The Red Queen Kills Seven Times (1972)
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Emilio Miraglia directing. Marina Malfatti from All the Colors of the Dark (above) and The Night Evelyn Came Out of the Grave (below).
We enter with a castle and two young girls, sisters we learn, playing… then fighting. Their grandfather tells them a story of the garish painting that evoked one of the girl’s violent mania: every hundred years the Black Queen kills kills her sister the Red Queen by stabbing her seven times. A year later, the Red Queen then comes back to life and kills six innocents then the Black Queen. This same tragic event happens every hundred years and the next occurrence is 14 years from now. 1972.
(This yearly cycle reminded me of the Carmilla 40-year resurrection in Lust for a Vampire, and no doubt was intended to add supernatural overtones.)
Flash forward, after a title sequence with the sisters playing and fighting, Franziska and Herbert are staying with grandfather and sees red queen running away after she (apparently) scares the patriarch to death. Kitty is unseen and supposedly out of town, evelyn/eveline (dark hair) accidentally killed by kitty years ago
With the title, the movie becomes a game of counting murders. Grandfather starts off the count as #1.
There are: a greasy thug (Peter) extorting Eveline, a woman in a mental institution (Martin’s wife), corporate shenanigans (after Hans Meyer is killed, his suspicious 2nd-in-command Martin takes over), sexcapades (I’m not sure who Martin didn’t sleep with), a stylish clothing company (Springe, German but I can’t help but think of it as Italian), and mysterious/threatening phone calls.
Note: The drowning in water that occurs at the beginning is revisited on a different character at the climax. Wildenbruch = “wild break”.