The Night Evelyn Came Out Of The Grave (1971)

The Night Evelyn Came Out Of The Grave makes excellent use of a man’s past to deconstruct his present, while creating a strong setting for a multi-faceted mystery that’s sure to make even the most jaded movie-goer crack a smile as the twists unfold. 

Rating:

Lord Alan Cunningham (Anthony Steffen) is loaded. He’s got a ton of assets and multiple homes. He’s a good-looking guy and sure knows how to sweep a woman off her feet. In movie-talk, these guys usually are the worst kinds of men, and in The Night Evelyn Came Out Of The Grave it’s no different. He seems to have a thing for redheads. After seducing them and bringing them back to his place, he gets them to strip before forcing them to put on black boots and whipping them until they submit. Their fates are left up to the viewer, but we immediately strike them as dead in the worst way. One night Lord Alan attends a lavish party with his cousin and he meets Gladys (Marina Malfatti) whom he instantly falls in love with. His complete obsession with his long dead wife (specifically her strawberry-colored hair) causes him to hunt down, seduce and ultimately kill, beautiful red heads. As the bodies pile up Gladys is dragged into his downward spiral, and even Alan hears strange sounds before he finally catches a glimpse of his dead wife. The mystery unravels faster as he tries to put the pieces together before he loses his sanity. All this leads up to an ending with so many double-crosses it has to be seen to be believed.

Let’s get this out of the way now. The box cover and description, will lead most to believe this is some zombie/return from the dead horror film, but The Night Evelyn Came Out Of The Grave is much more a stylized giallo film. Red herrings abound in this film. Just when you think you’ve got it figured out, the character you thought was behind it all is offed, or better yet, another idea is dropped into your mind, then you find yourself doubting what you previously thought. As with any good giallo, there’s plenty of gore and boobs (oh, God are there boobs). The Night Evelyn Came Out Of The Grave never holds back from letting it all show. I’d say that most of the women in the film (well, any with more than a few lines of dialogue) manage to get out of their clothes, and do so rather quickly (which is nothing to complain about). As with most horror films, the women that find themselves naked usually find themselves in another situation as well, dead. The violence is pretty cranked up, and the audience is treated to some pretty inventive death sequences (one involving a poisonous snake really stood out to me).

The horror elements are great, but the real standout of the film is the story. Yes, I gave a quick overview earlier, but there’s so much more going on under the surface. Lord Alan is constantly sinking deeper and deeper into a mania that very few people would be strong enough to deal with. It’s clear from the get go that the film is littered with unsavory characters, and the audience is seemingly encouraged to make their own decisions about who’s who, but the really fun part is that everyone seems guilty. I almost laughed because I found the most innocent characters to be the most likely ones that I would choose to be the “bad guys”. I’m not giving anything away here, but Evelyn’s brother is always around, staring at people with his creepy eye, getting paid off by Lord Alan and always carries a gun. I immediately pegged him as one, if not THE, villain, but my idea was quickly shot down. These are the kinds of games that are played with the audience throughout the film, and it’s exactly why the film works as well as it does.

I’m not going to say it’s perfect, because it’s not. For all of the beautiful camerawork (and everything listed above) several of the actors made me cringe whenever they were on screen. Some of the setups seemed way too convenient (even though I said the ending was ace, there’s a certain level of convenience built into it), and I’m not quite sure about the actions of certain characters (the doctor seems to be in on the whole plot from the beginning, but it seems just too easy – I don’t know how else to explain it).

Overall, The Night Evelyn Came Out Of The Grave is a well-told giallo/horror story from Emilio Miraglia (the amazing Red Queen Kills Seven Times) that suffers from some major plot holes and takes some liberties in asking the audience to buy a little too much to make it work right. Any aficionado of giallo films might dig this, but more mainstream film fans may want to give it a pass.

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