I’ve always admired the differences that exist between those two closely linked subgenres known as the Giallo and the Slasher film. Of course, the latter was technically birthed from the former thanks to the likes of Mario Bava, Dario Argento, Bob Clark and John Carpenter, but when you put them side by side, the differences become even more fascinating than the similarities.
Slashers, in general thanks to their simplistic nature, are usually more malleable and allow elements of satire, broad humour and even genre blending to build on what usually are dark, thinly plotted movies that rely on punchy deaths and a memorable villian to thrive.
While Giallo on the other hand still feeds off those all-important and often flamboyant murders, the genre usually only sticks with the whole murder/mystery angle, but while slashers go for the short, sharp shock, Giallo spin out their stories and style to dizzying, hypnotic extremes. Logic and realism are cast to the wind as it attempts to tell its brutal, psychosexual stories with all the exagerated flair and fluctuating focus of someone on edibles trying to tell you the plot of Psycho. A good example of this is Emilio Miraglia’s The Red Witch Kills Seven Times, a Giallo that hits all the expected targets like a greatest hits package.
It’s not entirely unusual for a family to have a few skeletons in their closets, but the Wildenbrück family have something rather more disturbing lurking around in their family tree – an out and out curse. Signified by the rather grim and lurid painting hanging up in the castle (yes, castle) where their grandfather lives, as feuding children Kitty and Evelyn are told of the family legend of the Red Queen, a crimson clad apparition who rises every hundred years to kill seven people and ultimately spell doom for any sisters owning the Wildenbrück name.
Years past and the sisters only grow to hate each other more, but as the next hundred years is about to be up before the Red Queen is said to rise again, people around Kitty start getting suspicious about the fact that Evelyn hasn’t been seen for a while and her sister’s insistence that her hated sibling has wordlessly moved to America is holding about as much water as an incontinent bladder. Something untoward is definitely going on and matters get even more shady when a female figure clad in a red cape is seen fleeing from the violent murder of one of Kitty’s work associates not long after her grandfather croaks due to a fear induced heart attack.
Has the Red Queen truly risen to claim the lives of seven unfortunate souls, or is something far more conniving afoot. The police think the latter and target Kitty and her married lover, Martin; her older cousin Franziska thinks otherwise. But one thing is for certain, Kitty is positive her missing sister can’t be involved – but how can she be so sure. It’s like I said, some families have skeletons in their closets… literal ones.
I have to be honest, I thought Emilio Miraglia’s previous venture into Giallo, The Night Evelyn Came Out Of The Grave was good, but not great as it seemed to stumble over it’s own feet when trying to offer up all the stylish pizazz and psychosexual backstory usually found within the genre. However, with his second crack of the whip, the director seems to have found a much more stable balance that almost feels like he’s trying to enact a Giallo victory lap. All the expected aspects of the famously lurid genre are here I some form or another and it truly feels like the director has loosened up a little and is having get fun building a wobbly Jenga tower from all the usual tropes.
Of course, we start with old Giallo favorite: childhood trauma, as we immediately are introduced to the two, central sisters at the age of nine as the wilder Evelyn stabs and decapitates Kitty doll with a dagger for fun and in an attempt to calm them down, their elderly grandfather bizarrely tells them the terrifying legend from their family legacy. While we reel from this spectacularly inadvisable act of parenting, The Red Queen Kills Seven Times then literally throws every trick in the book at us – ethereally attractive leads, promiscuous maneaters, extravagantly dressed killers, at least one example of a sexually perverted male character, crayon-red blood and, best of all, a whopping, twisted secret that casts serious doubt over the innocence of Barbara Bouchet’s doll-like protagonist. It’s all here amd while it may admittedly lack the Polish and audacious nature of a Bava or an Argento, the movie’s best aspect is that it takes all of those familiar tropes and turns in something both familiar and fresh.
To go full spoiler on you all, what helps is that the twisted, messed up past that affects most people in these types of flicks actually also affects our main character too as it’s revealed that Evelyn is, in fact, dead and was accidently killed a short while prior by Kitty during the latest (and last) fight they ever had. As a result, our “hero” has resorted to stashing the rapidly decomposing body in the bowels of the family castle under the advise of her older cousin in order not to fuck up the will of their rich Grandfather. However, the killer, who takes to sprinting round the surrounding area in a billowing red cloak and cackling like she’s going for gold in the Villain Laugh Olympics, seems to match the description of the late, lamented Evelyn, which in turn gives Kitty Edgar Allen Poe levels of posthumous guilt.
It’s all juicy stuff and Miraglia makes sure to wallpaper over all the numerous, Giallo plotholes in the way that the experts do – with lashings of luscious cinematography, occasional spots of nudity and the odd brutal murder. The colours are divine and punch up those chic, 70s fashions to the limit while the kills are somewhat a little more basic than some of its more ambitious peers, but a moment where a junkie is dragged down the street by a Volkswagen Beetle only to be noisily crunched against the curb is a good one and the climactic setpiece which sees the dungeon of the castle get flooded with someone inside it is certainly more imaginative than your average Giallo. Of course, the final cherry on the cake is a rich score which also adheres to the rules of the game by not matching the gothic menace of the visuals and yet ends up being practically perfect as the vaguely dreamy melody bolsters the nightmarish sight of the Red Queen running full speed at us down an otherwise deserted corridor, or the ghastly appearance of her masked features
While maybe not in the upper echelons of the genre’s highest highs, The Red Queen Kills Seven Times earns it’s awesomely extravagant title by taking the established rules and swirling them around just enough to deliver something that feels both gnarly and new. The Red Queen may not technically kill seven times, but she certainly slays all day long.
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