Queens of Evil (1970)

David (Ray Lovelock The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue) stops to help a man with a flat tire one night. As David changes the tire they discuss the differences between the burgeoning hippie culture and the older generation’s set of  ideals and the man surreptitiously punctures David’s motorcycle tire. As the man drives off he warns David not to fall to the devil. David fixes his own tire and catches up to the man but he crashes his car into a tree and no one will stop to help them. The man dies and David drives on, stopping to sleep in the shed of a house in the forest.

He is awakened the next morning by a beautiful girl named Liv (Hadee Politoff – Count Dracula’s Great Love) who lives there with her two sisters Bibiana, (Evelyn Stewart – Spirits Of Death) and Samantha (Sylvia Monti – The Fifth Cord). David is invited in for a madcap, psychedelic breakfast but doesn’t seem to realize that there is something a little off about the sisters. After his attempts to leave go nowhere, we realize that David has stepped into another world like Alice through the looking glass or maybe, more appropriately, like Lisa from Lisa and the Devil, the moment she strays from the crowd.

I don’t want to give away too much about this dreamy, hazy film from Tonino Cervi (director of Today We Kill, Tomorrow We Die, a Spaghetti Western co-written by Dario Argento). There are castles in the forest, mysterious nighttime visitors, midnight bonfire rituals, and general unexplainable goings on; all with a pop art Italian Horror fairytale sheen throughout the whole film.

In fact, it is a very fairytale-like film that combines a Grimm’s Fairy Tales feel with the aforementioned Lisa And The Devil and a touch of the weirdness toward the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Queens Of Evil is very much an Italian horror gem waiting to be rediscovered, don’t blink toward the end as you’ll miss Geraldine Hooper the actress that played Carlo’s ‘boyfriend’ in Deep Red. How’s that for trivia?

-Brad Hogue