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The
Reincarnation of Isabel
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Review
by
Brian Lindsey
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3
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3 |
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10
= Highest Rating |
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Let
me get right to the point. This movie doesn't
make a goddamn lick of sense.
I haven't seen a film this incoherent in some
time... maybe never. Director Renato Polselli
(Delirium) isn't exactly
known for tightly constructed narratives, but
this trippy bit of T & A-flavored gothic psychedelia
should be advertised as having been filmed in
Confuse-O-Vision!
It's got something to do with
the execution of a vampire-witch named Isabel
400 years ago and the Satanic cult that continues
to sacrifice maidens to her in an attempt to resurrect
her in the body of a look-alike descendent, the
soon-to-be married Laureen (sexy Rita Calderoni).
Laureen's uncle Jack (Bloody
Pit of Horror's Mickey Hargitay) purchases
the unused wing of a castle for her as a wedding
gift, much to the displeasure of a strange, reclusive
man (Raoul Traucher) who lives in another part
of the building with his scarred, hunchbacked
servant named Gerg. During an engagement party
thrown at the castle attended by various relatives
and village locals, weird things begin to happen.
Stephie, a ditzy female guest, claims she was
jumped from behind and accosted by some kind of
monster, though no one believes her. Various cast
members the movie
never really bothers to make clear just who the
hell everyone's supposed to be
experience flashbacks to events surrounding the
staking and burning of Isabel centuries before.
Gerg and his master, the surly recluse (who cuts
a decidedly vampiric figure in his all-black attire),
creep around the castle spying on and/or staring
ominously at the others. Meanwhile, other female
guests and women in the village are attacked by
cloak-wearing vampires; one of the women staying
at the castle, Christa (pouty-lipped Christa Barrymore)
is found lying naked, apparently dead, in one
of the corridors. She's buried in a cemetery on
the castle grounds but wakes up inside the coffin,
screaming, as Gerg gleefully shovels dirt atop
it. Later Christa appears as a sort of ghost,
giving bubbleheaded Stephie a scare. Then, for
no apparent reason
in a scene that has absolutely nothing
to do with the rest of the film
Stephie gets involved in a mιnage a trois with
a homely guy (with a bad facial tick) and her
blonde girlfriend, who somewhat resembles Christina
Aguilera. In a futile attempt to be funny this
gratuitous three-way is incongruously accompanied
by bad Dixieland music. (???) Stephie,
by the way, sports false eyelashes thick enough
to strain pasta through.
Now believe it or not, this
thing's just getting rolling. There are more vampire
attacks. The bloodsuckers turn out to be some
of the local men and Laureen's relatives, members
of the devil cult who hope to resurrect Isabel.
The victimized women, naked except for capes,
are chased by the more rustic villagers, who assault
them with sticks and want them burned as witches.
Laureen and just about everyone else have more
weird flashbacks and/or dream sequences, none
of which make any sense. The cellar beneath the
castle turns out to be some kind of dimension
door to the Underworld. Laureen is taken there
to participate in the final ritual that will bring
her doppelgänger, Isabel, back to life. Any
attempts to explain what's going on just make
everything more confusing... After some supposedly
expositionary dialog
which isn't very helpful at all
the one character we're led to believe does
know what's happening underscores his comments
with "Don't try to understand it." (I,
for one, had given up on that after the
first twenty minutes.)
The Reincarnation
of Isabel is a maddeningly obtuse film,
its near-total incoherence exacerbated by a slapdash,
willy-nilly editing style that renders even simple
scenes incomprehensible. Disastrous continuity
errors only dig a deeper hole. (The sequence in
which the girls are hounded through the village
mixes day and night shots in a manner Ed Wood
himself might find appalling; in another scene
Christa's outfit magically changes from slacks
to hot pants and back to slacks again!) The acting
is absolutely dreadful. Special effects and gore
make-up are cheap and shoddy-looking. Happily
the flick features just enough unintentional humor
to make it (barely) endurable... The Satanic cult
members parade about in bright red leotards that
look like old-fashioned longjohns (the kind Jed
Clampett would wear), while at times the subtitled
dialog is howlingly bad
characters inexplicably say things apropos of
nothing actually going on in the movie. And Mickey
Hargitay, whose performance consists of either
(A) stone-faced taciturnity or (B) over-the-top
histrionics, is always good for a laugh. There
are plenty of really bad '70s clothing and hairstyles
to gawk at, too.
More gawking is inspired by all the naked and
semi-naked Eurobabes flitting about. Calderoni
is pretty hot and Barrymore, who co-starred with
Calderoni and Hargitay in Polselli's gonzo giallo
Delirium (as a bleach
blonde), gets some choice scenes. The other ladies
ain't half-bad either. All this flesh on display
doesn't help the movie very much, mind you, but
it certainly doesn't hurt.
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The
disc is one of Image's Redemption line
of Eurohorror flicks for Region 1 DVD. Apparently
they all feature an introductory segment hosted
by Razor Blade Smile's
Eileen Daly, dressed up as a winged, leather-clad
vampiress with fangs and contact lenses. Since
it's about "Naziploitation" films like
Ilsa: She-Wolf of the SS
and Salon Kitty,
the introduction included here has nothing whatsoever
to do with The Reincarnation
of Isabel in
any way, shape or form. Frankly, this is just
plain stupid. Even more irritating, this
host segment is the disc's 1st chapter stop; the
film proper begins with Chapter 2.
(One simple question: WHY?)
As for Isabel, the
widescreen print used for the DVD represents the
first time the film has been available on home
video. It's not in particularly good shape, looking
soft and exhibiting a fair amount of speckling
and print damage throughout. (The opening credits
fare the worst.) Kudos to the Redemption folks
for doing what they could to restore it; the work
that went into sprucing it up is detailed in a
brief liner notes booklet. The audio track is
Italian mono with (optional) easy-to-read English
subs. The disc's only extra is the somewhat muddy-looking
trailer, which is also in Italian but has no subtitles.
1/02/04
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