My take: This film is full of strange elements that fail to come together to make an even remotely scary whole.
Rating: 1 out of 4 stars
I’m starting to see a theme in late 1950s – early 1960s cinema: all doctors and professors are obsessed with their work. And they all must use that work in their attempts to save some young female. I’ve seen this in Eyes Without a Face, where the doctor killed to replace his daughter’s damaged face. The same plot exists in the Brain That Wouldn’t Die, where a doctor was trying to find a replacement body for his disembodied head of a fiancé.
It would really have sucked to be a doctor or professor in 1960. Apparently, everyone thought you were a psycho-killer out to steal their body parts.
Such is the same in Mill of the Stone Women, but this time it is a professor who is trying to save his sex-pot daughter from a rare blood disease. The plot revolves around a young art student named Hans. He goes to the “Mill of the Stone Women” to interview the mill’s owner, the professor. The mill has an utterly creeping rotating display of life-size figurines depicting the deaths of famous women.
Poster for Mill of the Stone Women, which was released as il mulino delle donne di pietra in Italy.
While at the mill, Hans spots the professor’s voluptuous young daughter. He becomes enamored with her, but quickly learns that she has a rare disease where any sudden fright could result in her instant death. (Is this a real thing? I doubt it.) It also becomes clear that the professor has been going to tremendous, devious lengths to keep her alive.
The movie has a few creepy elements in it, but they fail to come together to make the whole interesting. I find this to be an utterly forgettable film. Instead of watching this, I would recommend that you watch Eyes Without a Face and the Mystery of the Wax Museum. This film is just a hodge-podge of those plots.
I got the movie on a disc via Netflix. Here’s the trailer for your edification. Warning: it makes the film sound a lot more interesting than it actually is.
January 21, 2015 at 9:58 am
Ouch. Do you ever regret watching 1 star movies? Would the world be a worse place of these were erased from the annals of time?
January 27, 2015 at 5:34 pm
Yes, I do regret watching those 1-star ones. And I really regret the fact that I usually end up watching them more than once. When I really dislike a movie, I procrastinate writing a review. As a result, I end up having to watch parts of it again to remember it clearly when I write the review. Beer helps though. Lots of beer.