Cosa avete fatto a Solange? (What Have You Done to Solange?). 1972. Italy/West Germany/UK. Directed by Massimo Dallamano. Screenplay by Bruno Di Geronimo, Dallamano. With Fabio Testi, Karin Baal, Joachim Fuchsberger, Cristina Galbó, Camille Keaton. In Italian; English subtitles. 2K DCP restoration courtesy of American Genre Film Archive. 107 min.
Said to be an influence on Nicholas Winding Refn and Peter Strickland, Massimo Dallamano’s 1971 giallo about a mysterious disappearance, a secret sex society, and a series of grisly murders at a Catholic girls’ school in London would also make a nifty triple bill with Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now and Peter Weir’s Picnic at Hanging Rock, similarly unnerving Gothic tales of repression from the 1970s. Ennio Morricone’s brilliant score, with its discordant death knells and its deceptively romantic lullaby theme sung by Edda Dell’Orso, stands alongside Krzysztof Komeda’s for Rosemary’s Baby as an exemplar of horror film music.