After Allen’s wife Evelyn dies in childbirth he goes mad and starts bringing home trashy redheads with questionable morals. He gets them into his dungeon and tortures and kills them after making them put on a pair of Vampirella boots. His doctor, who apparently has no qualms about his patient being a killer, tells him he needs to get married again in order for these episodes to go away. Because, you know, that would work. So Allen finds himself a trashy blonde with questionable morals and marries her.

Allen is apparently a Lord or Baron or something so he has greedy relatives hanging around until they start dropping dead and we are supposed to start wondering at this point if Evelyn is dead or alive. I’m also not absolutely sure Allen is actually killing these girls. They may be getting away.

This movie is bad and I don’t mean bad in that trashtastic-cheesy-campy-so-bad-it’s-good way. I mean bad as in it stinks. The dang movie is only 98 minutes long and Evelyn finally came out of her grave at minute 82, and it wasn’t even like what you think it should be. The whole movie was slow, just blah blah blah plod plod plod until you get to the end. Then it became a seriously over the top absurdity of reveals and whodunits.

The transfer is horrid. I had to watch educational films in school in the 70’s that were probably already 20 years old that had better quality. There were times when the film wasn’t even lined up properly! The color is awful and the editing looks like it was done with a pair of dull scissors. In spite of everything the audio was surprisingly good. I didn’t have to keep the remote in my hand.

There’s plenty of nudity in that casual 70’s Italian way. I love girls from the 70’s with their little potbellies and full hips; full of confidence. Why everyone today is dying to be as skinny as possible I’ll never understand. Possibly the only reason to watch this movie is for the nudity and erotic dancing. There really isn’t much gore; the deaths are more implied than shown. However there is one super awesome death where a woman gets whacked on the head and there is a brief moment where she has this “the hell?” look on her face then gets whacked again. Then her body is placed in a large cage full of foxes. It was great because it was funny, not for any other reason.

Going back and reading the synopsis I see that I rented a giallo, NOT a horror movie, so really it’s my own fault. I guess I wasn’t paying enough attention but in my defense look at the cover art! Where’d that severed head come from? There was no severed head in the movie. Gah!

I can’t really recommend this film to anyone. It had some good moments of atmosphere and acting but ultimately was far too slow and boring to keep my attention. I hesitate to say the story didn’t make a lot of sense at times and was too convoluted since I am talking about Italian giallo but this one was far worse than the norm.

3 out of 10 dead wives that won’t stay dead. Maybe. I’m not sure.