The Red Monks

The Red Monks (1989)

I frati rossi

A young woman weds a seemingly charming young man, and moves into his ancient mansion. She quickly learns to hate the old mansion and its inhabitants, while she gets frustrated with her husband's secrecy on his late night activities and the contents of the dungeon below. As heads begin to roll she discovers about her husband's past and his connection to some cult called the Red Monks. However, wait till he finds about HER past.

Date of release
1989-08-24
TMDB
4.4 / 10 (14)
Runtime
1h 25m
Genres
Horror
Director
Gianni Martucci

Casting

Interesting facts

The Red Monks is a 1989 Italian horror film directed by Gianni Martucci, and produced by Pino Buricchi. The screenplay was co-written by Martucci and Buricchi, based on a story by Luciana Anna Spacca. Buricchi began promoting the fact that famed Italian horror director Lucio Fulci had handled the special effects, or that Fulci had even co-directed the film. Fulci claimed he never worked on the film, and director Gianni Martucci even said that Fulci was way too ill at the time to have worked on the project with him. The film was later released to home video however with credits that still claimed that Lucio Fulci had collaborated on the film.

Production

Prior to directing The Red Monks, director Gianni Martucci had a sporadic career in film, working on only 5 films between 1972 and 1988. His work predominantly followed the trends of Italian films, such as scripting the giallo film Naked Girl Killed in the Park, erotic films, crime films and slasher films such as Trhauma. His final film was The Red Monks, in which he attempted to revive the gothic film genre in Italy.

The film was aimed at foreign markets which led to its producer Pino Buricchi putting director Lucio Fulci's name in the credits initially as special effects supervisor. According to the film's script girl Anamaria Liguori, Fulci never once stepped on the set and had nothing to do with the film's special effects.

Shooting took place on location at Villa Giovanelli-Fogaccia in Rome. Martucci said there was some difficulty filming there as Prince Giovanelli would often wake up when they were filming and would get mad at the crew. Martucci did find the villa appropriate as Giovanelli only lived in one wing of the castle and it had a distinct fortress-like look, and the parts of the castle that were not lived in were nearly in a state of neglect which suited…

During post-production on the film, Martucci was told the running time was too short for distribution, which led to him re-editing the film to include a wrap-around framing segment.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

Recommended