Monday, October 22, 2018

PRIME EVIL: THE RED QUEEN KILLS SEVEN TIMES (1976) ** ½


Two rich sisters named Kitty and Eveline live in a mansion where a spooky painting of a woman in a red cloak foretells their ominous fate.  Decades later, friends of the now-grown Kitty (played by Barbara Bouchet) are picked off one by one by a killer dressed as the woman in the painting.  It’s only a matter of time before she becomes the killer’s next target.  Even though the police are hard at work on the case, Kitty is withholding an incriminating secret that could bust the investigation wide open.

The central murder mystery is ho-hum, and the stalking scenes suffer from a few repetitive kills.  (The only memorable death involves someone being impaled on a gate.)  In fact, the film’s subplots are a lot more interesting than the murder investigation itself.  The legend of the woman in red, along with the revelation of Barbara’s big secret (not to mention her involvement with a junkie blackmailer) are sure to keep you engaged when the rest of the movie is spinning its wheels.

The Red Queen Kills Seven Times is an uneven, sometimes frustrating giallo, but it’s buoyed by a great performance by Bouchet.  She’s given plenty of scenes that allow her to descend into wild-eyed theatrics and she looks positively stunning during her freak-outs.  While most of the film is patchy, the final reel in which Bouchet is locked in a slowly flooding room teeming with rats is stellar.  (She also gets a handful of sultry nude scenes too.)  Sybil Danning also shows up briefly, but you’ll wish her part was bigger.

AKA:  Horror House.  AKA:  Blood Feast.  AKA:  Feast of Flesh.  AKA:  The Corpse Which Didn’t Want to Die.  AKA:  The Lady in Red Kills Seven Times.

You can watch the film for free on Amazon Prime:  HERE

No comments:

Post a Comment