DANZA MACABRA VOLUME ONE: THE ITALIAN GOTHIC COLLECTION On Blu-ray From Severin

 

Last year Arrow Video released GOTHIC FANTASTICO, a four-disc Blu-ray set of Italian Gothic thrillers. This year Severin follows suit with DANZA MACABRA, which has four other Italian horrors on Blu-ray. 

There is a film called DANZA MACABRA (aka CASTLE OF BLOOD), and it happens to be one of the most famous examples of the Italian Gothic. And.....it's not in this set. (Maybe it will show up in Volume Two??) 

What this set does have is four films making either their North American or overall official Blu-ray debuts. Each movie gets its own disc case, and each disc is filled with extras (every title gets at least one audio commentary). There are plenty of new featurettes including talks with various cast & crew members for each production, and, as anyone who is familiar with this genre would expect, there's plenty of footage of nightgown-clad beauties clutching candelabras. (Just check out the box art above. It's taken from an Italian poster for LADY FRANKENSTEIN, but it summarizes "Italian Gothic" better than 200 pages of text ever could.) 

The four films are: 

THE MONSTER OF THE OPERA: I reviewed this movie in 2019 under the title THE VAMPIRE OF THE OPERA. It's something of a follow-up to THE VAMPIRE AND THE BALLERINA. Both movies were directed and co-written by Renato Polselli. A musical troupe of young folks chooses to rehearse in an abandoned old theater, and the expected mysteries & mayhem ensue. 

THE SEVENTH GRAVE: On its disc case Severin touts this film as a long-lost discovery (I had never heard of it, let alone seen it). Directed by one Garibaldi Serra Caracciolo, it comes off like an Italian version of a 1930s-40s low-budget Hollywood old house/mystery story. 

SCREAM OF THE DEMON LOVER: This movie is known by several different titles. Directed and co-written by Spaniard Jose Luis Merino, It's a wild tale that combines elements from films such as REBECCA and JANE EYRE with a Bela Lugosi-Monogram style mad scientist subplot. 

LADY FRANKENSTEIN: This is by far the most famous (or infamous, depending on your point of view) film in this set. Golden Age Hollywood legend Joseph Cotten is Baron Frankenstein, but as soon as he gets his monster up and running, the brute kills him. It's up to the Baron's sultry daughter (Rosalba Neri) to take up the family scalpel--but the lovely Lady has far more than science on her mind. Beloved by bad movie mavens everywhere, LADY FRANKENSTEIN finally gets a much needed official North American Blu-ray release, and it also has the most extras of any film in this set. 

I intend to cover some of the discs included in this set individually, but it's going to take me time to get through all the extras and (especially) the commentaries. When I do look at the films separately I'll go into more detail how they look and sound. 

Some have complained that there's not enough "heavy hitters" in this set, but one has to remember the myriad rights issues involved with titles made in other countries. I think it's a worthy set, and it appears that Severin has some more Italian Gothic releases planned for the future.