The Kiss of a Dead Woman was directed by Carlo Infascelli (Forbidden Decameron) and would be his last film. It was written by Infascelli, Adriano Bolzoni, Tatiana Pavoni and Gastone Ramazzotti and was based on the same novel, Carolina Invernizio's Il Bacio Di Una Morta, as the better-known film of the next year, Il Bacio. It was also made into a film in 1949.
The story is the same. It begins with Clara (Silvia Dionisio, Live Like a Cop, Die Like a Man) supposedly dead and her brother Roberto (Peter Lee Lawrence, Killer Caliber .32) saving her by asking to see her body and realizing that she is still breathing. We see in flashback how brother and sister loved one another but she married Count Guido di Lampedusa (Orso Maria Guerrini, The Big Racket), a relationship that seemed good until he fell for singer Yvonne Rigaud (Karin Schubert, Emanuelle Around the World), who plans to take him for her own and murder Clara. Her husband comes to his senses and saves his wife, giving us a happy ending that seems too simple.
That said, this feels more giallo than Mario Lanfranchi's version of the story with a black gloved poisoner shown in POV shots and even an attempted assault at the close of the story.
Peter Lee Lawrence was the AKA of Karl Hirenbach, a German actor who mainly worked in Italian Westerns. He also appeared in photo comics as Pierre Clement and sadly died of a brain tumor at the too young age of just thirty. As for Karin Shubert, she had a sad life as well. After a career appearing in Italian exploitation films from Westerns to commedia sexy all'italiana and very late Eurospy like Missile X: The Neutron Bomb Incident, she starred in several Joe D'Amato films. That's not the sad part. That comes in when we learn that she was divorced and her son's drug addiction led to him having violent outbursts, often directed at her. His treatment was expensive, so she went from posing nude to adult films until retiring in 1994. That year, she tried to mix barbiturates with vodka to escape life but was rescued by neighbors. Two years later, she killed herself by carbon monoxide poisoning.
This movie feels like it was filled with tragedy, as Carlo Infascelli retired after this, as the death of his producer son Roberto was too much. Add to that Riccardo Pallottini, the cinematographer, who was killed in a plane crash while making Tiger Joe for Antonio Margheriti.
Less horror than costume drama, there's still a lot to like in this film.
The story is the same. It begins with Clara (Silvia Dionisio, Live Like a Cop, Die Like a Man) supposedly dead and her brother Roberto (Peter Lee Lawrence, Killer Caliber .32) saving her by asking to see her body and realizing that she is still breathing. We see in flashback how brother and sister loved one another but she married Count Guido di Lampedusa (Orso Maria Guerrini, The Big Racket), a relationship that seemed good until he fell for singer Yvonne Rigaud (Karin Schubert, Emanuelle Around the World), who plans to take him for her own and murder Clara. Her husband comes to his senses and saves his wife, giving us a happy ending that seems too simple.
That said, this feels more giallo than Mario Lanfranchi's version of the story with a black gloved poisoner shown in POV shots and even an attempted assault at the close of the story.
Peter Lee Lawrence was the AKA of Karl Hirenbach, a German actor who mainly worked in Italian Westerns. He also appeared in photo comics as Pierre Clement and sadly died of a brain tumor at the too young age of just thirty. As for Karin Shubert, she had a sad life as well. After a career appearing in Italian exploitation films from Westerns to commedia sexy all'italiana and very late Eurospy like Missile X: The Neutron Bomb Incident, she starred in several Joe D'Amato films. That's not the sad part. That comes in when we learn that she was divorced and her son's drug addiction led to him having violent outbursts, often directed at her. His treatment was expensive, so she went from posing nude to adult films until retiring in 1994. That year, she tried to mix barbiturates with vodka to escape life but was rescued by neighbors. Two years later, she killed herself by carbon monoxide poisoning.
This movie feels like it was filled with tragedy, as Carlo Infascelli retired after this, as the death of his producer son Roberto was too much. Add to that Riccardo Pallottini, the cinematographer, who was killed in a plane crash while making Tiger Joe for Antonio Margheriti.
Less horror than costume drama, there's still a lot to like in this film.
