RG
Roberto Giacomelli
•Marco, a thirty-five-year-old Roman, travels to Naples for a pleasure trip. After meeting his cousin Elena, Marco falls victim to a pickpocketing incident where a necklace with a crucifix decorated with seven gems is stolen from around his neck. The man immediately appears very agitated, and his only concern now is to recover the crucifix, as the precious piece of jewelry is the only remedy for a curse that has plagued him since birth: only with the crucifix around his neck can Marco avoid transforming into a werewolf on full moon nights. To find the object, Marco contacts the local underworld until he reaches a fence of stolen goods: his precious crucifix has ended up in Rome.
A famous Neapolitan saying goes "See Naples and then die," an apt statement for the characters who come into contact with the infamous "Roman Werewolf in Naples" protagonist of the ultimate trash-cult horror symbol: "The Cross of Seven Stones." Also known by the significant title "The Camorra Against the Werewolf" (sic!) it is probably the film that alone encompasses the entire essence of trash, a horror that wouldn't scare even an infant, a movie packed with numerous unintentionally comic scenes, with effects so demenial and poor that they elicit more than one laugh; in short, a film so bad and clumsy that it evokes pity.
"The Cross of Seven Stones" starts with a delirious subject that, even if told in two words, could hardly be taken seriously; a werewolf who must face a gang of camorrists to recover a precious little object is really a whimsical idea that would be more suited to a comedy with Enzo Cannavale, rather than a horror that nevertheless aims to scare. The special effects are of a disarming ingenuity: werewolf transformations made with a dissolve as done in the 1940s; an exploded belly rendered with an obvious balloon filled with tomato sauce and even a squalid body melt sequence... not to mention some explosions at the end and sudden, intrusive frames showing monstrous faces clearly stolen from another movie.
As for the look of the werewolf, one should draw a pitying veil: once turned into a werewolf Marco appears naked as a worm with a fur mask covering the upper part of his face in the style of a Mexican wrestler, a wig simulating a flowing and chestnut mane and gloves reproducing clawed paws to cover the hands. Then there is a question that surely anyone has asked while watching the movie: why is Marco completely naked right after transforming and then, after returning to normal, has all his clothes on again, clean and ironed? Well, evidently there are things that humans are not authorized to know!
The screenplay in several points seems improvised, to the extent that the film often seems almost incapable of moving forward and relies on comically ridiculous dialogues (mostly ridiculous Neapolitan farce sketches that end punctually in swearing) and the total inability of the lead actor, an unforgettable Eddy Endolf (in reality the same director Marco Antonio Andolfi) worthy of a trash Oscar. Here and there are also inserted sequences of black masses and satanic orgies to clarify the protagonist's past and the origin of his curse, flashbacks that reach their climax in the scene where little Marco (standing in his crib, peeking from behind the bars like a prisoner) meets his devil-werewolf father, a guy trapped in a furry costume that makes him look like a hybrid between one of the monkeys from "Planet of the Apes" and the hairy Chewbacca from "Star Wars".
The film copy analyzed is even the director's cut, that is, the version remastered by Andolfi, director of such a masterpiece. In this version the film is titled "Talisman" (but we like to always and anyway remember it as "The Cross of Seven Stones") and lasts a few minutes longer because the director has inserted at the beginning, at the end, and in a long dream sequence in the middle of the film, useless, boring, and rather irritating snippets in the style of "National Geographic" in which images of war, volcanic eruptions, third-world children, and various effect images are shown as if to underline the fact that all the evils of humanity have a connection with the werewolf's curse; in short, avoidable idiocies.
If evaluated under an objective optic and a real sense of aesthetic value, "The Cross of Seven Stones" is as atrocious as cinema can offer: non-existent screenplay, joke-like dialogues, improvised actors, beginner direction, supermarket special effects, and so much involuntary ridiculousness. If, on the other hand, this film is evaluated under a purely trash optic, then one has to deal with an absolute masterpiece, capable of making the viewer spend 90 minutes of guaranteed laughs.
