Italian Mono

Mario Bianchi’s film is a 1982 remake of the recently reviewed Malabimba. The spirit of a newly deceased woman possesses her daughter, and proceeds to wreak havoc in the gothic castle that is the family’s domicile. Of course, given that the father is a murderous drug-addict, there isn’t that much for the possessed teen to do, as far as the plot itself is concerned. Curiously, this effort is less lurid than its predecessor (barring a couple of insanely OTT performances), with less nudity and taboo-busting, and also a rather less interesting deconstruction of respectable society. Plotting and motivation are haphazard at best. Still, it’s a not-unentertaining late-period Italian gothic, blessed with handsome sets.
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Connoisseurs of Eurosleaze will be pleased with this nasty little variation on the gothic. In an isolated castle, a fractious, failing aristocratic family has gathered. There is no more money in the family, except indirectly: one brother, now in a vegetative state, is married to a rather wanton woman, who now holds the purse strings. The matriarch suggests that her other son marry her, even though his brother is still alive. The man is properly horrified by the suggestion, and he is also still in mourning for his wife. But then something – the spirit of his wife? a demon? – invades his teenage daughter, who then starts acting out sexually and recreating scenes from The Exorcist.
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