Notizie

It can be easy to lose track of just how much work and time goes into a single comics panel – to think of a graphic novel like prose, where you can strike out a line and rewrite it at any time. But comics are much more architected than that, built up in stages, and you can’t build a penthouse unless you have the right foundation.

It’s more obvious with books that don’t tell simple, direct stories – ones where the architecture had to be laid out more carefully, planned more fully, and where the foundation had to be chosen to tell this particular version of all of the possible stories circling in the creator’s head.

I bring this up with Leela Corman’s stunning new graphic novel Victory Parade , because this is not a straightforward book. It’s skips around in time and space – not hugely, but...

That’s how things ought to work — give this reviewer Exactly the great disc he wants to see and wait for the flood of praise. This Italian-French gothic gem can hold its own in the Eurohorror Renaissance of 1960, with fine direction, an attractive cast, a seductive heroine/villainess, and lush color cinematography that turns a Flemish windmill into a young lover’s Garden of Horrors. It’s a period picture with fairy tale overtones, atrocious medical crimes and a sensual romance that leans heavily on squeamish Victorian taboos . . . yes, it’s irresistible. So is the lavish presentation, one of this disc label’s very best. Call it Holiday Horror, perhaps.

Mill of the Stone Women

Blu-ray

Arrow Video

1960 / Color / 1:66 widescreen / 90, 95, 96 min. / Street Date December 14, 2021 / Available from Arrow Video / 59.95

Starring Pierre Brice, Scilla Gabel, Herbert Böhme, Wolfgang Preiss, Dany Carrel, Liana Orfei, Marco Gugliemi.

Cinematography Pier Ludovico Pavoni

Production Designer...

Mad doctors! Mortiferous maidens! Horrifying hallucinations! A key early Euro-horror and one of the very first in color, this French-Italian production is a medical horrorshow crossed with a folk tale -- its centerpiece is a vintage carillon attraction in an old mill; creepy Scilla Gabel is the minatory seducer who bridges the gap between life and death. Mill of the Stone Women Region A+B Blu-ray Subkultur / Media Target Distribution GmbH 1960 / Color / 1:66 widescreen / 90, 95, 96 min. / Die Mühle der versteinerten Frauen / Street Date June 30, 2016 / Amazon.de Eur 24,99 Starring Pierre Brice, Scilla Gabel, Wolfgang Preiss, Robert Boehme, Dany Carrel Cinematography Pier Ludovico Pavoni Production Designer Arrigo Equini Film Editor Antonietta Zita Original Music Carlo Innocenzi Written by Remigio Del Grosso, Giorgio Ferroni, Ugo Liberatore, Giorgio Stegani from Flemish Stories by Peter Van Weigen (possibly apocryphal) Produced by Giampaolo Bigazzi Directed by Giorgio Ferroni

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

2016 is shaping up as a...