La dama rossa uccide sette volte (1972)

Directed by Emilio Miraglia [Other horror films: La notte che Evelyn uscì dalla tomba (1971)]

Known under the evocative title The Red Queen Kills Seven Times, La dama rossa uccide sette volte is a giallo that has a decent amount going for it. Possessing a great mystery, fun plot, and memorable killer, it’s a very solid film, and one of the better gialli I’ve seen.

Firstly, I love the set up and the legend of the Red Queen, based on the painting seen in the opening. The Red Queen is killed by her sister, the Black Queen, and so the Red Queen returns from the dead to get her revenge, killing six innocent people, and for the seventh and final victim, the Black Queen, her sister. All of which is a long way to say that, indeed, The Red Queen Kills Seven Times.

It’s quite possibly among one of my favorite titles of a giallo.

In other news, the plot largely revolves around mysterious murders involving some sisters, a castle, a curse, a will, and some mixed-up identities, not to mention secret deaths and blackmail. It’s just a lot of fun all the way through, and like all great gialli, there’s a lot of viable suspects, and figuring out the mystery provides a good time. As it is, I don’t 100% love the finale – I wanted a little more oompf – but it was still quite well-done.

One thing this film succeeds in that few gialli really do is creating a memorable design of the killer. The Red Queen’s design is great – a woman in a red cape and hood, with a maniacal laugh every time she kills someone (and surprisingly, that laugh never once gets old). It’s a great killer, one that you’d expect from some 80’s slasher, and not that many gialli showcase great designs (as so many instead show black gloves and trenchcoats, which, to be fair, has it’s own charm).

Barbara Bouchet (The Black Belly of the Tarantula) made a solid lead, and had some great scenes, especially during her flashbacks. Really, though, most performances are solid, from Sybil Danning, Fabrizio Moresco, and Nino Korda to Ugo Pagliai, Marina Malfatti, and Pia Giancaro. Rudolf Schündler was nice to see, and while generic, Marino Masé (Contamination) certainly looked the part of a detective.

Directed by Emilio Miraglia (who also made the excellent The Night Evelyn Came Out of the Grave), The Red Queen Kills Seven Times isn’t a particularly gory giallo. There are some solid kills, such as a woman being tricked into climbing a fence, but then impaling herself on the spikes, or a good stabbing in the back of a van, but the kills here aren’t near as important as the mystery and occasional atmosphere, the same of which could fairly be said of The Night Evelyn Came Out of the Grave.

Also, portions here and there of the film take place in a castle. By no means is the castle necessarily central to the plot, but some of the better scenes take place in and around it, and it’s a very solid setting when it pops up, and gives the film a little Gothic spice, as Italian horror did often in the 1960’s.

The Red Queen Kills Seven Times was a pretty good movie. I don’t know if it’s good enough to make my top five gialli at the moment (with films like Deep Red, The Case of the Bloody Iris, and the early The Murder Clinic, it’s hard to crack the best of the subgenre), but it’s definitely a solid film, and with that great killer, isn’t a movie that’ll be forgotten.

7.5/10