Lover Of The Monster — Lover Of The Monster(Blu Ray)
From the early 1970s Lover Of The Monster is a lightly sleazed & campy euro-horror take on Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde thing- with Klaus Kinski playing the placid-to-bug eyed, sweaty, and sexually fired lead. Here from the folks over at Full Moon Features is a Blu Ray release of the film- feature just a bare-bones release, though the new print is rather good.
Released in the year 1974 Lover Of The Monster ( aka Le amanti del mostro, Canavarın Sevgilisi) was an Italian/ Turkish production. It was written/ directed by Rome born Sergio Garrone- who had a good pedigree in 70’s exploitation fare, with the likes of two Django films- Django The Bastard( 1969) and Kill Django…Kill First( 1971), and a few Naziexploitation pics SS Experiment Love Camp(1976) and SS Camp 2: Love Camp(1977).
The film kicks off with heiress Anijeska Nijinski ( Katia Christine) and her husband Alex (Kinski) moving into the grand gothic house of her Doctor father, who passed away some years back. It’s clear their marriage is in difficulties from the off- as they take bedrooms on separate side of the grand house on arrival, then spend little or no time together- with Alex drinking and slumbering in the library, while Anijeska sits in the large garden picking flowers while moustached and suited and booted local Doctor tries to chat her up. Alex himself is a doctor, but somehow lost his passion for it and largely life it’s self- one day while being in a drunken semi slumber in the library he comes across a hidden/ sealed book. Opening it up he finds the mad doctor diary of his long-dead father in law, and in due course uncovers his bubbling red test tube lab in the cobwebbed basement of the house. And one thing leads to another he starts shooting himself up, morphing from been morose and glum, to a bug-eyed sweaty and manic madman- who mainly attacks women in a sexualized manner.
The film is set in an odd place between period gothic & dusty cowboy with a grand house set in a deep and dark green forest, which is just down the road is a rough ‘n’ ready one-horse town where they hang folk in the dusty square. It starts out very sort of period set marriage problem drama, before in time adding in mad doc tropes, then moving rapidly more fleshy/ depraved attacks- all amp up towards the wonderful deranged final attack. It’s fair to say it does rather tread period drama water before it kicks into the mad doc tropes, and the sleaze/ violence isn’t quite as extreme/ intense as you’d hope/ want. But Kinski is in fine form, with Christine having quite a younger Nicole Kidman quality about her- and she works well enough alongside the yin/ yang swings on Mr Kinski. On the whole Lover Of The Monster is a rewarding enough slice of low key euro horror, with some nicely sleazed and depraved touches here and there.
Moving onto this new region free Blu Ray disc- and sadly this is just a barebone affair- with all we get here been the film itself and trailer reel, but this is the same for most of Full Moon releases. We get a very bright and crisp new 4k print of the film- this has only an Italian track with fixed and bold subtitles. Sadly Kinski is dubbed with a rather ill-fitting voice, but after the initial shock, this isn’t too noticeable.
In finishing if you either enjoy lightly sleazed euro take on mad doc period horror, or of course, enjoy Mr Kinski film work- you’ll be needing to pick up this release Lover Of The Monster.