Mill of the Stone Women
7 /10 1 Votes
Director Giorgio Ferroni Duration Music director Carlo Innocenzi | 6.8/10 IMDb Genre Horror, Sci-Fi Running time 1h 36m Cinematography Pier Ludovico Pavoni Country Italy
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Writer Giorgio Stegani , Giorgio Ferroni Release date August 30, 1960 (1960-08-30) (Italy)
September 5, 1962 (1962-09-05) (France) Cast Pierre Brice (Hans von Arnam), Dany Carrel (Liselotte Kornheim), Scilla Gabel (Elfie Wahl), Wolfgang Preiss (Doctor Loren Bolem), Herbert A. E. Böhme (Prof. Gregorius Wahl), Liana Orfei (Annelore)Similar movies Scilla Gabel movies, Movies about sculpture, Horror movies Tagline Why do warm-blooded beauties suddenly turn to stone?! | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Mill of the Stone Women (Italian: Il mulino delle donne di pietra) is a 1960 horror film directed by Giorgio Ferroni. The film stars Pierre Brice and Scilla Gabel.
Contents
Released on 30 August 1960 in Italy, the film became the first Italian horror film shot in color.
Mill of the stone women 1960 trailer
Cast
Production
The opening credits of Mill of the Stone Women claim the films plot is based on a short story by Pieter van Weigen in the book Flemish Tales. This is fiction as there is no book by that title or Flemish author by that name.
Shot by director of photography Pier Ludovico Pavoni, this was the first Italian horror film shot in color.
Release
Mill of the Stone Women was released in Italy on 30 August 1960. This made it the third locally based horror film released in Italy in August of that year after Black Sunday and Atom Age Vampire.
The film grossed higher than both Black Sunday and Atom Age Vampire in Italy with a total of 164 million Italian lira. Roberto Curti, author of Italian Gothic Horror films, 1957–1969, described this gross as disappointing in its home country but more successful abroad where it was distributed by Galatea.
Reception
From contemporary reviews La Stampa, stated that Ferroni directed the film with skill and technique, but the film resorts to cliches of coffins, corpses and screams that make any scary moments less frequent than expected. The Monthly Film Bulletin stated that the "flat countryside of Holland, with its windmills, provides some unusual, if rather neglected settings for this macabre, Grand Guignol piece", while the review concluded that "apart from the grandstand finish, which is unusually good within its melodramatic limits, the pace is dreadfully sluggish and monotonous."
In his book Italian Horror Film Directors, Louis Paul praised the visual appearance of the film, inspired by Flemish and Dutch painters. And while critiquing the rhythm of the film, he noted its "memorable images".
References
Mill of the Stone Women WikipediaMill of the Stone Women IMDb Mill of the Stone Women themoviedb.org