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The Sister Of Ursula
[Severin]
1978; color
Directed by Enzo Milioni
Starring: Barbara Magnolfi, Stefania D'Amario, Anna Zinnemann, Antinisca Nemour, Yvonne Harlow, Vanni Materassi, Giancarlo Zanetti & Marc Porel
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Normally I don't think of giallos as being sleazy but The Sister of Ursula has a vibe about it that gives me the feeling it would have been as welcome a fit in a Times Square grindhouse as it would have been in a suburban art house theater. (Maybe it's the fact there's more sex in this flick than in any ten giallos put together, some of it bordering on softcore porn.) By the time this film was released, in 1978, the genre was already on the wane, which might explain director Enzi Milioni's more-explicit-than-most shot selection - as an effort to either revive the genre or, at the very least, draw enough attention to his film to make people take notice. The movie revolves around two sisters, Dagmar and Ursula, vacationing at a lonely seaside resort somewhere in Italy. It is also of note that Ursula is psychically sensitive to some degree, and tormented by the bad vibes she keeps getting from just about everyone around her. While in the area the sisters are also on a quest, in the wake of their father's death, to find their long-missing mother. In an odd (read not so odd) coincidence, at the same time random women are starting to turn up dead on or near the resort's premises, all brutally killed by a masked, black gloved killer. While Dagmar spends her days trying to hook up with a local scumbag who works at the resort (a junkie, in one of the film's strange and somewhat unnecessary subplots) Ursula is tormented by visions and feelings she can't control. When she's alone, she has some sort of ability to communicate with her dear old dead dad, although that's never really explored, or explained, until much later in the movie. As if all of this weirdness isn't enough, there's also the lesbian hotel owner; her hooker girlfriend; her husband (who's actually screwing the nightclub singer); and a trough of other assorted sordid types, most of whom wind up killed. Typical of the genre, Milioni throws plenty of subterfuge our way in an effort to keep the suspense building as to who the killer really is - and, for my money, he succeeds. The ending isn't so much of a surprise, but the revelation that the instrument of death is a giant wooden dildo is one of the more bizarre twists I've seen yet. For all it's weirdness, and despite lots of hairy people having ugly simulated sex, I would watch it again.
—Giallo Biafra
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