The Night Evelyn Came Out of the Grave

Emilio Miraglia's specialty was the gothic giallo, the crumbling-estate ghost story with a rational swindle hidden inside it, and this is his signature. A lord fresh out of the asylum, unhinged by grief for his dead red-haired wife Evelyn, invites red-haired women out to his rotting castle and does not let them leave, until he remarries and the late Evelyn appears to climb out of her tomb. Whether she is a revenant or a con aimed at the family fortune is the whole game, and the plumbing that connects the twists is loud and creaky. What holds it together is atmosphere: fog, a mausoleum, Bruno Nicolai's score, Erika Blanc rising out of a coffin mid-striptease. Watch it for the mood and forgive the machinery.