#stanko molnar

1980, Italy

Original title: Macabro

Allegedly inspired by a true story brought to the director's attention by co-writer Pupi Avati (The House with Laughing Windows), Lamberto Bava's first solo feature sees actress Bernice Stegers, fresh off Fellini's City of Women, throwing all the class out the window as an adulterous woman who goes over the edge when her lover is decapitated in front of her in a car accident.

When Jane Baker's husband goes away for a while she wastes no time in scurrying over to her love shack across town to cavort beneath the sheets with her lover Fred (exploitation bit player Roberto Posse), while her homicidal pre-teen daughter Lucy drowns her little brother in the bathtub back home.

When Jane gets a phone call bearing news of the 'accident', she and Fred race off in the car, and her frantic behaviour causes a collision.

After recuperating in a mental hospital for a year, and now estranged from her husband, she moves into her former part-time pad, upstairs from the blind landlord Robert Duval (Croatian actor Stanko Molnar, also of Bava's A Blade in the Dark and Demons 5).

Despite her outwardly 'cured' appearance, Jane has a secret - she keeps her lover's head in the freezer - and is so preoccupied with night-time necrophilia that she doesn't notice the blind babe from downstairs trying to romance her.

And while he may be blind, he's not deaf; he can hear her making love with her imaginary visitor all night long, which both torments him and piques his curiosity.

His own investigation into what lies behind her locked doors is matched by that of Jane's manipulative daughter Lucy, who pops by uninvited to leave 'gifts' in her mother's room in an effort to drive her mad and hopefully see her locked up for good.

Macabro (Macabre, 1980)

Macabro (1980) - Betamax cover