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The Hanging Woman
[Troma]
1973; color
Directed by Jose Luis Merino
Starring: Paul Naschy & Dyanik Zurakowska
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This Italian / Spanish co-production has elements of Giallo (to the extent that there's an unknown killer, a big red herring, and a ton of explanatory backstory revealed just before the big finale) but remains first and foremost a horror flick. It plays out like this: just after a funeral (in a tiny, remote Scottish village), a woman sneaks back into the crypt where the recently deceased is interred, opens the coffin and pries a letter from his - ahem - cold dead hands. As she's reading the document she realizes someone else is also in the tomb; she recoils in horror, screams and collapses. Moments later a man arrives in the village for the reading of his dead uncle's will. (Coincidentally, the same man who'd just been laid to rest.) As soon as he's off the train weird stuff starts to happen. First, the stationmaster tells him not to be out after dark. Then, as he's walking to his late uncle's house, he hears strange noises in the cemetery. He goes to investigate, and literally backs right into the woman we've just seen in the crypt. Only she's dead and hanging from a tree. He runs to the first house he sees and - surprise, surprise - no one will let him in. When he finally gains entry into one house, it turns out not only to be the home of his dead uncle, but the woman he just saw hanging from a tree was his cousin! Things only continue to take turns for the weirder, as it seems the whole house has a cloak of mystery and darkness surrounding it. The present lady of the manor (stepmom to the dead girl and second wife of the dead uncle) who has an agenda to sell the place, is also a practitioner of black magic and a horny slut. The other residents of the house, a scientist who was financially backed by the dead man and has an extensive lab in the basement, and his 20-something daughter who's basically a servant, are biding their time waiting to see what happens because the inheritor of the entire estate is the newly arrived nephew. Aside from them, and best of all, we get Paul Naschy (who does not live in the house) as a gravedigger with a penchant for grave robbing and necrophilia. (He's practically a lead, and turns in the best supporting role I've seen him do thus far.) In their quest to find the hung woman's killer, and as more and more bizarre things occur, the bumbling police continue to mount accusations against the nephew. When the truth is finally revealed, we get zombies(!), a surprise beheading (about which Naschy relates a great story in the bonus interview) and, in true horror fashion, an ending that actually lays the groundwork for future horrors to come. All in all, The Hanging Woman is a fine piece of Eurotrash well worth watching.
—the Kommandant
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