THIS MONTH The Horrible Dr. Hichcock and The Perfume of the Lady in Black
There comes a point in the life of every serious horror fan when they start to explore the Italian genre movies of the 60s, 70s and 80s.
For me, it began with the films of Dario Argento (The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, Deep Red, Suspiria), then widened to take in Mario Bava (The Mask of Satan, Blood and Black Lace, A Bay of Blood) and Lucio Fulci (Zombie Flesh Eaters, The Beyond, City of the Living Dead). It’s the same for most, I imagine. These are the names that dominate lists. Just this morning, in readiness for this article, I glanced at the Top 46 Italian Horror Movies according to Rotten Tomatoes, and all of the above movies (and several more) by this unholy trinity featured.
Look beyond Argento, Bava and Fulci, and the most commonly named titles are films like Pupi Avati’s The House of the Laughing Windows, Ruggero Deodato’s Cannibal Holocaust, and Lamberto Bava’s Demons. Two films that are not in that RT46, though – or, indeed, ever mentioned by mainstream media – are Riccardo Freda’s The Horrible Dr.
Hichcock (1962) and Francesco Barilli’s The Perfume of the Lady in Black (1974). In the first, which opens in late-19thcentury London, the titular surgeon (Robert Flemyng) develops an anaesthesia that slows his patients’ hearts. At night he injects his wife Margaretha (Maria Teresa Vianello) so he might indulge his necrophilic kink, but then accidentally kills her for real and flees the country. Upon returning 12 years later, his new wife Cynthia (genre icon Barbara Steele) believes the house to be haunted by Margaretha’s ghost. The Perfume of the Lady in Black, meanwhile, sees Silvia (Mimsy Farmer) start to glimpse both her dead mother and herself as a young girl. Is a childhood trauma rising to the surface? Are the other residents in her Rome apartment block conspiring to freak her out? Is something supernatural at play? Or might she be losing her mind?
Both films are gorgeously shot in Technicolor, and both conjure the spirit of Edgar Allan Poe with their favouring of black cats and thunderstorms, obsession and madness (Hichcock also features live burial and a House of Usher-style fiery climax). The two movies further overlap in their employment of malevolent other-wordly whispers and their fondness for women in spectral white floating down corridors.
