tensaip I won't bother regurgitating the plot, because the movie didn't seriously try to have one. It had an idea for a plot, but... well, read the other reviews in the comment section.This is going to be an analogy of how not good REINCARNATION OF ISABEL played.It was as if... the producers had arranged a train wreck killing the entire cast and crew (including Renato Polselli) on their way home from location to collect on a life insurance scam. The wreck also destroyed all copies of the finished script but spared 90% of the exposed negatives. Not satisfied with just the insurance money, the producers then hired an undergrad film student to edit the footage into a releasable film by the end of spring break. With neither a script nor a budget, the student calls his girlfriend at the college radio station to borrow a few albums nobody at the station will notice missing and then join him at the editing studio. The two then spend the next week cutting the film and dubbing in the music and dialogue by themselves. Finishing just in time, they suddenly realize that one missing can of film rolled behind the refrigerator and was ruined before they could make use of it.Thus, we are left with a finished product that is haphazardly structured, inappropriately scored, and buffoonishly scripted. We have a scene in which a doctor character is molesting his patient in one room while simultaneously applying a vampire bite to a different woman in a completely different room. SIMULTANEOUSLY, dude! We have a virgin-raping 3-way scored to ragtime harpsichord. We get a Donald Pleasance impersonator thrown into a snake-pit with only TWO snakes in it and one is already DEAD. Even at the denouement when Laureen runs down the stairs, she's barefoot, but once outside she's wearing bedroom slippers. WTF, was she keeping them by the front door?

MARIO GAUCI What I wrote about this one at the end of my review for the same director's DELIRIUM (1972) turned out to be the height of understatement: this is one insanely incomprehensible and intensely incompetent film – which I brought myself to award a higher rating than BOMB only because of its undeniable entertainment value! To begin with, the picture can't seem to make up its mind whether the titular figure is a witch or a vampire (so that we're treated to various occult rites and would-be feral attacks – if anything, both involve the consumption of fresh blood). Isabel's reincarnation seemed possible via the sacrifice of seven virgins (though when they're finally captured for this purpose, we don't get so many – maybe the production ran out of extras, or else they simply thought the audience wouldn't notice!); however, given that one of the girls is a dead ringer for the witch herself (both, in fact, are played by Rita Calderoni), why were the others even needed?! It goes without saying, then, that the various returning actors from DELIRIUM were far better served by their roles in that earlier outing (I seriously doubt how much of the script they understood this time around).Incidentally, considering that very little characterization is even attempted, I couldn't help whiling away the time in associating a number of the faces with celebrity music figures – so that Mickey Hargitay (who, unsurprisingly, would retire soon after!) resembles Mick Jagger, Raoul (the inspector from DELIRIUM is here the hostile landlord/head vampire who goes by the name of…drum roll, please…Dracula) looks like George Harrison, the hero Richard reminded me of John Entwistle, while the unhinged butler seemed like Mick Fleetwood (albeit with 'undead' make-up approximating that of Herk Harvey in CARNIVAL OF SOULS [1962])!! Having mentioned this singular musical association, there's a scene in which the hero is shown trying to break the latch of the gateway to the dungeon where Calderoni has been trapped, a scene that is unaccountably introduced by an outburst of rock music (Giovanni Reverberi's score does manage elsewhere a lovely theme befitting the generally Gothic mood) – not having had the time to realize just where Richard was and what he was doing, and coupled with the character's visible wincing and the jutting of a piece of metal at the corner of the frame, both my brother and I were deceived into thinking he was strumming on some electric guitar (by this point, we honestly were ready to expect just about anything from the film)! Ironically, Polselli was reported as saying that what he intended all along was to depict the heightened perception of events by people in the throes of hysteria – except that, in our case, this alternative visualization was more the result of sheer bewilderment!With this in mind, many scenes in the film have two or three different layers of reality to them – giving the whole an appropriately surreal vibe…but the treatment is so hopelessly clumsy (ranging from delirious editing to blatant day-for-night shooting) that it all goes for naught! At first, too, it seemed interesting that all the characters (which Polselli doesn't bother to clearly define) were 'present' at the time of the witch-burning but, while it's established that Raoul had himself been re-incarnated, there's no explanation whatsoever about the physical likeness of all the others – again, it must be that extras were hard to come by! Even more baffling is the emphasis on a ditzy girl (the actress playing her had been the first victim in DELIRIUM) – providing deliberately(?) terrible acting, unfunny comedy relief (denoting her nymphomaniac personality, Polselli even chooses to end the film with a double entendre involving her!) and, worst of all, is involved in an extended and wholly gratuitous ménage-a'-trois with another (good-looking) girl and a fattish simpleton distinguished only by his facial tick (a scene that would have been deemed tasteless in even the most vulgar of low-brow Italian comedies then also in vogue!). Yet another head-scratching moment is the fact that, in one scene, the medieval(?) citizens are seen baying for the blood of two (of the proposed seven) sacrificial victims in particular – for no discernible reason other than to provide an excuse for a chase in which the girls (wearing just capes and one of whom is well endowed to boot) are finally cornered as if they were wild animals! When all is said and done, I can only suggest the film for the unenviable position of the absolute nadir of the "Euro-Cult" style during its creative heyday – deposing, in fact, previous titleholder TRAGIC CEREMONY (1971)! This reminds me that I've got another obscure Gothic outing, Luigi Batzella's THE DEVIL'S WEDDING NIGHT (1973), to watch as part of my ongoing marathon; for the record, the same director would later make NUDE FOR Satan (1974) – also with Calderoni – and which, coincidentally, is regarded as ideal pairing (that is to say, is equally loony) for THE REINCARNATION OF ISABEL itself…

lazarillo A group of people are having a party in a castle one of them (Mickey Hargitay) has just bought. The castle is haunted by the malignant presence of a witch who was burned 500 years earlier and who, not surprisingly, looks just like one of the guests (Rita Calderoni). Yet another rip-off of Mario Bava's "Black Sunday"?--of course, but this movie is much, much more than that. All the male guests are either reincarnations of the earlier historical figures or vampires who have been living for centuries waiting for the opportunity to reincarnate the witch, Isabel. The women meanwhile are all virgins because, not only are virgins necessary for the ceremony, but as one character eloquently puts it, "Vampires need blood uncontaminated by human semen." (This leads one dumb girl in a particularly hilarious scene to give up her virginity to her nymphomaniac friend and a fat, ugly guy with a severe facial twitch).Obviously, the main appeal of this movie is sex and nudity, but anyone watching it SOLELY for that purpose might be a little frustrated as this a Renato Polselli film, a man whose directorial style can best be described as completely deranged. While there are acres of flesh on display here, Polselli often seems more interested in the bizarro camera angles, the staccato editing sequences, and the pulse-pounding score than he is in lingering on the action like some of his hack contemporaries (or more modern-day "erotic" filmmakers) would have done. All the actors and actresses from Polselli's more famous film "Delerio Caldo" show up again here, and while the latter are even more naked than they were in "Delerio Caldo", some of them turn out to be pretty untalented as thespians(and Polselli doesn't have the good sense to kill them off quickly like he did in the other film). Meanwhile, the stronger actors like Hargitay, Calderoni, and Krysta Barrymore are pretty much wasted in the incomprehensible chaos the film quickly descends into.Regardless of whether you like this film or not, however, I GUARANTEE you'll never see anything else like it.

drifterrus This is one of the worst films I've seen, unlike much of the Italian sleaze/giallo genre. The actors do not know how to act, editor was on permanent leave, beautiful landscapes only make its hollowness more apparent. Avoid it, there's nothing to enjoy. Even the blood looks more artificial than cranberry sauce.