THE LONG HAIR OF DEATH (1964)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous* 
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *metaphysical, psychological, sociological*

**SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS**

Roughly four years after the international success of Bava's BLACK SUNDAY, director/co-writer Antonio Margheriti made two 1964 horror films with Bsrbara Steele. Of the two, I've always thought the less heralded LONG HAIR OF DEATH the better offering. HAIR seems designed to be the obverse of SUNDAY, as in "sympathy for the witches," though in comparison to that film, Margheriti's is replete with a lot more twisty melodrama. 

At the end of the 15th century, tyrannical Euro-noble Count Humboldt orders the burning of an accused witch, Adele Karnstein. (The last name is certainly borrowed from LeFanu's central character in CARMILLA, though it doesn't carry any special symbolism.) Humboldt believes that Adele cast a spell that killed his brother Franz, though some years later the noble will learn that his own grown son Kurt killed his uncle to secure the family's power. I bring this up because some reviews claim that Humboldt is executing Adele out of lust for her body. The confusion may stem from the fact that on the night scheduled for Adele's execution, the accused's grown daughter Helen (Steele)-- also suspected of witchcraft-- sneaks into the count's castle to plead for her mother's life. Humboldt offers to delay the execution while the two of them make love, having told Kurt not to proceed until he's present. But Kurt is in a hurry to knock off his patsy and orders the witch killed. Adele dies amid threats of supernatural vengeance while her pre-teen daughter Elizabeth looks on. Helen learns that her sacrifice was for nothing, and she flees the castle, but the count doesn't want her spreading nasty rumors, so he tosses her off a waterfall. But as if inviting a serpent into his own bower, Humboldt also adopts Elizabeth as his own ward.     

Roughly a decade passes, during which Elizabeth grows into young womanhood (Halina Zalewska, who also plays Adele). She's first seen mourning at the grave of her sister Helen, and then vaguely menaced by Kurt, who wants to marry her despite what his father says about her "witchy" looks. Clearly any supernatural vengeance is going to be channeled through innocent-seeming Elizabeth, the same way Katya, descendant of evil Asa in SUNDAY. was the medium through which the evil witch worked her will. However, Elizabeth apparently doesn't have any conscious magic mojo, because Kurt uses his royal power to force her into marriage. So even though Kurt doesn't know that his father deflowered Helen, here we have the makings of a cross-generational incestual pattern. 

Time passes, and in line with Adele's final curse, plague strikes the land. Elizabeth prays to her sister's grave for counsel, which may lead to the next big event: lightning strikes the grave and restores life to Helen-- though when she appears at the Humboldt's door, she pretends to be an amnesiac stranger named Mary. The sight of the woman he killed strikes Humboldt dead, putting Kurt fully in charge.

At this point one might expect a pretty linear path in which Helen/Mary (who also in a sense Adele as well) takes vengrance on Kurt, who caused Adele's death and who violated Elizabeth, albeit under the auspices of formal marriage. However, the script takes an odd turn in that Elizabeth-- who may have brought Helen back in the first place-- has become possessive, if not actually enamored, of her husband, and doesn't like it when Kurt starts moving in on Mary. History seems to repeat itself as Kurt makes love to the Helen-Doppelganger even as his father made love to the original. Elizabeth, far from collaborating with her sister-semblance, considers stabbing Kurt from behind but can't pull it off.

Kurt plans to kill off his wife in order to possess Mary. who has continued to sleep with the evil ruler but doesn't seem in a big hurry to knock him off. Then she changes her mind and conspires to drug Elizabeth and entomb her alive. This section feels like the scripters trying to extend the run-time with a meandering salute to Poe's "Premature Burial," and it has the consequence of crippling the momentum of the plot. Kurt goes through the whole rigamarole of wife-murder, and the next day, his courtiers act like she's still walking around healthy as a horse, though Kurt never catches sight of her.

Then things get freakier still, as Kurt conveniently finds a document left behind by Franz, the uncle he murdered. The paper tells him that Franz left provisions to acknowledge that he left behind a bastard daughter by the witch Adele, who is none other than Elizabeth. Therefore not only did Kurt sleep with two women who were his half-sister and her sister, Humboldt slept with a woman in a sibling relationship to his niece. These revelations upset Kurt's sense of control as the court prepares for the ritual sacrifice of a human-sized effigy by fire-- but when the supernatural vengeance finally falls, guess who winds up inside the effigy?

There's a lot of good potential in the script, which was also co-written by Ernesto Gastaldi, one of the premiere giallo writers. The problem with HAIR-- whose title makes no sense whatever-- is that it takes too long to deliver the vengeance, and that, when it does come, it seems a routine turnabout at best, with none of the personal touches of a really great revenge-dish.