It is said that no parent should ever have to bury their child. Such a death, especially when the child is quite young, is certainly the most heartbreaking experience any of us could ever imagine. Of course, it’s much easier to swallow if our dead kid comes back as a vengeful ghost who kills all sorts of crappy villagers we blame for her death! That’s the most awesome experience any of us could ever imagine!
Director Mario Bava (Baron Blood, I vampiri) uses all his technical prowess behind the camera to prop up this mostly dull revenge tale of a supernatural tot forcing superstitious dummies into impaling themselves on spikes and cutting their own throats.
Spooky village sets are impressively lit, the camera swoops and swirls here and there in impressive fashion, and our squared jawed hero even ends up chasing himself repeatedly through the same room again and again for reasons that a spectral brat could only understand!
Dr. Paul Eswai’s nightmarish encounter with his equally hunky double only served to illustrate his genius as the guy investigating the mysterious deaths in the village.
Despite spending all of the film decrying the villager’s superstitious beliefs and being outraged at the bizarre home remedies provided by the local witch which they all favored over his fancy pants modern day medicine (which seemed to consist of him placing a wet rag on a chick’s head), Dr. Eswai has to have his ass saved by the local witch a couple of times, doesn’t debunk anything at all, but yet walks away with the only hot broad in the whole village! The benefits of a college education are obvious indeed!
Dr. Eswai is called to the village by his friend Inspector Kruger to help get to the bottom of things. His first task is to perform an autopsy on a gal who fell onto some sharp spikes. I wasn’t sure how the autopsy would dispel whether she accidentally fell, was pushed, or as was forced by a ghost to jump on them, but it allowed Dr. Eswai to meet the luscious Monica so Dr. Eswai clearly knew what he was doing!
Monica is a gal who used to live in the village, went away to school and then came back just in time to witness an autopsy.
Monica turns out to have a secret connection to the crazed baroness/medium who is also the mother of the dead child at the wormy center of this poop sandwich of a town crisis.
Monica’s relationship with the baroness and her return to town just in the nick of time to provide a sexy damsel in distress is so convenient for the story that it’s one of the spookiest elements of the film!
Even spookier though is Dr. Eswai’s hair! It maintains such an immovable, glazed look throughout the proceedings that it proves to be a sturdier hero than the largely ineffective Dr. Eswai himself! It’s also smartly colored with an oragnish hue that goes quite well with Dr. Eswai’s fashion don’t burnt umber suit!
It’s easy to run Dr. Eswai down though for his utter lack of involvement in successfully bringing the mystery to a successful conclusion, but really, isn’t he just a glorified coroner here? Can we really expect everyone to live up to legendary TV coroner Quincy, M.E.?
After all, it wasn’t like things didn’t get wrapped up, right? Once the medium unleashed her ghost on the town witch’s boyfriend, this caused an occult powered catfight between the two that ultimately settled everything.
And Dr. Eswai still ended up with Monica. And his hair still looked super suave. I’m pretty sure Quincy would’ve taken that result any day of the week!
© 2010 MonsterHunter
