MCBASTARD'S MAUSOLEUM

DANZA MACABRA VOLUME 5: THE SPANISH GOTHIC COLLECTION (1964-1985)

STRANGE VOYAGE (1964)

EXORCISM'S DAUGHTER (1971)

THE DRACULA SAGA (1971)

TURN OF THE SCREW (1985)

Severin's fifth installment of the Gothic deep-dive Danza Macabre collections has arrives, and this time it's a return to the Spanish Gothics, which they previously highlighted with the third volume. This time around we get three North American disc premieres, a huge A/V upgrade for the one with two complete versions of the film, with over ten hours of newly produced extras to pour through. So, grab a shovel, follow me into the cow-webbed crypt, and let's dig in....

STRANGE VOYAGE (1964)

Label: Severin Films

Region Code: Region-Free

Rating: Unrated

Duration: 92 Minutes

Audio: Spanish DTS-HD MA 2.0 Dual-Mono with Optional English Subtitles

Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (1.66:1)

Director: Fernando Fernán Gómez

Cast: Carlos Larrañaga, Tota Alba, Lina Canalejas, María Luisa Ponte

First up is what I would consider to be a gem of this set, Strange Voyage (1964), directed by Fernando Fernán Gómez, from a story based on a mysterious true crime story from 1956 known as the “crimen de Mazarrón”. It's part creaky black and white Gothic, part black comedy, part social commentary about the dangers of repression under a fascist regime. It takes place in the outskirts of Madrid where siblings Pequita (Rafaela Aparicio) and Venancio (Jesusu Franco, The Sadist of Notre Dame) live under the thumb of their cruel older sister, Ignacia (Tota Alba, Battered Flesh) live in a mansion overlooking the town square. It's the sort of small town where on Sunday everyone attends church, and the rest of the week they're drinking wine and gossiping in the square, while on the weekends the young people gather to hear the music of travelling band Los Guacamayos, lead by handsome crooner Fernando (Carlos Larrañaga). Venancio and Pequita are very child-like despite being grown adults, who find themselves living under the strict thumb of their older sibling Ignacia, who's pretty scornful of the pair. However, when Ignacia sells of the family vineyards the younger siblings start to fear that she is planning to sell the home out from under them and leave them high and dry without a cent to their name.

The twins suspect that Ignacia is not quite the shrew she plays at, after hearing voices coming from her bedroom at night, who turns out to be a the handsome and much younger travelling musician Fernando, who is also seeing several other women from around the village. Eventually all of the secrets and suspicion lead to a murder and a clever attempt to cover it up, with Fernando caught up in the intrigue.

The interior shots of the mansion are steeped in surreal Gothic atmosphere, and the black comedy offers an unexpectedly offbeat sense humor to the proceedings. It's certainly a film that is chock full of surprises, including a delirious finale that mirrors the mysterious true crime that inspired the story, and some flashbacks reveal much of the mystery that came before it.

Not surprisingly, due to the not so veiled commentary about fascist repression, the film was not met well my government censors at the time of it's release, and because of this went largely unseen for many years. My favorite part of the film was the banter between the childlike siblings played by Aparicio and Franco, both are terrific, but it's Franco's performance that really bowled me over, I found it quite effective. He's so young here, his awkward appearance and peculiar body-build certainly figure into his performance, which I found quite sympathetic. Tota Alba is also quite wonderful as the cruel older sibling, coming off quite wicked, but then the layers are pulled back and we see a hidden side of her, revealing her repressed hopes and dreams, and we can see what repression does to someone, and how that tragically plays outin this scenario. Another aspect of it involves the discovery of a body in a place that threatens to contaminate the town's beloved wine supply, which was delightfully macabre and a bit of a stomach churner in thought, even if there is no truly grotesque or visceral imagery to be found. Viewer's looking for horror might be offput, but as a Gothic slice of repressed small village intrigue I found this to be quite a wonderful watch, a bit of a slow-burn for sure, but the payoff is worth it.

