Lord Alan Cunningham (Anthony Steffen) is obsessed about his dead wife Evelyn (Paola Natale). When she died Alan had a nervous breakdown and was in an asylum for a while. When he was released, he began torturing redheaded women who reminded him of his wife. Alan’s doctor, Dr. Richard Timberlane (Giacomo Rossi Stuart) wants him to leave his castle and move to London to get away from memories of Evelyn.
Alan’s Aunt Agatha (Joan C. Davis) convinces him to attend a séance telling him that the medium, Miranda, can contact Evelyn. She assures him that once Evelyn has been contacted his periods of anger would cease. At the séance are Alan, Aunt Agatha, Alan’s cousin, George Harriman (Enzo Tarascio), and Alan’s cousin, Farley (Umberto Raho). Evelyn’s brother and Alan’s gardener, Albert (Roberto Maldera), arrives later. During the séance a vision of Evelyn appears, Alan faints.
George offers to move into the castle to keep an eye on Alan. Also living at the castle are Aunt Agatha and Albert. George suggests that Alan get married again. At first Alan isn’t interested, until he meets Gladys (Marina Malfatti). Alan and Gladys get married, and she moves into the castle. Gladys is a blonde, so Alan doesn’t try to kill his new bride. Instead, Alan tries to settle down to a normal life. He is interrupted by visions and dreams of Evelyn and of the affair she had with another man.
With Gladys now the new Lady Cunningham strange events begin to happen. Gladys begins to express the feeling that the castle is haunted, and that Evelyn really didn’t die but instead faked her death and ran away with her lover. Alan’s grasp on sanity seems to slip when people in the castle begin to get murdered, but who is behind the otherworldly happenings may be someone closer to reality than anyone realizes.
“The Night Evelyn Came Out of Her Grave” AKA “La notte che Evelyn uscì dalla tomba” AKA “The Night She Arose From the Tomb” was released in 1971 and was directed by Emilio Miraglia. It is an Italian horror thriller and a giallo.
I remember seeing a chopped-up version of this movie on either late-night TV or one of those DVD compilations. It was crap. It’s tough to take a giallo film, remove all the naked parts, and still have a movie you can understand. A lot of the plot gets cut out as well. There have been many versions of the film; most of them are missing a lot of information. It makes the movie uneven and messy.
The complete version is much better to understand but still has a few issues. There are parts that are a little slow and the plot is a little complex. On the plus side, there are lots of gothic horror elements infused in a chain of murderous events and punctuated by naked redheads. Combined with an unusual ending the movie left me not sure if I liked it or not.