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The dating world is a horrific and complicated sea to navigate. I don’t have to navigate these waters anymore and I’m thankful for that but as we all know, there’s dangerous things waiting in the waves, which are crushing down on ya as you just look for someone to spend the rest of your life with. Sure, she may seem alright after hanging out a few times but how are you to know if or if not she keeps her ex lover’s severed head in her fridge and is pretty much a shattered woman whose sanity is a mask? Is this a viable fear for someone looking for the person they wish to spend the rest of their lives with? Probably not, but not everyone watches this damn movie when they were ten and had it stain their brain before they entered the mysterious world of sexual companionship. Anyways, now that I’m a married man I can revisit this silly thing because I no longer have to worry about a severed noggin in the fridge, unless it’s mine but by that point it won’t matter anymore. Janet Baker (a wonderful Bernice Stegers) moves into a Louisiana boarding house a year after her world went to shit. Ya see, while hooking up with her lover instead of watching her kids, her son dies and as they rush back to her house, a car accident kills her side piece. Traumatized, she’s sent to an institution. Now that she’s out, she’s back at the place where she use to meet up for dirty rendezvous with her hunky man (well, hunky in a Steve Buscemi kind of way). The original landlord’s blind son now owns the joint and becomes infatuated with the mysterious woman. Well, it’s a doomed lust because there’s a nasty little secret Janet is keeping and if you read my opening rambling, you know shit’s going to come a head (sorry) and not everyone is gonna be breathing by the time those end credits roll. Her creepy daughter begins to pry in an attempt to get her parents back together, Janet’s private life is interrupted and the blind man can’t hide his feelings anymore as Janet’s late night bang sessions with some unseen lover drive him to drastic measures. Mario Bava’s son Lamberto gets a little scuzzier in his genre outing but please do not let that dissuade you, no need to hold your nose to the air like a pompous ass. The decay of mental illness concerning its cast is just as striking as any of Mario’s gorgeous cinematography. Hell, we recognize something is very wrong with Janet’s daughter before anything much happens and the sympathetic blind man (a solid Stanko Molnar) is harboring some obviously sick intentions. But the show belongs to Janet and when Ms. Stegers is on camera, she plays the kind of unhinged that seems to be just bubbling under the surface until it gets to bare its teeth. She’s perfect. Playing sultry, charming and insane like a master juggler. Also perfect is the somehow unsettling jazzy soundtrack that sounds like it would be more at home in a steamy softcore sex flick. It works to add to the vibe of “off” this thing radiates. Does the ridiculous sting of the final hurt the film? No, I don’t think so but I’m also an idiot.
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