Special Features:

- Audio Commentary With Dr. Adrian Smith, Co-Author Of Norman J. Warren: Gentleman Of Terror

- A 'Rara Avis' Duo – Ángel Sala, Head Of Programming At The Sitges Film Festival, On Fernando Fernán Gómez & Jess Franco(15:22)

- The Multifaceted Mind Of Fernando Fernán Gómez – Filmmaker Helena de Llanos On The Work And Legacy Of Her Grandfather (23:14)

- Facing The Sun: STRANGE VOYAGE's Promise Of Broken Dreams – Video Essay By Andy Marshall-Roberts, Host Of The Nasty Pasty Podcast (19:53)

- Trailer (3:27)

EXORCISM’S DAUGHTER (1971)

Label: Severin Films

Region Code: Region-Free

Rating: Unrated

Duration: 111 Minutes 27 Seconds (Spanish Version), 96 Mutes 24 Seconds (U.S Version)

Audio: Spanish DTS-HD MA 2.0 Dual-Mono (Spanish Version) or English DTS-HD MA2.0Dual-Mono (U.S. Version) with Optional English Subtitles

Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (1.85:1)

Director: Rafael Moreno Alba

Cast: Analía Gadé, Francisco Rabal, Espartaco Santoni, Helga Liné

Exorcism's Daughter aka House of Insane Women (1971), directed by Rafael Moreno Alba (Dream Kiss), was originally released in 1971 as Las Melancólicas, but was retitled with the more salacious Exorcism's Daughter in the U.S. to cash-in on the blockbuster success of William Friedkin's The Exorcist (1973), which must have been a bit of a disappointment to anyone expecting a green-vomit spewing/360 head-spinning exorcism spectacle when they bought their tickets. While there is an exorcism that features in the film what we really have here is an asylum-set melodrama. The period is the 19th century, a young liberal-minded new physician Dr. Alba (Espartaco Santoni, Blood Ceremony) arrives at an decrepit asylum for women, and attempts to treat the women using new modern day techniques like hypnosis to reveal the root cause of their disturbances. However, the idealistic doctor runs into pushback from the asylums lone warden Fuso (Francisco Rabal, Dagon) who prefers to use the asylum as his own personal brothel. The main story here concerns dr. Alba treating the disturbed Tania (Analía Gadé, Love Letters of a Nun), who lost her mind at the age of eleven after witnessing her mother die during a traumatic and harrowing exorcism. This one has plenty of dingy asylum atmosphere and grit, salacious in it's own right with scenes of sexual debauchery, including Spanish bombshell Helga Liné (Horror Express) as one of the more sexually craved inmates, but also has some surprising moments of delicacy when it comes to Dr. Alba's handling of the patients.

Notably, this release offers both the original Spanish Version scanned in 4K from the original camera negative plus the complete U.S. Version with additional footage, including the infamous orgy, sourced from an archival 35mm print, presented on separate discs.

Special Features:

Disc 1:

- Spanish Version

- Trailer (3:37)

Disc 2:

- U.S. Version (96 Minutes) + Special Features:

- Audio Commentary With Matt Rogerson, Author Of The Vatican Versus Horror Movies And Fulci’s Inferno: Faith In The Films Of A Horror And Giallo Auteur

- A Film That Stands Apart – An Appreciation By Ángel Sala, Head Of Programming At The Sitges Film Festival (17:50)

- Madwoman In The Attic: EXORCISM'S DAUGHTER And The Female Gothic – Video Essay By Kat Ellinger, Author Of Daughters Of Darkness (14:06)

THE DRACULA SAGA (1973)

Label: Severin Films

Region Code: Region-Free

Rating: Unrated

Duration: 9q Minutes 43 Seconds

Audio: Spanish or English DTS-HD MA 2.0 Dual-Mono with Optional English Subtitles

Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (1.66:1)

Director: León Klimovsky

Cast: Tina Sáinz, Tony Isbert, Helga Liné, María Kosty, Narciso Ibáñez Menta

The Dracula Saga (1973) comes to us from legendary Spanish director León Klimovsky (The People Who Own the Dark) that is very much in the mold of Hammer's Gothic bloodsuckers, with a fair amount of gore and titties galore. The story itself is rather unique, when Count Dracula (Narciso Ibanez Menta, The Night of the Werewolf) realizes that his family bloodline is about to go extinct, after years of vampiric inbreeding proves problematic, only manifesting cycloptic little monstrosities. Looking to spawn the future bloodline from human stock he summons his distant granddaughter Berta (Tina Sáinz, Flor de Santidad), who is pregnant, and her husband Hans, (Tony Isbert, The Devil's Cross) to her ancestral home high up in the Transylvanian mountains. Arriving in the area they are initially warned away by angry villagers, but pay no heed tot he superstitious locals, even after finding a woman half nude in the forest with bite marks on her breast. Arriving at the castle they encounter strange inhabitants, but her grandfather Count Dracula is oddly largely absent, but they fund themselves greeted by three pale-skinned women, among them the Count's wife Munia (Helga Liné, Nightmare Castle), and Irina (Cristina Suriani, Horror Rises from the Tomb) and Xenia (Maria Kosty, Night of the Seagulls). They are told that they are expected to come to live at the castle and be the heirs to the Dracula fortune, but soon her husband falls victim to the vampiric charms of Munia, and she is left to her own devices, becoming more unstable as she is continually gaslit about her and her unborn child's prospects.

