Death as a Woman in a Red Cape

Two beautiful sisters dwell in the shadow of a deadly prophecy in the 1972 giallo film The Red Queen Kills Seven Times (La dama rossa uccide sette volte). Few movies, even Italian movies, can boast such a robust cast of beautiful women and, shot amid scenic castles and villages in Germany, the scenery is pretty lovely too. And the story is half juicy murder mystery and half stylish ghost story, making for an altogether pleasant and bloody ride.

Kitty Wildenbruck (Barbara Bouchet), of the wealthy Wildenbruck family, is a beautiful fashion photographer who works all day with beautiful women like Rosmary (Pia Giancaro) and Lulu (Sybil Danning), trying to forget the time she accidentally bashed in her beautiful sister's skull and hid her body in the cellar.

The only other person who knows about the death of Eveline is their beautiful elder sister, Franziska (Marina Malfatti), who always wears sexy, unwieldy lingerie to bed.

But so does Kitty.

There's a story concerning a weird painting in the family castle of one woman stabbing another in the neck--a Red Queen attacking a Black Queen. The movie never lays it out quite directly but it seems the sisters are somehow supposed to repeat the struggle between the queens. When a woman in a red cape starts murdering Kitty's acquaintances one by one it seems Eveline may have risen from the grave to do just that.

Kitty confides at one point that, as much as she and her sister fought, she did miss her somehow. There's a nice subtext of phantasmal, coexisting resentment and compulsion throughout the film that mixes well with its stylish and sexual aesthetic. The Red Queen Kills Seven Times is available on Amazon Prime.

Twitter Sonnet #1383

The broken glasses changed again for new.
The movie roof supports a running man.
A moneyed sky contained excessive blue.
The answer lies betwixt the beige and tan.
The fragile structure sways in candy wind.
For forty years the hair contained a mind.
The heart remained in wait for post to send.
The dust of bunnies draws a fluffy kind.
The strangely smooth and shaky shadow walked.
With paces sliced at perfect ticks of time.
Like nothing silent, armies met and talked.
The winds construct a fitting metal chime.
They took the day to make a shorter night.
They threw a squirrel to make a stranger flight.