While Italian director Emilio Miraglia never rose to the heights of some of his fellow directors like Dario Argento or even Umberto Lenzi, he holds a special place in a many a genre fan's withered heart for a few of the six films he did direct: a crime film entitled Assassination starring the one and only Henry Silva, a Spaghetti Western starring Richard Harrison entitled Shoot, Joe, Shoot! and the two giallos that are in this set from No Shame Films, the infamous The Night Evelyn Came Out Of The Grave and the, until now, elusive The Red Queen Kills Seven Times. Both films prove to be solid thrillers with some great casts, plenty of style, and some cool murder set pieces as well.

The Night Evelyn Came Out Of The Grave:

Antonio De Teffe (of the excellent horror infused Spaghetti Western, Django The Bastard, also known as The Strangers Gundown) plays the somber Lord Cunningham, a man whose life has been nothing but sorrow since his wife Evelyn passed away a little while back. In some sort of psychotic therapy treatment, he's decided to help cope with her loss by abducting beautiful young women who look like his wife, taking them back to his place, and torturing them to death, which gives them a more than uncanny likeness to the late Evelyn. After he's spent some time in deranged pursuit of a sultry nightclub dancer named Susie (Euro-cult starlet Erika Blanc of The Devil's Nightmare), his friend Richard (Giacomo Stuart-Rossi of Joe D'Amato's excellent Death Smiled On A Murderer) encourages him to move on a find a new wife. Cunningham is a bit of a weirdo and while Evelyn still haunts his dreams and nightmares, he's obviously got more than a few screws loose upstairs.

Cunningham's murderous ways remain secret to most, so his social standing hasn't diminished in the least. He's a wealthy man who comes from good stock so it's no surprise to find him out one night at a rather prestigious upper society shin-dig where he meets a pretty young woman named Gladys (Marina Malfatti of Umberto Lenzi's Seven Blood Stained Orchids) who he soon falls head over heels in love with. Luckily for Cunningham, the feeling is mutual and their whirlwind romance soon blossoms into a marriage that seems to be the very thing he needed to curve his murderous ways. Things are looking up for Cunningham until many of the people in his circle start being killed off, seemingly by a jealous wife named Evelyn who, as the title implies, might just have returned from the dead…

An atmospheric film that owes as much to Mario Bava's older gothic films like Black Sabbath and The Whip And The Body as it does to the Hitchcock influenced giallos of Dario Argento and Sergio Martino, The Night Evelyn Came Out Of The Grave relies as much on its ghostly atmosphere as it does on more traditional giallo elements like red herrings and psychological twists. Plenty of shadowy cinematography, creepy location shots and a fantastic cast of Euro-cult regulars make this one an interesting giallo that doesn't necessarily play by the stalk and slash rules that so many of its sister films do.

Having been released previously on a completely screwed up bootleg DVD from Sinema Diablo with a messy, ugly, stretched print that blow all the fantastic compositions to Hell and back it was hard to appreciate just what a good looking film this really is. Thankfully this disc restores the movie to its proper original aspect ratio making it much easier to appreciate the film as the spooky and sexy thriller that it is.

The Red Queen Kills Seven Times:

The Wildenbruck family, as wealthy and illustrious as they may seem on the surface, have their fare share of problems just as any other family unit does. Two of the daughter, Kitty (the gorgeous Barbara Bouchet of The Black Belly Of The Tarantula and Evelyn get into a scrap one fine and sunny afternoon and Kitty winds up killing her sister, completely by accident mind you, and tossing her body into the lake on the family estate. This murder seems to tie into a curse that has been put upon the family in which 'The Red Queen' returns from her grave once every hundred years to kill and kill again – well, seven times at least – hence the title. Kitty's all too familiar with this story, she's known it since she was a child and a painting that portrays the notorious Red Queen hangs proudly in the living room of the home.

At any rate, fourteen years after these events, the father of the family, Tobias Wildenbruck (Rudolf Schundler of Win Wenders' The American Friend), is also found dead.. Kitty starts having horrible dreams about murder and death and they prove to be so distracting that she's having trouble at her job as a fashion magazine photographer. The dreams eventually culminate in the death of her boss, who is found murdered under rather bizarre circumstances. To make matters worse, witnesses have seen a woman running around dressed in garb all too similar to that worn by the Red Queen in the painting that Kitty grew up around.

Like the film that came before it, The Red Queen Kills Seven Times benefits from an interesting supporting cast. Look for a young Sybil Danning (of The Howling II) as one of Kitty's models named Lulu, while Marina Maltaffi returns in the role of Franziska, another one of Kitty's sisters. Marino Mase, who had a brief role in Ruggero Deodato's Phantom Of Death is easy to spot as one of the cops on the case, while pretty Pia Giancaro of The Bloody Hands Of The Law shows up in the role of Rosemary. Performances are about what you'd expect from a seventies giallo, they're decent if a little ham-fisted at times though Bouchet does very well in the more intense scenes, looking genuinely scared in spots which makes the proceedings considerably more suspenseful than they would be otherwise.

As its predecessor, The Red Queen Kills Seven Times makes very good use of its European locations. The family home is creepy in and of itself, add to that some of the surprises that lay in the basement and on the surrounding ground and you've got the perfect setting for a gothic murder mystery. The Red Queen herself, garbed in a black suit with a garish red cape, looks quite the killer and when she shows up she definitely makes an impression. The pacing drags a little bit in the middle but there are enough plot twists and gory murder scenes in this one to make it a whole lot of fun regardless.

Video:

The 2.35.1 anamorphic widescreen presentations on these DVDs looks pretty sharp. A few here and there minutes have a fair bit of grain and some noticeable print damage but this is few and far between and the image, for the most part, is of excellent cleanliness and clarity. Those who have only ever seen The Night Evelyn Came Out Of The Grave by way of previous shoddy VHS or bootleg DVD releases are in for a real treat as it looks fantastic here and what a difference seeing it in its original aspect ratio makes! There is some aliasing in the usual spots, look for it on some of the checkered suit coats and shirts and along the grills of the cars in the background, but other than that this is, once again, a top-notch presentation from No Shame Films. Color reproduction is strong, black levels stay deep, and there's a pretty solid level of both foreground and background detail present in the image. Flesh tones look lifelike and natural and there's really not a whole lot to complain. Both films are really well done all the way around in the video department!