AC
As Chianese
•Cinematic debut for the great Italo-American director, author of classics like the "Godfather" saga and "Dracula". It's a debut under the sign of producer Roger Corman who, as per tradition, finances a Hammer-style gothic film with touches of unusual ferocity and sadism bordering on the nascent Italian horror. The plot is based on a story by cinematographer Charles Hannawalt: a noble Irish family, the Hallorans, gather in their castle to commemorate little Kathleen, who died prematurely eight years earlier, drowned in the pond adjacent to the manor. But the meeting is also a good opportunity to clarify certain details of an inheritance that, with family intrigues and a mysterious axe-wielding assassin, will prove more than dangerous. Shot in a more than unsettling black and white, the film benefits from a well-written screenplay by Coppola himself, with the intention of criticizing the institution of the family, a clear critique rich in psychoanalytical elements that do not clash with the film's gothic tone: stunning the images of the murders or the dolls that mysteriously emerge from the pond whose bottom, legend has it, houses a tombstone and a wax statue. Although produced on a low budget, actors William Campbell and Luana Anders, at their best, do everything they can to elevate the film in terms of performance. The screenplay comes to the aid of a sometimes uncertain technique. Also known as "Dementia 13" and "The Haunted and the Hunted".