The Gothic atmosphere of this one is terrific, lots of cobwebbed castle corridors and candelabras, surreal dinner settings with raw meat and viscous blood wine. They really go all out for the castle-set creepiness with this one. Additionally we have an inbred cycloptic, hairy-faced child of Dracula locked away in a room, and the buxom brides of Dracula stalking the nearby woods and claiming new victims. I really enjoyed the look of Narciso Ibanez Menta as the aging and decrepit Count Dracula, desperate to keep his lineage alive, corrupting the youth to do so.

Fans of Hammer-esque Gothic vampire tales are in for quite a treat with this one, the continuing the undead bloodline plot is pretty cool, I love the gaslighting and paranoid pregnancy elements that harken back to Rosemary's Baby, and the amount of nudity and bloodletting was quite satisfying.

Special Features:

- Audio Commentary With Rod Barnett And Troy Guinn, Film Historians/Co-Hosts Of NaschyCast

- Klimovsky's Vampires – An Appreciation By Ángel Sala, Head Of Programming At The Sitges Film Festival (15:54)

- The Spanish Hammer: The Rise And Fall Of Profilmes – Interview With Profilmes Production And Sales Executive Lluís Ferrando (20:37)

- Inheritance As Horror: Blood, Tradition And The Gothic In The Dracula Saga– Video Essay By Kat Ellinger, Author Of Daughters Of Darkness (12:55)

- Trailer

THE TURN OF THE SCREW (1985)

Label: Severin Films

Region Code: Region-Free

Rating: Unrated

Duration: 118 Minutes 20 Seconds

Audio: Spanish/Basque DTS-HD MA 2.0 Dual-Mono with Optional English Subtitles

Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (1.66:)

Director: Eloy de la Iglesia

Cast: Pedro Mari Sánchez, Queta Claver, Cristina Goyanes, Asier Hernandez,

This is a Spanish set so you know Severin are gonna find a Eloy de Iglesia (Cannibal Man) gem to include on it, and of course, they have. We get de Iglesia's1985 adaptation of Henry James’ classic Gothic novella. In this version the director swamps gender for the protaganist, this time instead of a young woman we have a spiritually conflicted young man Roberto (Pedro Mari Sánchez, Creation of the Damned) who has left the seminary after struggling with his sexuality. He's had the good fortune of having been hired by the wealthy uncle of orphans, 11 year-old Flora (Cristina Goyanes) and 15 year-old Mikel (Asier Hernandez, streamer series The Collector), to be a live-in teacher and mentor them at their remote seaside mansion, where the only other adult is the dutiful older maid Antonia (Queta Claver Antonia, The Priest). Roberto is strict and structured in his teachings, but finds the siblings are surprisingly headstrong and emotionally elusive, particularly teen Mikel, who it seems was quite effected by the illicit behaviors of their former governess Cristina, who committed suicide the previous year, and her lover, the estate groundskeeper Pedro (Pedro Nieva Parola, El Pico), who also died. Mikel proving to be particularly troublesome presence for the Roberto, but also a source of conflict, as he finds the young boy attractive, causing spiritual/sexual tension within himself, which is compounded by hearing voices, and seeing what appears to be the ghost of Pedro. Roberto is convinced that the kids are toying with him, not willing to accept that there might be supernatural source, or that perhaps he himself my be suffering from insanity, unable to realize which, until it ends ending in tragedy.

Igelsia's adaptation is quite faithful to the source novella, the film is full of supernatural and homosexual tensions and heightened atmosphere, the seaside setting is absolutely gorgeous, while the three main cast are superb, with the young actors portraying the orphans being quite wonderful in their roles.

Special Features:

- Audio Commentary With Matt Rogerson, Author Of The Vatican Versus Horror Movies And Fulci’s Inferno: Faith In The Films Of A Horror And Giallo Auteur

- Repression And Tragedy – An Appreciation By Ángel Sala, Head Of Programming At The Sitges Film Festival (13:12)

- One In Four Hundred – Interview With Actor Asier Hernández (22:11)

- The Role Of My Dreams – Interview With Actress Cristina Goyanes (20:39)

- Head Full Of Phantoms – Video Essay By Xavier Aldana Reyes, Author Of Spanish Gothic: National Identity, Collaboration And Cultural Adaptation (22:24)

- Trailer (2:30)

