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The opening reflects Moxey's The City of the Dead, not a British view of New England but an Italian rendering of Scotland. The sorceress (Hélène Chanel) was once pursued by the judge (Andrea Bosic) when young and beautiful, he presides over her burning as the aged crone puts a curse on the village, "hatred will take root here!" Plight of the descendant, cf. Corman's The Haunted Palace, one century later the lass bearing the witch's name (Vira Silenti) comes to get married amid bedeviled hysteria. ("We will illuminate these rooms with our love," chirps the groom of the castle full of roaring fireplaces and disembodied cackles.) The maiden is seen as la maledetta strega resurrected so the townspeople march in with torches, Maciste (Kirk Morris) to the rescue. Mythology and follia and "the fairy tales of old," it all goes into Riccardo Freda's Orphic splendors. The pure-hearted musclehead uproots a tree and locates the portal into Hell, his oiled chest is swiftly adorned with scarlet scratches from a leonine guardian, serpents and buzzards and oxen are among the other doped beasts he must wrestle. The Castellana Caves supply uncanny stalactites for the vast infernal canvases, special-guest sufferers include Sisyphus under a Styrofoam boulder and Prometheus pecked at by a demonic turkey. Goliath chortles lustily until Maciste hurls a petrified log his way, the hag morphs into her shapely form to tempt him, golden apple and all. Meanwhile the heroine is judged by a law "too afraid of the unknown," a Bible bursts into flame upon her touch. Rain on a pyre is the miracle, magic belongs to "all women in love." Pasolini serves up a scatological gloss in The Canterbury Tales. With Angelo Zanolli, Donatella Mauro, Gina Mascetti, Antonella Della Porta, John Karlsen, Charles Fernley Fawcett, Remo De Angelis, and Pietro Ceccarelli.
--- Fernando F. Croce |