Lucretia Love Movies

This is a crazy horror-film spoof in which the enthusiastic leads provide laughs just by the strength of their characterizations alone -- and because they are obviously having fun. Oliver Reed is Dr. Heckyl whose lumpy face is so ugly it has kept women away in droves. He works at a podiatrist's clinic and one day attempts suicide by quaffing a whole bottle of a weight-loss elixir. The result? Dr. Heckyl becomes Mr. Hype, the suave ladies man. The only problem is that Mr. Hype is evil incarnate, his urge to kill is greater than any other urge, and so he remains as virginal as ever as he leaves a trail of victims behind. When he goes after the woman he has loved as Dr. Heckyl, serious confusion is in store -- she prefers the good-hearted beast over the rotten charmer. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

A mother discovers a horrifying secret about her young son's imaginary friend in this gothic shocker based on Henry James' The Turn of the Screw and directed by the late Marcello Aliprandi. Twelve-year-old Martino may as well live alone at his family's sprawling Venetian villa. Largely ignored by his wealthy, self-absorbed parents and left with few playmates with whom to pass the day, Martino soon falls under the spell of an imaginary friend named Luca. When Martino's mother begins to investigate her son's increasingly hostile invisible playmate, a revelation about her past leads her to believe that Luca may in fact be the vengeful spirit of the child she lost before Martino was born. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

Pam Grier and Margaret Markov reteamed a year after Black Mama, White Mama for this similarly crowd-pleasing exploitation effort. They play Roman slaves who eventually rebel against their male oppressors. Mixing elements from the Italian peplum and the Filipino women's prison movies, The Arena also adds some po-faced feminist theory while still managing to exploit its scantily-clad stars. Italian film regulars Lucretia Love and Rosalba Neri look strangely out of place in a movie filmed in their own country, but fans of drive-in movies should be pleased. ~ Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide

Carroll Baker, the blond starlet best known for her role in Baby Doll, ended her career in a number of Italian giallo thrillers including A Quiet Place to Kill, Paranoia, The Fourth Victim, and this giallo-tinged crime film from director Osvaldo Civirani. Baker plays a dual role as translator Julie Harrison and her twin sister Mary. The serpentine plot begins as Julie tells her lawyer Dave Barton (Stephen Boyd from Ben-Hur) that Mary's life is being threatened in London while Julie herself is being stalked by a mysterious stranger in Amsterdam. Dave's racecar-driving friend Tony Shane (George Hilton) saves her from both an attempted kidnapping and an attempted murder before putting her up with an old blind woman to hide. The blind woman is murdered that same night, and Luciano Pigozzi turns up as an insurance investigator who finds out that Mary has stolen a precious diamond from an Indian Maharaja, double-crossing her husband to do so. To reveal any more of the plot would rob the viewer of the jaw-dropping developments, but the film features an unbelievable prank played by Julie's knife-wielding co-worker in a gorilla mask, a speeded-up car chase reminiscent of Rat Pfink a Boo Boo, and a very odd denouement in an abandoned windmill. The cast is loaded with genre veterans like Lucretia Love, Carla Mancini, Franco Ressel, and Ivano Staccioli, and the familiar-sounding score is by the ubiquitous Stelvio Cipriani, making this a solid addition to any giallo library. Various versions run 89 and 87 minutes. ~ Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide

In this spooky Italian-Yugoslavian horror movie, a lovely English bride is possessed by the vengeful spirit of an 18th-century Transylvanian witch on her wedding night and creates all sorts of bloody mayhem for her hapless husband and others. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide