And now we near the end of the Summer of Love (craft) 2, and what better way to cap the summer off than with a Stuart Gordon film staring Jeffery Combs?
We open in the Italian countryside. A massive 12th Century villa stands proudly while the aged Duchess D'Orsino (Helen Sterling) makes her way around the massive rooms. She busies herself by making a simple meal of one thin slice of bread and a raw fish head, but dies before getting the tray off the table.
Some time later the Reilly family arrives to take over the villa until they can liquidate the estate. John (Combs) is the last known relative of the Duchess, so he, his wife Susan (Barbara Crampton), and their blind daughter Rebecca (Jessica Dollarhide) are now lords of the manor as it were.
The family is hoping a change of scenery will improve things. Rebecca lost her eyesight (and her brother) in a car crash thanks to John's drinking. John swears he's a change man, but things don't seem to be improving. Plus there seems be something about the old castle.
As it turns out, there is. It seems John isn't quite the last living relative the Duchess had. No, there's her son Giorgio (Jonathan Fuller), who was the intended recipient of that meal mentioned earlier. It seems the Duchess had some rather old fashioned views on raising children, so she kept her boy locked in the dungeon for a few decades. With his dear old mama gone, Giorgio looks to stretch his legs, and if he happens to run into his cousin the more the merrier. He's rather hungry by now you know...
Pretty good, although the connection to Lovecraft is a bit thin. Supposedly based on "the Outsider" (1926) the film has at least one scene that appeared in the story but that's about it. On its own merits though, pretty darn good.
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