Enzo Milioni's drawn-out giallo entry, The Sister of Ursula/La sorella di Ursula.

Starring: Barbara Magnolfi, Stefania D'Amario, Vanni Materassi, Marc Porel and Anna Zinnemann.

By the late '70s the gialli had undergone numerous transformations, from the colourful depth of Bava's Blood and Black Lace/Sei donne per l'assassino (1964) to the stylishness of Argento's Animal Trilogy (1970-1972). The gialli that followed mainly focussed on pushing the levels of sex and violence through the roof and leaving the intricately woven plots and grandiose story telling behind. The Sister of Ursula belongs with that latter group.

The plot is a fairly basic setup, beautiful sisters, Dagmar (D'Amario) and Ursula (Magnolfi) are residing at an extravagant hotel while searching for their estranged mother, incidentally a mysterious killer has also checked in and has swiftly started to brutally slay promiscuous men and women in and around the hotels grounds.
One of the main reasons for the notoriety of The Sister of Ursula is down to the killers lewd choice of weaponry, without that little creative choice and the beautiful scenery aside, The Sister of Ursula would be a pretty forgettable title.



The acting is actually quite good and the two leads; Stefania D'Amario & Barbara Magnolfi, give enough in their performances to keep the plot rolling along nicely; it's more or less what any self respecting lover of gialli has come to expect. In terms of style and direction, there are a bounty of gorgeous shots; making great use of the locale and some of the stony interiors casually flirt with a gothic sensibility. The one thing that struggled with the most is the sax-heavy soundtrack, it feels, ironically, a little too piercing and cuts through certain scenes with a jagged edge.

Unlike other giallo films that rely on extensive scenes of dialogue to push the plot forwards, the scenes of dialogue here feel overly protracted and serve more to pad out the runtime than actually engage the audience. Owing to be more of a nuisance than a hook in this instance, as The Sister of Ursula is far from a "smart" film. When compared to similar work that came before, and a few that came after, it really struggles to hold its ground.

I suppose that in all fairness, The Sister of Ursula does work well as an ultra sleazy, erotically charged giallo and is a prime example of how the genre changed to amplify carnality over plot complexity.