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Fleeing from her incestuous & abusive hunchbacked brother Franz Holsten
(Luciano Rossi), Greta's (Ewa Aulin) coach has an accident outside castle
Ravensbrück, that butally kills her driver & renders her an amnesiac.
Count Walter (Sergio Doria) & Countess Eva (Angela Bo) Ravensbrück however
happily accept her as a guest in their castle, & their doctor, Sturges
(Klaus Kinski) can at least establish Greta's name ... from an amulet she's
wearing, that by pure chance also contains the secret of reviving the dead - a
problem which Sturges has long been working on in his sparetime.
However, when he finally gets around to reviving a dead body, he is killed
by some evil spirit ...
Greta meanwhile, unfazed by this, seems to enjoy her stay, & soon both
Eva & Walter fall in love with her ... & soon Eva has sex with her ...
but when Eva witnesses Walter having sex with her too, she lures her into the
dungeon & walls her in.
When Eva the next day tells him that Greta has left all of a sudden - in her
nighty, too -, Walter has the local commisssario (Attilio Dottesio) send out a
searchparty, but to no avail, Greta remains missing. Eva's mood meanwhile
couldn't be better, until - at a masque - she sees Greta. In panic she runs
off, but everywhere she goes, Eva is already there, & time & again she
turns into a monster too. As the only logic consequence, Eva throws herself out
of a window to her death.
At Eva's funeral, Walter's father (Giacomo Rossi-Stuart) turns up, & all
of a sudden he sees Greta too ... as it turns out he has been her former lover,
& now - after the funeral is over & he has stayed behind - she chases
him across the graveyard right into Eva's crypt, who miraculously is
resurrected & kills her stepdad.
Greta then returns to castle Ravensbrück, where she brutally kills not only
Walter, but also his sevant Simeon (Marco Mariani), before she disappears for
good ...
Only the poor commissario is left baffled, until he finds Greta's amulet in
Walter's hand & takes it to the local scientist professor Kempte (Franco
Cerulli), who can identify the symbol holding the secret of eternal life, &
he tells the story of doctor Holsten (yes, it's Greta's brother Franz from the
beginning of the movie), who sought, & apparently found, a way to revive
the dead ... but then his sister - Greta - died, & he revived her. But far from
being grateful, she then brutally killed him & since has been roaming the
countryside ...
Joe D'Amato's early attempt at Gothic horror is seriously hampered by a way
too tight budget for this kind of movie and a lack of real interest into the
genre. What D'Amato instead does is throwing Gothic mainstays into his film
(& out of it again) rather at will, be it raising the dead, ghost girls,
spooky masques, forbidden (incestuous) love, girls (& cats) walled in, mad
scientists and whatever else the genre might offer. However, this hefty stew,
garnered with a dose of eroticism, comes across quite charmingly
despite/because of all its incongruencies & plotholes, because of its
over-the-top approach to its material.
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