Queens of Evil is a 1970 Franco-Italian co-production directed by Tonino Cervi. It’s a bit hard to decide to which genre this movie should be assigned. It’s not quite gothic horror, it’s not a giallo. It’s really a contemporary fairy tale gothic horror movie.

David (Ray Lovelock) is a young hippie riding his motorcycle to wherever it takes him. He stops to help a middle-aged man with a flat tyre. The man gives him an odd lecture. David expects it to be the kind of lecture that middle-aged guys would deliver to kids in 1970 but this is oddly different. Then there’s a car crash and there are police and David, being a hippie, doesn’t want to get mixed up with the police. He takes a side road and finds a house. He decides to sleep for the night in the shed. The following morning he meets the people who live in the house – three beautiful young women. David thinks their house looks like something out of a fairy tale.

There are some situations in life that are too good to be true. Three gorgeous very friendly babes living alone in a fairy tale cottage in the woods is one of those situations. Maybe he should have taken Liv’s advice. She was the first of the girls he encountered and she told him he’d be smart to leave. But of course he doesn’t. And there’s probably no male in the world who would have hopped on his bike and left. These girls are so friendly and gorgeous.

The girls are Samantha (Silvia Monti), Bibiana (Evelyn Stewart) and Liv (Haydée Politoff). They seem to be sisters.

There’s something else in these woods. It’s a kind of castle, the sort you’d expect in a fairy tale.

David notices that the girls seem to appear very suddenly and then, in the middle of a conversation with one of them, he’ll turn around and she’s gone.

Had David been more familiar with fairy tales he might have reflected that although there are certainly beautiful princesses in such tales not every female in fairy tales is a beautiful princess.

David becomes involved with Samantha. There are some slightly odd things about this house in the woods but David is so entranced by the three women that he doesn’t worry too much.

Of course things will end up becoming rather dangerous for poor David. He has no idea what he’s let himself in for. He’s very young and rather innocent.

Tonino Cervi’s career as a director wasn’t very extensive or distinguished but he does a fine job here. He creates a very subtle sense of unease. David knows there’s something slightly odd going on but it never occurs to him that it might be something to worry about. He’s a live and let live kind of guy. These chicks are a bit eccentric but he’s a hippie so that just makes them more fascinating to him.

Then slowly things become stranger. We know that eventually something really dramatic will happen but when it does Cervi manages to make it quite shocking.

Ray Lovelock was a fine (and versatile) actor and he does the innocent idealistic hippie thing extremely well. We really like David.

The three female leads are very effective. The three sisters seem to be slightly odd and a tiny bit disturbing but the three actresses don’t overdo this. And they manage to make the sisters seem a bit like the kinds of girls you might meet if you ever found yourself in a fairy tale. They’re beautiful and entrancing. They’re also seductive.

For most of its running time this movie avoids gothic horror clichés, or uses such clichés in unexpected ways. The viewer is really not at all sure what’s going on. Are the three sisters just free spirits ignoring the rules of conventional society (in other words are they basically hippies like David)? Is one of them a psycho, or are they all psychos? How dangerous are they? How crazy are they? Are they witches? Are they good witches or bad witches? Is this a giallo or a gothic horror film? We come to suspect that something supernatural or paranormal may be going on. Of course we’re seeing things from David’s point of view, which may be distorted. He’s a hippie. He might be having a drug fantasy.

Things become clearer towards the end but we’re still left with a few questions. And the ending is not quite what we expect. It remains a movie that doesn’t quite slot neatly into a particular genre.

Mention should also be made of the production design which is both dazzling and unexpected. The sisters’ house might appear to be a fairy tale cottage in the woods but no fairy tale cottage has this kind of ultra-modernist interior decor.

Queens of Evil is a wonderful fascinating oddball movie. Highly recommended.

Mondo Macabro’s Blu-Ray presentation looks great and there are some nice extras.