After Bava, the production’s most valuable asset was undoubtedly its chief designer. “We had an extraordi- nary art director, Beni Montresor, who worked hard without ever complain- ing,” Freda praised. “The scene in which Gianna Maria Canale suddenly ages into an old woman seems suc- cessful to me, in part, because the look of his sets corresponds perfectly to the truth about her character.” 5 Born in Verona in 1933, Montresor was only 23 years old at the time of filming, but he threw himself into cre- ating the world of the Duchess with a marvelously uninhibited flair for the macabre. The sets are a sumptuous feast of decadence, resplendent with a surface articulation of skulls, tall dripping candles, and sheer fabrics torn to sigh in the breeze like cobwebs. The Du Grand family crypt, reached via a secret passage behind the castle’s main fireplace (the first of many such conveniences in the an- nals of Italian horror), contains a va- riety of ornamental femurs and skulls, one of which serves as a pre- Addams Family security alarm, with flashing eyes and an owl-like shriek. The entrance to the castle’s main hall is couched in satin drapes folded into jagged points around the peaked arch, in a manner that recalls the out- stretched wings of a bat or dragon. One of the most striking furnishings in the castle is a bronze sculpture found at the base of the main hall’s stone balustrade: a swan-necked dragon with skeletal, upturned wings, bare female breasts, and the clawed feet of a griffin. Montresor’s work is deliriously inspired, and some might argue that it’s a bit overdone; dur- ing the ball sequence, none of the Duchess’ high society guests take any notice of the bountifully morbid de- cor—nor do the police look askance at any of this horror show when they arrive to interrogate Gisèle late in the film. In fact, the sheer hyperbole of Montresor’s work—its emphasis on at- mospheric clutter over logic, the heap- ing-on of art for art’s sake—would be one of the film’s most lasting contri- butions to the character of the Italian horror film.
RICCARDO FREDA (seated) confers with Mario Bava (right) on the set of I VAMPIRI.