Audio/Video: All four of the films on the set get 1080p widescreen presentations non region-free discs. Strange Voyage and The Dracula Saga are scanned in 2K from the original camera negative, while the Spanish version of Exorcism's Daughter and The Turn of the Screw are scanned in 4K from the original camera negative, with the U.S. cut of Exorcism's daughter getting a 2K scan from a 35mm theatrical print. Both version of Exorcism's Daughter are framed in 1.85:1 widescreen, with the other three films are all framed in 1.66:1 widescreen. The new transfers look fantastic, we have some gorgeous depth and clarity, strong black levels, and accurate looking colors throughout, for the most part. The only exception is the U.S. cut of Exorcism's daughter, which has inherent source flaws related to it being a theatrical print, but even then, it looks better than the previous Blu-ray from the now defunct Code Red. Audio on all four film comes by way of Spanish DTS-HD MA 2.0 dual-mono with optional English subtitles, while Exorcism's Daughter U.S. cut also gets an English dub. The tracks are clean and sound authentic for their era, a bit limited range wise, occasionally narrow sounding, but these are largely dialogue driven, and the exchanges were always intelligible, and the sound effects and scores fared well in the mixes.

This set has over ten hours of extras, truly a wealth of bonus material to pour through. Starting off with Strange Voyage, we get a new Audio Commentary With Dr. Adrian Smith, Co-Author Of Norman J. Warren: Gentleman Of Terror, 15-min A 'Rara Avis' Duo – Ángel Sala, Head Of Programming At The Sitges Film Festival, On Fernando Fernán Gómez & Jess Franco, 23-min The Multifaceted Mind Of Fernando Fernán Gómez – Filmmaker Helena de Llanos On The Work And Legacy Of Her Grandfather, 20-min Facing The Sun: Strange Voyage's Promise Of Broken Dreams – Video Essay By Andy Marshall-Roberts, Host Of The Nasty Pasty Podcast, and the 3-min Trailer.

Exorcism's Daughter includes both the 118-min Spanish Version plus the 96-min U.S. Cut of the film, in addition to

a new Audio Commentary With Matt Rogerson, Author Of The Vatican Versus Horror Movies And Fulci’s Inferno: Faith In The Films Of A Horror And Giallo Auteur for the U.S. Cut. Other extras include the 18-min A Film That Stands Apart – An Appreciation By Ángel Sala, Head Of Programming At The Sitges Film Festival, the 14-min Madwoman In The Attic: EXORCISM'S DAUGHTER And The Female Gothic – Video Essay By Kat Ellinger, Author Of Daughters Of Darkness, and the 4-min Trailer.

The Dracula Saga gets anew Audio Commentary With Rod Barnett And Troy Guinn, Film Historians/Co-Hosts Of NaschyCast, which are always a treat, the 16-min Klimovsky's Vampires – An Appreciation By Ángel Sala, Head Of Pr, 21-min The Spanish Hammer: The Rise And Fall Of Profilmes – Interview With Profilmes Production And Sales Executive Lluís Ferrando, 13-min Inheritance As Horror: Blood, Tradition And The Gothic In The Dracula Saga – Video Essay By Kat Ellinger, Author Of Daughters Of Darkness, and the Trailer.

Last, but certainly not least, The Turn of the Screw gets an Audio Commentary With Matt Rogerson, Author Of The Vatican Versus Horror Movies And Fulci’s Inferno: Faith In The Films Of A Horror And Giallo Auteur, 13-min Repression And Tragedy – An Appreciation By Ángel Sala, Head Of Programming At The Sitges Film Festival, 22-min One In Four Hundred – Interview With Actor Asier Hernández,

20-min The Role Of My Dreams – Interview With Actress Cristina Goyanes, 22-min Head Full Of Phantoms – Video Essay By Xavier Aldana Reyes, Author Of Spanish Gothic: National Identity, Collaboration And Cultural Adaptation, and the 30-min Trailer.

The 5-Disc Blu-ray set arrives in a top-loading Rigid Slipbox with outer box artwork by Luke Insect. Inside the four films are housed inside black keepcases with single-sided wraps with cool artwork.

Danza Macabra Volume Five: The Spanish Gothic Collection is yet another essential deep-dive into the realm of cob-webbed creakiness and psychological terror, offering rare Euro-cult gems in their uncut glory with hours of extras that will certainly give you a deeper appreciation for the films and the creatives who made them. When it comes to essential box set Severin are truly in a class of their own, this gets a high recommend from me, particularly if you're a lover of the cult-cinema Gothics.

Screenshots from the Severin Films Blu-rays:

STRANGE VOYAGE (1965)