‘You afraid of ghosts, Miss Julie?’
A successful teacher has finally put a traumatic childhood behind her. Then, on the eve of their birthday, her abusive twin sister escapes from the psychiatrist institute where she has been incarcerated for many years. Strange incidents occur, and the teacher fears that her sibling may be plotting a bloody revenge…
Italian Giallo feature that leans more heavily into the horror, courtesy of co-writer and director Ovidio G. Assonitis, hiding behind the alias of Oliver Hellman. Leading the cast are Patricia Mickey, Michael MacRae and Dennis Robertson.
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Growing up with an abusive twin sister, Mary (Allison Biggers), was deeply traumatic for Julia Sullivan (Mickey). It’s taken her years to get straightened out, but now she’s in a good place, teaching children with hearing difficulties and enjoying a long-term relationship with psychiatrist boyfriend Sam Edwards (MacRae). But then, out of the blue, she’s contacted by the family priest, Father James (Robertson). Biggers is seriously ill, and duty dictates a visit to the institution where she’s been incarcerated for the best part of a decade. The visit does not go well. A skin virus has disfigured her, and she is as unbalanced as ever. Mickey can’t leave quickly enough.
While preparing for her upcoming birthday, Mickey hears from Robertson that Biggers has escaped, which makes her understandably nervous. Mr Kimura (Jerry Fujikawa), the maintenance man in her apartment building, is suddenly nowhere to be found, and her favourite pupil, Sacha (Richard Baker), is mauled to death by a savage dog that reminds her of her sister’s childhood pet. MacRae has to go out of town to a conference, potentially leaving her alone the night before her birthday. He arranges for her best friend Helen (Morgan Most) to spend the night at her apartment with strict instructions not to open the door to anyone. Unfortunately, she accidentally lets the cat out and goes to fetch it, leaving the door wide open. The scene is set for a truly unforgettable birthday celebration.
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The Italian Giallo thriller, extremely popular in Europe in the early to mid-1970s, is generally credited as an early inspiration for the American Slasher craze, which started with Bob Clark’s ‘Black Christmas’ (1974). By the time Assonitis’ film hit theatres, that craze was in full swing, largely due to the phenomenal box office returns of the John Carpenter classic ‘Halloween’ (1978). Given those financial considerations and an almost entirely American cast, it’s no surprise that this film abandons some of the more familiar Giallo mystery tropes and opts for far more of that slasher vibe. There’s no complex conundrum here, merely a half-hearted ‘who is the killer?’ puzzle, which takes a distinct second place to shock tactics and gory moments. There isn’t all that much credibility in the story from the start, and by the end, it does feel like Assonitis didn’t care for logic and was just happy to focus on the nasty stuff.
The abandonment of the plot in favour of a more blunt-force approach is a little bit of a shame. Although the basic story set-up is a little hard to swallow, Assonitis displays a solid grip on the narrative in these early scenes and shows some talent for building suspense. Low angles and wide lenses help establish an unsettling vibe to the apartment house, and these displays of visual flair are a nice call back to the work of Argento and those other early Giallo filmmakers. Sadly, the film just runs out of story during the second act, and from the moment Mickey’s airheaded BFF answers the apartment door for no reason and then leaves it open to go look for the cat, things disintegrate into silliness as likely to provoke laughter as chills. Curiously, the climax is remarkably similar to that of the Canadian slasher ‘Happy Birthday To Me’ (1981). However, the two debuted in theatres only a few weeks apart, so it’s unlikely that either influenced the other.
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In terms of the gore, this one does deliver, although the practical SFX look a little dated now. Those flaws are particularly noticeable during the interaction between a Rottweiler’s head and an item of home improvement equipment. Just the concept of the scene is still likely to upset animal lovers, but the fakery will amuse others (me included). The scene had more significant consequences, though, as the British Board of Film Classification singled it out as one of the things they really didn’t like about Assonitis’ movie. This distaste resulted in the film getting swept up in the media-created U.K. ‘Video Nasty’ witch-hunt of the early 1980s. Initially released on home video by the Medusa label in 1983, it was pulled out of circulation and placed on the ‘Prosecuted Films’ list by the British authorities. There’s no information about any specific legal action taken regarding it, though, and the film was eventually released uncut in the U.K. in 2004.
The information concerning its warm reception in the U.K. is sadly one of the most memorable things about this cinematic exercise. Opportunities to make the story and characters more impactful are squandered early on, with few details provided about the twin’s past life to set the groundwork and make the audience invest in Mickey’s growing hysteria. We are told that the girls never knew their father, as if it’s important somehow, but it’s never referred to again. Parish priest Robertson seems to have been involved with the situation from day one, but his role in the drama is never clearly defined. The killer’s motivations aren’t addressed in any coherent way, and the child with glowing eyes that appears on the film’s poster is another red herring; she’s nowhere to be found. There is an ongoing sense of impending revelations that will turn the story on its head at the end, but, again, those never happen, the film opting for vague nonsense instead.
Clik here to view.
Mickey appears here under her married name of Trish Everly, her husband at the time being Phil, who was one-half of the legendary musical act The Everly Brothers. Like the rest of the cast, she was an American, and the film seems to have been shot entirely on location in Savannah, Georgia. It’s unusual then that the film is apparently solely of Italian origin rather than some kind of an international co-production. Assonitis was born in Egypt, and one of his co-writers was Peter Shepherd, a British actor-producer. They worked together several times, with Shepherd usually as assistant director, a role he also fulfilled on Bernardo Bertolucci’s ‘1900/Novecento’ (1976). Assonitis is probably best remembered now for ‘Beyond the Door/Chi sei?’ (1974), a ripoff of ‘The Exorcist’ (1973) that was apparently so blatant that it prompted a successful lawsuit by Warner Brothers. He also directed the ridiculous octo-horror ‘Tentacles/Tentacoli’ (1977), which definitely had nothing to do with ‘Jaws’ (1975).
There are some surprising moments of filmmaking skill on display here, but the enterprise is finally sunk by an underdeveloped script and a determination to shock rather than scare.