Terror review

	Nino and Aldo burst through the door catching the girls unaware as they rehearse a play... Christina: “What's this?” Nino: “This is a gun and it shoots bullets!” Terror (1978) aka La Settima Donna (The Seventh Woman) Dir. Franco Prosperi Starring Ray Lovelock, Florinda Bolkan, Flavio Andreini, Stefano Cedratti . Three hoodlums, Aldo (Ray Lovelock), Nino and Walter rob a bank, ruthlessly gunning down several bystanders as they make their escape. When the getaway car breaks down they are forced to look for a hideout and so break into a secluded house, where a group of schoolgirls and their teacher Christina (Florinda Bolkan) just happen to be studying. Sneaking through the back door Walter encounters a maid in the kitchen and promptly slaps her around a bit before caving her head in with an iron. Nino on the other hand checks upstairs and has a go at raping one of the schoolgirls rather unsuccessfully and he ends up with a nasty stab wound in his groin. Without further incident the house is secured and the telephone disconnected.

At first this seems to be just another spin on the same themes that can be found in films like Last House on the Left (1972) or The House by the Edge of the Park (1980), i.e. group of ne'er-do-wells take hostage some innocent people and do bad things to them. And while this is true there are some outstanding moments in Terror that make it an essential watch rather than a generic clone. The opening bank heist is filmed from waist height making it impossible to see the faces of the robbers, thus we don't know which members of the gang do all the shooting. Throughout the film Aldo constantly tells one of the girls that he is just the getaway driver and had no part in the murders, and because of the way the robbery was filmed the viewer has to go along with his tales. This makes for a great plot device and the revelations that unfold towards the end of the film are all the more enlightening because of it. Bizarre, trippy imagery is also on the menu accompanied by some equally strange music. Alongside the score by Roberto Pregadio there's a bizarre twisted hybrid/cover of Roxy Music's ‘Get Together' (sung by Lovelock), accompanying a series of shots of the schoolgirls in bikinis, and a piece of music that sounds like the intro to Donna Summer's ‘I Feel Love' looped badly and played over a scene where Christina, now found out to be a Nun, is forced to strip out of her civilian clothes and put on her habit

However, it's the rape scenes involving the schoolgirls that are most effective and unsettling. Filmed in the dark with just basic spotlighting on the characters, the first rape scene, in which Nino and Walter take turns to have sex with one of the schoolgirls, is made all the more disturbing by the fact that it's played out in slow motion with only music for sound, plus Walter is naked apart from mascara, lipstick and brightly coloured eye shadow. Just to put an even more fucked up slant on the whole thing is the way Walter looks at Nino during all this, the looks he gives to him come across as if Walter would rather be raping Nino instead of the girl. Even more disturbing is the second slow-mo rape of another girl with a walking stick. Nothing graphic is shown on screen as once again it's the lighting, slow motion and sounds that affect, as all that is shown is Nino poking his walking stick into the camera intercut with close ups of his mental grinning face, it's the implication of what he's doing partnered with the almost psychedelic visuals that really give it impact.

This is a pretty above average rape/revenge thriller from Franco Prosperi with the three male leads giving their best David Hess inspired performances while the girls cry, look desperate and just basically sit and wait for stuff to happen to them and as usual the schoolgirl premise doesn't hold up for a minute as they all look at least 20. An atmosphere of menace and tension builds up as incident quickly follows incident until the tables are turned and the slimy bastards get their just desserts. ‘Terror' is thoroughly politically incorrect, though would you really want it any other way?

Many thanks to Marc Morris and the Mondo Erotico archive for the original VHS cover artwork.