User Reviews

A GAME FOR EVELINE (1972, original title Un gioco per Eveline) is an extremely rare and low budget little giallo shot in France. I found a scuzzy copy on Youtube with English subtitles. The story begins with a bickering married couple surviving a car wreck and ending up recuparting at a countryside villa inhabited by another couple and the ghost of a little girl who seems to haunt the place. Not much happens in this slow-burning oddity; there are a few mildly spooky scenes but little in the way of the carnage or indeed atmosphere most viewers will expect from the genre. In addition, the mystery is just too slight to sustain the running time, so there are boring parts. As for the twist ending, I suspect many will class it as a cop out...

A Game For Eveline has Nathalie (Erna Schurer, Scream of the Demon Lover) and Pierre (Wolfgang Hillinger) arguing over having children when they nearly drive off a cliff. They find their way to the home of Phillipe (Marco Guglielmi) and Minou Giraud (Adriana Bogdan), another couple who are mourning the loss of their daughter Eveline. That night, in bed, Pierre hears the cry of a child and during other times, a doll seems to be moving around from room to room. Phillipe is the only one who can see her and he claims that she's a ghost while Eveline claims that her daughter is alive and being hidden from her. In the midst of all this weirdness, the hosts seemingly want to keep them there as long as possible and keep trying to sleep with both of their guests.

You might find this boring but I loved the mood. And who can turn away Rita Calderoni when she shows up in a film, this time hiding up a platinum blonde wig, bestill my Italian Gothic loving barely beating right heart. She also looks just like the housekeeper who supposedly died with Eveline. And why is Phillipe kissing her?

The fact that Eveline is playing with a ball is no accident, particualrly after Mario Bava's Kill, Baby, Kill! And Fellini's ripoff act in his segment in Spirits of the Dead. Bava himself said, "That ghost child with the bouncing ball... it's the same ideas as in my film, exactly the same! I later mentioned this to Giulietta Masina (Fellini's wife) and she just shrugged her shoulders, smiling and said, "Well, you know how Federico is...""

Director Marcello Avallone was also the assistant director of The Horrible Dr. Hichcock and its believed that he directed most of the sexualized foreign scenes. He would go on to make Maya and Specters.