Macabre is Lamberto Bava’s first solo directing credit and it arrived in the year of his more famous father’s (Mario Bava) death. The film is late giallo and lacks many of the genre’s traditional touches, but Lamberto manages the suspense well and delivers some genuinely creepy moments.
Bernice Stegers stars as Jane Baker, a New Orleans wife and mother who leaves her kids in the care of the yard man one morning so she can tryst with her lover, Frank. While the two of them are playing Ride ‘Em Cowboy, her adolescent daughter (Veronica Zinny) drowns her little brother in the bathtub. Someone calls Jane, who gets Frank to drive her home. On the way, they’re involved in a freak accident and Frank loses his head. Literally.
One year later, Jane is released from an asylum and moves into the old house where she and Frank used to meet. The blind landlord, Robert (Stanko Molnar), who has a crush on her, is glad she’s back until he starts hearing the sounds of passion issuing from her apartment as she calls out Frank’s name.
At varying points, the movie could become a ghost story, a psycho kid story, a creepy landlord story, or a nutty woman in the upstairs apartment story. Actually, it blends elements from all of them together. Unfortunately, Bava gives in to the temptation of tossing in a last-second kicker designed to shock that just doesn’t work and futzes with the story as we expect it to end. Bad move.
Filmed in New Orleans, the flick lets us see parts of the city that aren’t the French Quarter, and that’s nifty. It’s a near-miss that works for 88.5 minutes out of 89. —Doug Bentin