The fairly predictable and rather ridiculous plot follows two sisters, Ursula (Barbara Magnolfi of Suspiria and Cut And Run) and Dagmar (Stefania D'Amario of Nightmare City and Zombie) Beyne decide to get away from it all and take a vacation at a fancy resort in a small, Italian coastal town. Once they arrive, however, things start to get strange. A curvy prostitute is found dead in one of the hotel rooms, butchered around her fuzzy girl parts by an unseen assailant!

Ursula wants to get out of there as soon as possible, as she's having ominous premonitions about the hotel and the people who populate it, but Dagmar has got the hots for a suave junkie named Filippo (Marc Porel of Live Like A Cop Die Like A Man). Unfortunately for Dagmar, Filippo lusts after Stella Shining (Anna Zinnemann of Shoot The Living, Pray For The Dead), a lounge singer who works in the hotel's nightclub and who wears far too much make up. If that weren't bad enough, the man who owns the hotel is currently squabbling with his wife, who is intent on leaving him so that she can be with her younger lesbian lover, Jenny.

While the soap opera high jinks play on, a seventeen year old boy and his sixteen year old girlfriend are slaughtered in an old basement nearby the hotel. Ursula's behavior becomes increasingly bizarre as she starts to obsess over her late father and what became of him, and the murders continue though no one seems particularly distraught over any of this.

The Sister Of Ursula is pretty poorly plotted but it's certainly beautifully shot and photographed. The film makes great use of its excellent locations and if nothing else, the film always looks great. Plenty of lingering shots of the rocky coastline and some cinematography that seems to be saying 'hey, the story is pretty bad but look how cool this place is!' do a pretty good job of capturing the rustic beauty of the area and the interesting architecture of the buildings that surround it.

The picture also ups the sleaze factor considerably when compared to a lot of other Giallos. The sex isn't technically hardcore, though it certainly comes close with some pretty graphic oral loving and a scene where a male character might actually be eating out a female character's bum rather than simulating the act! As far as the bloodshed goes, the murders pretty much all take place off camera though Milioni lets his camera soak up the aftermath with a few grisly shots of butchered bodies and bloodied Euro-poon.

As far as the performances go, it's rather eerie to see Marc Porel shooting up on camera when you consider the problems he had with substance abuse but aside from that one scene where he's caught with needle in hand, his performance here is pretty standard. He's suave and fairly charming but also a bit of a bastard when he needs to be. Sefania D'Amario as Dagmar is a marginally horny wench but is one of the few sympathetic characters in the film, as she obviously wants the best for her troubled sister even if she takes a break now and again to masturbate with random gold chains that apparently make her feel like a woman. Barbara Magnolfi is the real star of the show, however. She goes over the top a little bit now and again but is quite good as the strange and potentially off kilter Ursula, particularly during the last half hour of the film where it all starts to hit the fan.

Ultimately, Sister Of Ursula isn't a very good film but that said, it's not at all short on entertainment value, sleaze or unintentional humor. There's a fair bit of padding in the film - a long and unnecessary car ride and most of the sex scenes, for example - but the film is goofy enough that it isn't dull. You shouldn't have too much trouble figuring out who the dastardly murderer is by the time you get to the second killing, which essentially renders the last part of the film completely devoid of suspense - but then, Milioni wasn't so much making a legitimate thriller with this film as he was exploiting the Giallo by throwing in massive dollops of gratuitous sex and some quirky violence, in hopes of milking the genre's success before it piddled out completely.

The Italian language Dolby Digital Mono track on Severin's DVD isn't bad at all. A couple of scenes contain some really mild background hiss but you have to listen for it to really notice it. The optional white English subtitles are clear, easy to read, and free of any typographical errors.

The main supplement on this release is an interview with writer/director Enzo Milioni entitled Father Of Ursula (anamorphic widescreen). He talks quite frankly about making the film and about where he got some of his ideas from. He mentions that Marc Porel was cast because Barbara Magnafoli was involved with him and that time and so he was cast despite his well known drug abuse problems. He's quite blunt about what happened with Porel during the production and about what happened to him a few years later. He also covers how he wound up with the locations we see in the film and how this film is kinda-sorta related to The Eyes Of Laura Mars! Of course, no interview would be complete without talking about the wooden dildo, which Milioni claims was his (he still has it and shows it off to the camera), describing it as 'an old knick-knack of mine.'

Rounding out the extra features are some slightly animated menus, chapter selection, and the film's extremely exploitative original Italian theatrical trailer (3:41) presented in anamorphic widescreen with optional English subtitles.

Want more information? Hit the Severin Films website here!