Erica Blanc Movies

A woman dealing with the loss of her mate learns he had a surprising secret life in this drama from Italy. Antonia (Margherita Buy) is a doctor who finds both challenges and rewards in her work with people with AIDS, who has also enjoyed a long and seemingly happy relationship with her husband Massimo (Andrea Renzi). When Massimo is killed in an auto wreck, Antonia is crushed and turns away from her work and her friends; while she tries to reach out to her mother Veronica (Erica Blanc), Veronica is too emotionally distant to be of much help. As Antonia struggles to come to terms with her grief, she discovers to her shock that her husband had been having an affair through much of their marriage, and her confusion is intensified when she learns that Massimo's lover was a man, Michele (Stefano Accorsi). Antonia confronts Michele, who would prefer not to say anything about Massimo, but Antonia is persistent, and in time the two open up to each other about the man they both deeply loved. As a friendship grows between Antonia and Michele, she has another surprise in store -- she finds she's pregnant with Massimo's child. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

This British/German horrorama was the sequel to....drum roll please....Mark of the Devil (1970). The original film starred Herbert Lom as a "burning judge" preying upon accused witches in 18th century Austria. Anton Diffring substitutes for Herebert Lom in Part 2, but the basic premise remains intact. The overall tenor of the film is implicit in its alternate English-language title, Witches: Violated and Tortured to Death. Neither the original nor the sequel to Mark of the Devil had anything to do with the similarly titled 1985 Val Guest production. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Spaghetti Western veteran Antonio De Teffe (aka Anthony Steffen) stars in this delightfully tacky supernatural giallo from Italian filmmaker Emilio P. Miraglia. De Teffe plays Alan Cunningham, a titled nobleman who has just been released from a mental institution after a breakdown brought about by the death of his beautiful red-haired wife, Evelyn. Alan isn't quite right, and despite loads of helpful advice from his doctor and money-hungry cousin, can't stop picking up red-haired women and dragging them back to his castle dungeon, where his desire to punish his late wife's infidelity leads to some hallucinatory S & M murders. Eventually he meets the beautiful Gladys (Marina Malfatti) and quickly marries her, generating a good deal of anger among his greedy relatives. That's when members of his family start disappearing and the obligatory inheritance plot tightens around the deranged lord, raising the question of whether Evelyn is really dead after all. Miraglia directs with a somewhat plodding style atypical for the normally lively genre, but the film's cheese value is enhanced by a wonderfully schizophrenic score by Bruno Nicolai; an amusingly dotty production design; and enough sex, kinkiness, and violence to satisfy any giallo fan. Erika Blanc (aka Enrica Bianchi Colombatto) makes an impression as one of the strippers Alan brings to his dungeon, Alan's dead aunt (Joan C. Davies) is devoured by a cageful of hungry foxes, and the cast also includes familiar genre faces Umberto Raho and Giacomo Rossi-Stuart. ~ Robert Firsching, Rovi

One of the more prominent works of Italy's premier horror stylist Mario Bava, this occult murder mystery interweaves elements of the traditional giallo thriller formula with an unusual Gothic ghost story. The tale is set in a modern-day Carpathian village rocked by a series of bizarre murders, in which the female victims are found with gold coins imbedded in their hearts. The coins are revealed to be talismans placed on the victims by the local sorceress (Fabienne Dali), meant to ward off the supernatural powers of the aged Baroness Graps (Giana Vivaldi). The baroness has been acting as an earthly liaison for the vengeful ghost of her murdered daughter, who wants to claim the villagers' souls -- with Erica Blanc next on the list. In order to free the village from the evil curse, Dali must find the sequestered baroness and destroy her. The film was released in the U.S. in two dubbed and re-edited versions, Kill, Baby, Kill! and Curse of the Living Dead (packaged as part of an "Orgy of the Living Dead" triple feature). ~ Cavett Binion, Rovi