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Emily De Blancheville (Ombretta Colli) returns to her family home,
Blancheville Castle, accompanied by her best friend Alice (Irán Eory) and
Alice's brother John (Vanni Materassi), who's also her fiancé,
incidently, for the first time in many years, and for the first time since
her father'd death. Her brother Rodrigue (Gérard Tichy) welcomes them all
with open arms, but it's soon apparent that not all is well, especially
since the local doctor Lerouge (Leo Anchóriz) is around a little too much
given there's nobody sick in the house, the housekeeper Miss Eleonore
(Helga Liné) seems to keep many a secret ... and one night, when she
wanders though the castle, Alice finds a disfigured man ... who John later
reveals to be his and Emily's father who hasn't died after all, but is
filled by the desire to kill Emily before her 21st birthday to keep the
family line alive (it's all based on superstition of course) - but then
daddy escapes, but makes nightly visits to lure her into an early grave.
It's soon that suspicions and accusations fly ... but then John is
attacked, Emily is killed (though it's later found out she was only in a
death-like trance and entombed alive) - and then Doctor Lerouge, one of
the chief suspects in the murky case, finds the body of Emily's dad ...
and everything points to the fact that he was killed a couple of days before
Emily's "death" ... Well, ultimately, Rodrigue is revealed to
be the real killer, but he's unmasked and dealt with, and somehow Emily
escapes her tomb, and finally she leaves with a great inheritance and John
on her side, while the doctor, who was instrumental in unmasking Rogdigue,
gets Alice. Quite obviously inspired by Edgar Allan Poe's The
Fall of the House of Usher, The Blancheville Monster is
still a nice and atmospheric gothic/murder mystery. Sure, on closer
inspection the whodunnit part of the piece seems unnecessarily
far-fetched, the characters are mostly disappointingly one-dimensional,
and not all the acting is really up to the task - but the film has a
likeable and refreshingly old-fashioned creepiness to it tha's sure to
capture pretty much anyone with at least a touch of nostalgia and a love
for the genre beyond what the current horror trend might be.
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