Marta

... Dopo Di Che Uccide Il Maschio E Lo Divora

US Title: Marta

Spanish-Italian 1971

D: José Antonio Nieves Conde

P: Jose Frade//St & Sc: Ricardo Lopez Aranda & Juan José Alonso Millan//DP: Ennio Guarnieri//E:Maruja Soriano//M: Piero Piccioni//Art D: Roman Calatayud//Color

Cast: Marisa Mell, Stephen Boyd, Howard Ross, Jorge Rigaud, Isa Miranda,Jesus Puente, Melida Quiraga.

Miquel lives alone with his butterfly collection and his pack of dogs, who patrol the grounds of his estate. One day they trap a woman named Marta who Miquel ends up saving. It just so happens that she has escaped from a mental institution and oddly enough, resembles Miquel's first wife who disappeared two years ago. Her attempts to seduce him fail as he's tormented by something from his past. The longer Marta stays there she becomes obsessed with investigating all the rooms of the house. When she begins wearing Miquel's wife's clothes, his reaction is one of violence as he flashes back to an incident that resulted in the death of his domineering mother. More twists are revealed (such as who Marta really is) before the film ends with the arrival of the police.

This film has quite a few similarities to Hitchcock's Psycho. The lead (especially as played by Stephen Boyd) character has a serious problem involving his mother (he caused her death), collects and displays his beetle collection (as opposed to the stuffed birds on display in Psycho), and finally, a woman enters his life resulting in attempted seduction and death. Unfortunately, the principal actors (Boyd and Mell) are nowhere near in the same league as Tony Perkins and Janet Leigh. Boyd is especially guilty of an over-the-top style, so that there's no sympathy when his downfall arrives. You wish it had happened much earlier. Marisa Mell has nothing to do but look sexy and is stuck wearing the same brown bra and panties (was the budget so low they couldn't afford a change?) throughout the film to the point where you have to wonder about her character's personal hygiene.