures everybody into a final ambush of double-crosses, gaslight
revelations, and an inheritance grab with a climax where things really
get twisted into an intractable knot of “You have gotta be kidding me!?"
It doesn't help that Miraglia has an eye for a certain type of woman, which resulted in all of his actresses looking nearly identical, making it hard to deduce who we're looking at half the time. And thanks to the ambiguity of that final big twist, the implications of who gets away with what at the end of The Night Evelyn Came Out of the Grave are a bit scurvy and, dare I say, a bit of a buzzkill.
Originally posted on May 27, 2016, at Micro-Brewed Reviews.
The Night Evelyn Came Out of the Grave (1971) Phoenix Cinematografica :: Phase One / P: Bruno Nicolai / D: Emilio Miraglia / W: Fabio Pittorru, Massimo Felisatti, Emilio Miraglia / C: Gastone Di Giovanni / E: Romeo Ciatti / M: Bruno Nicolai / S: Anthony Steffen, Marina Malfatti, Enzo Tarascio, Giacomo Rossi Stuart, Paola Natale
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