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Damned in Venice (1978)

Dir: Ugo Liberatore

Mark, (Renato Cestiè) is a blind boy living with his Sister, Christine (Rena Niehaus), in Venice.
During a funeral Mark has another in a series of recent visions of a man with a cane, only this time the man is with a woman and a dog that is eating a decayed arm.
Christine is openly unsympathetic to these visions and resents having to look after her Brother.

Christine's boyfriend Georgio is a struggling artist and their relationship is strained. He is also more sympathetic to Mark's visions, visions that get more frequent.

Mark and Christine are orphans and are staying with their Grandmother who does not want them to have anything to do with their late Mother's family, the Winters, due to some old dispute involving the death of her Son and nasty rumours about them.
But when Grandmother is killed in a bizarre fire accident their Mother's Family, the mysterious Winters (their Aunt and Uncle) become their Guardians and Mark and Christine go to stay at their house.
Events then take a very sinister and deathly turn indeed.
What is it with the mysterious well in the cellar?
What is Mark's destiny?
Is the seemingly very Human and helpful 'Dan' (Yorgo Voyagis), who suddenly sweeps Christine off her feet, really the ghostly, cane wielding figure of dread in Mark's visions?
And how can the still virginal Christine…be pregnant!?…..

This neglected little film really deserves a wider audience as, despite some less than thrilling pacing, there are many supernatural treats and shocks to enjoy.

This is no chocolate box vision of Venice that Ugo Liberatore and his Cinematographer Alfio Contini, have given us. It's decayed, foggy and forever shrouded in a literal and figurative gloom. Be it the shuttered rooms in the Winters house with their dustsheet covered furniture, an ongoing parade of funerals and their tolling bells or the morbid and depressive Winter Family themselves, Venice (like the film) is an oppressive weight.

The 'supernatural' events that unfold are pretty much what you would expect…worms from taps, mysterious voices and sounds, disembodied hands and Mark's increasingly violent visions. There is nothing groundbreaking here, but the atmosphere of doom created is palpable.
Pino Donaggio's lush main title theme compliments the hazy Venice locations and the rest of the score (far more abstract) also compliments this oppressive and bleak atmosphere.

Nudity is pretty frequent with a topless, murderous orgy scene, general full frontal shots of Christine in her bedroom and in Mark's visions of Dan seducing her. But there is nothing overly gratuitous here and the nudity is actually part of the ongoing plot.

As this is the 70's a bit of gore is to be expected as much as the nudity. And although it's sparse there are some effectively nasty visions of people being stabbed with a pointed cane (including in the face), a severed head and various violent demises that certainly deliver the bloody shocks which inject much needed fire into this generally cold and distant movie. One sudden and very unexpected sequence in particular is shocking in it's content, and is an event not seen in any other film I can think of.

Performances are all fine, with the young Renato Cestiè doing a good job as Mark especially.
Euro Splatter fans will spot Olga Karlatos, she of Fulci's "Zombi 2" and 'splinter in the eye' immortality.

The screenplay is rather messy and fractured and it's really down to the visuals and the performances to carry the movie. There is some very weird and minimalist dialogue exchanges as well. A classic example is when Christine comes downstairs and Georgio matter of factly asks her in front of Mark "Do you want to make love"?
"Yes", Christine replies, "that's why I came down". They then have sex as the lost looking Mark just stands there. There is little in this film that even feels normal.

"Damned in Venice" also seems longer than it is thanks to the sedate pacing, is overly complicated in it's construction of events and away from the direct supernatural set-pieces, the film plays far more like a dark drama than a horror film.
And the 'visions' aspect of the plot is very much a double-edged sword.
They provide some effective set pieces and shocks, but it becomes very hard to figure out what is real and what is not as the plot unfolds. Now of course this is a good thing in many ways and adds an air of mystery…but it means you have to listen carefully to understand what happens at the end.
It's a good twist but it's messily handled.

Overall then we have a bleak, morbid, oppressive and wonderfully atmospheric horror film with a few good and nasty shocks and whose only real faults are the overly sedate pacing and lack of energy and the needlessly convoluted unfolding of events. Otherwise it's a lost treat that is well worth tracking down.