The Monster of the Opera

When a dance troupe begins rehearsing in an opera house that's been closed for many years, Stefano, an aristocratic vampire in black tie & tails, suddenly appears and, whaddaya know, the lead dancer's a dead ringer for his lost love. That horror cliché gets turned on its head, however, because this bloodsucker lusts only for revenge on the adulteress who buried him alive centuries before. There's lots of neck-biting but no blood as the dapper demon chases the scantily-clad chorines through corridors and catacombs when he's not poking them with a pitchfork or making them dance in a trance. Stefano also tries feeding a few to his vampire brides chained up in the dungeon before he's finally brought to heel by having his portrait burned and face torched. Most of the shapely babes run around in baby-doll pajamas and there's even some lesbianism in this no-budget nightmare from director Renato Polselli, a delightfully prurient "auteur" who's also got DELIRIUM, THE TRUTH ACCORDING TO Satan, and REVELATIONS OF A PSYCHIATRIST ON THE WORLD OF SEXUAL PERVERSION to answer for. Stefano looks a bit like Christopher Lee when he hisses or laughs maniacally and the movie's even got a few atmospheric moments thanks to the black & white photography and spooky old opera house. Mexican monster movies have nothing on Italy's "Golden Age of Horror" when it comes to celluloid insanity of the mind-boggling kind, let me tell you.

A dance troupe decide to rehearse in an old theatre - it turns out a vampire lives there who in turn discovers that the lead dancer of the troupe looks exactly like his lover who died centuries ago. This early Italian vampire movie was directed by Renato Polselli, who is known to me for a couple of truly demented pictures he helmed in the early 70's, namely the mad giallo Delirium and the insane supernatural shocker Black Magic Rites. With this earlier film, Polselli's deranged directing style is dialled down a notch or two. But while the excessive sex and violence approach of those later efforts is missing, there is still an unmistakeable off-the-wall element to the direction here.

It was at least partially written by prolific Italian screenwriter Ernesto Gastaldi, but it has to be said that the story is very run-of-the-mill stuff. Having said all that, gothic horror films rarely exactly have original and surprising stories, as their appeal generally comes from atmosphere and feel. This one's no different really, with the attractive black and white photography and gothic location being pretty obvious plus points. There are some nicely typical moments to appreciate such as a woman in a nightgown being chased down old corridors by an aristocratic looking vampire. But this film has a tendency to throw in some unexpected lunacy in amongst the gothic clichés, such as the fact that the aforementioned vampire is armed with a pitchfork! And then there is a completely unexplained scene where a manic dance routine is used to ward off the vampire (somehow) - it has to be said, it's a bit more original than crucifixes and wolfsbane! Its all pretty bloodless and is more goofy than anything else, yet Polselli still has the good grace to throw in nice details such as a gaggle of feral vampire brides chained up to the walls in the cellar. So, you could overall describe this as a combination of the typical gothic horror with less expected eccentricities. Like other Polselli films its definitely worth a watch.

From the earliest Melies films, The Phantom of the Opera , to The Black Swan, the ballet girls facing monsters and demons (either inner or external) are always a nice formula. Il mostro dell' opera doesn't have much to add to the pile, but yet there are some intriguing moments which set it apart from the rest of the bunch.

Most importantly, we really do have a cast full of proper dancers. Of these, Milena Vukotic really was an accomplished ballerina. The leading lady in the double role of modern-day Giulia and mediaeval Laura, Barbara Haward, is a very pretty, sensitive actress and evidently another classically trained ballerina - and yet she seems to have disappeared from the face of the earth after that movie. Anyone knows ANYTHING about her?

The musical numbers are not merely showstoppers, but actually supposed to be stemming from the narrative, i.e. like in a 1930s musical, where random people begin to sing and dance and just happen to know the intricate choreography and the choral arrangements. To make the stage cleaning process more fun, they burst into a Charleston; to keep the (utterly bloodless and sexless) vampire at bay, they decide to 'dance the devil away', even though it's never explained why frenzied rolling around to big band bebop should help one in this department.

A massive lesbian group menage and a black pussycat scaring the living daylights out of some thirty grown-up men and women. Definitely not a wasted 1,5 hours, so have your reefers rolled up.

Renato Polselli's The Monster of the Opera is about a group of young dancers who rehearse in an old theatre unaware that it is home to a vampire. But mostly it is about knickers.

Polselli's story makes zero sense, the director focusing far more on the attractive young female dancers in their underwear than on the narrative. The girls run around in their knickers, dance in their knickers, get fruity with each other in their knickers (the film being one of the earliest horrors to feature lesbianism), and, in the totally absurd finalé, go wild in their knickers, their crazy gyrating keeping the vampire at bay (makes a change from a holy cross and garlic, I suppose).

But as much as I enjoy seeing pretty ladies cavorting in their underwear, the film is actually very tedious, while the performers' inexplicable histrionics soon get on the nerves. Polselli also directed The Vampire and the Ballerina (1960), which also featured a vampire, pretty dancers and underwear - I guess that film was a success for him, hence the repetition.

Troubled by strange dreams, a woman joins her traveling ballerina tripe as they make a stop at a Count's castle in the area for a show, but as they carry on with rehearsing for their big show find their charge to be a vampire looking to turn the group into similar creatures and must race to stop him.

Overall, this was a massively enjoyable Gothic horror effort. One of the biggest factors found here is the generally strong setup that generates the kind of old-school Gothic horror stylings that are part of the genre's history. Starting with the initial scenes of the troupe coming together to help their friend who is going through a series of bizarre dreams about a caped figure going around killing people, their whole backstage interactions that et to show off their friend dynamics, and the various personalities within the rest of the troupe that set up the kind of fine starting point that works quite nicely here. Not only odes that provide a great grounding for the multitude of storylines and subplots going on within the rest of the film once they arrive at the castle for the exhibition including the overt lesbianism for some fun moments but also how their professional jealousy overcomes their personal friendship as they spend the time goofing around while investigating the backstage parts of the castle. Once this moves into the series of interactions within the castle involving the group being whittled down while waiting for their final performance, this one starts getting really fun. As the main group continues rehearsing their performance on the stage inside the castle, the ability to continually splinter off and disappear allows for some fun moments with the group trusting the count's assistant while exploring that brings them into his capture or the inability to realize the count is watching them provide some great times before getting to the wild finale in the castle's basement. With this offering up plenty of solid Gothic-based action in the standout performance by the troupe featuring all sorts of great interactions and setpieces, the different confrontations with the vampire down in the chamber where the female vampires are chained up waiting for him, and the big action set piece to finally rid themselves of the threat bring this one to a thrilling, exciting finish. Utilizing the castle setting for its best aspects and having plenty of fun with the women running around in their nightgowns, this has a lot to like about it. There are some issues here that hold this one down. The main issue with the film is the outright slack pacing that slows this to a crawl at a point when it should be picking up speed. The series of background interactions that take place with the girls, bouncing around in flirtatious pranks, exploring the secret passageways of the castle, or going through the rehearsal part of their play serves this one nicely as a way to get to know the girls but also extends way too long for what it's trying to do. It leaves the vampire revelation until much later than it really should offering up the kind of sluggish start that saps a lot of the intrigue and thrills of this one more than it really should, especially with a lot of the action here being quite repetitive and involving the couples getting together or the inquisitive nature taking them out on tours. It doesn't hold this back much, especially compared to the flimsy pretext for the performance in the first place, but it's the main factor with this one.

Today's Rating/PG: Violence.