The Monster of the Opera (1964)

aka The Vampire of the Opera

Original title: Il mostro dell’opera

Sandro (Marco Mariani) the somewhat hyperactive director of a modern dance troupe has finally found the right place to make his dream project come true. It’s a long-abandoned old theatre that comes with a caretaker who only speaks in dire warnings and insinuations. Obviously, the place is supposed to be cursed. So there surely isn’t a vampire running around behind the scenes just waiting to get his teeth into Sandro’s prima ballerina (or however you call the position in modern dance) Giulia (Barbara Hawards) and whoever else takes his fancy.

Apparently, Gilulia is somehow connected with the vampire’s great love who doomed him to his bloodsucking existence, and the rather strange events he begins inflicting on the dancers are part of some plan for eternally recurring vengeance. Well, either that, or he really likes to poke underdressed women with a humungous pitchfork.

The Monster of the Opera was directed by Renato Polselli. Given that he also brought us The Ballerina and the Vampire, a film not containing any ballerinas but quite a bit of dancing, it’s pretty clear that the man had a genuine interest in putting some (or a lot of) dancing into his gothic horror movies, an interest clearly going above and beyond the opportunity female dancers lend the exploitative mindset to put women in outfits you’d otherwise never get away with. Unlike the earlier ballerina movie, being a sleaze genuinely seems to be only the tiniest part of Polselli’s motive for all the dancing – rather, this appears to be a genuine attempt to use modern dance as a part of the horror business.

I’m not sure I’d quite call it a successful attempt. Particularly in the film’s early stages, there seems to be an overabundance of dance numbers, not all of which are terribly well integrated into the plot, and the heavy lifting for the horror parts of the film is done elsewhere. Namely, right at the start of the film, in an exceptionally nightmare-like, heavily expressionist vision/dream sequence Julia and the caretaker seem to share (the film keeps it somewhat ambiguous) that isn’t just incredible to look at as something that feels like a refugee from some fantastic lost masterpiece of expressionist silent horror filmmaking, all built out of shadow, over cranked and undercranked camera work and images taken directly out of one’s nightmares but which also prefigures the strange mood and nightmare logic the film will take on in its third act, after all the dance numbers and the lounging of half-naked 60s hotties is done with, and the very early 60s portrayal of artistic people being energetic is through.

Then, the film actually makes pretty brilliant use of the dancing as part of the plot, too, trapping the dancers on stage via invisible walls, threatening them to dance or get sucked dry or pitchforked by the vampire, and suggesting nothing so much as the mediaeval dancing sickness to the viewer, turning what was once sexy-ish and a bit exhausting truly macabre, and deeply strange in feel.

Which is more than enough reason to power through one dance number too many during the first two acts, and makes this a rather interesting example of various attempts to transplant Italian gothic horror into modern times.