The story sets the puzzle up in an interesting way. Eight guests are invited to a dinner party. Four are slueth-y types the other four are thought by the host to have committed murders in the past. The host is killed and the mystery feels like a game in which all the clues are “on the table.” Went pretty well until the ending which just confused me. There was no “ah-ha” moment at the reveal. Not what you want in a murder mystery.
Gene Kelly dances and sings in an attempt to woo a teenager. Mostly a mediocre musical with a visually stunning final number.
This has all the look and feel of a typical spaghetti western except this takes place in 19th century Spain. Franco Nero plays what looks like a Union soldier but is actually a Spanish colonel. He gets hoodwinked by a pretty Gypsy girl and then it’s all downhill from there as he make mistake after mistake in order to please her. Klaus Kinski shows up, is predictably deranged, and further screws up his plans. The story is not nearly as action-packed as one would expect, but I enjoyed it and the characters.
After watching the famous version from a few years later, I wanted to see this, the first adaptation of Gaslight. It feels roughly the same but this version’s casting of the female lead is not as good. I appreciated that there was more emphasis on the relationship between the husband and the maidservant. Made him even more sleazy.
The Devil’s Nightmare would pair nicely in a double feature with Bava’s Lisa and the Devil. Both films tell the story of a group of doomed travelers who have to spend the night in a castle as their souls are collected by the devil one by one. Devil’s Nightmare isn’t quite up to the caliber of Bava but it has it’s share of haunting imagery especially through the performance of the demon white-faced Erika Blanc’s succubus. A little more budget and a little more visual atmosphere would have helped, but this gothic horror surely punches above its weight.
The title here is somewhat deceptive. The yeti vs. werewolf battle you would expect is just tacked on to the end. Most of the movie is about a Himalayan warlord who keeps slave girls as a means of curing his bacne. A scientific yeti expedition gets ensnared by the bandits. Meanwhile, Paul Naschy gets ensnared by demon cave girls and subsequently werewolfed by them. Parts of this crazy plot work, others fall flat under the cheapness of the location and the production.
