Kitty and Evelyn are two warring sisters, though it seems blonde Kitty takes the brun of brunette Evelyn's abuse. Taken aside by their concerned grandfather, the girls learn that their family history is haunted by two other sisters known as The Red Queen and The Black Queen. Like Evelyn and Kitty the two waged war until The Black Queen killed The Red Queen, setting into motion a cycle of murder and revenge that takes place every hundred years.
Fast forward 14 years and the young girls from the opening are now young women. Kitty (Barbara Bouchet) works as a photographer for a fashion house while third sister Franziska (Marina Malfatti) tends to their aging grandfather with the help of her slightly crippled, mustachioed and blunt hubby Herbert (Nino Korda). As for Eveyln, it won't spoil anything to tell you that she's dead – the victim of an accident stemming from one of her fights with Kitty.
When grandfather dies in the night with a look of terror on his face it results in a chain of events that suggest Evelyn has returned from the grave to seek revenge, fulfilling her earlier, creepy proclomation, "Kitty's the Black Queen and I am the Red Queen."
Set amidst the middle-class fashion world, writer/director Emilio Miraglia's RED QUEEN can't help but draw inevitable comparisons to the superior BLOOD AND BLACK LACE. The setting, rich with style, chic clothes, groovy 70s design and frequently naked hot models like a young, luscious Sybil Danning as Lulu certainly makes the flick fun to watch. Nowhere is this more evident than in a scene of Lulu stretched out buck naked on the couch of Martin (Ugo Pagliai), the fashion house's new general manager and Kitty's main squeeze. The only roadblock to their marriage? Martin's certifiably crazy wife who babbles away in the loony bin, convinced that her "friend" Evelyn will set her free.
Unfortunately, all the naked chics, cool fashions and chic/kitschy style can't elevate RED QUEEN above its paint-by-numbers, been-there-seen-that feel. With a bloated running time of nearly 100 minutes, the flick could easily have excised several scenes – and at least one entire subplot – for a tighter, snappier feel.
That said, RED QUEEN is well worth checking out, if only for a few classic moments that will remain etched in my memory years after the rest of the flick has faded into the recesses. In particular, the film's opening minutes featuring young Kitty and Evelyn deftly juggle dark humor and sinister sense of foreboding that the rest of the flick is lacking.
