Hailing from the hippie era, Queens of Evil is a warning to blokes wishing to lead a carefree life without the burden of rules, regulations and boundaries: beware of the bourgeoisie, whose supremacy is threatened by the hippie lifestyle, and of women who might seek to trap such men in a relationship and force them to betray their ideals.

Ray Lovelock (The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue) stars as handsome drop-out David, who stops his motorbike to help a rich man (Gianni Santuccio) fix a flat tyre on his car. The driver returns David's kindness by mocking the young man's lifestyle and surreptitiously pushing a nail into the front tyre of his bike. After fixing his puncture, David gives chase, demanding to know why the man was so mean; the wealthy man loses control of his vehicle and crashes into a tree. David sees that the driver is dead, so continues his journey. When he sees a police car on the road ahead, he takes another route that leads him deep into the woods, where he happens upon a cottage by a lake. David settles down for the night in a wood shed, and is woken the following morning by a beautiful young woman (Haydée Politoff),who introduces herself as Liv.

Liv invites David to stay for breakfast, and introduces him to her sexy sisters, Bibiana (Evelyn Stewart) and Samantha (Silvia Monti). He accepts Liv's invitation, and is surprised by the stylish decor of the cottage (there are massive portraits of the three women on the walls and countless scatter cushions). He is given cake to eat for breakfast ('let them eat cake'),after which he announces it is time for him to leave. The draw of three beauties is too much for him, however, and he returns, accompanying the women on a fishing trip. Bibiana shows David her hobby - embalming squirrels - and Samantha takes his bike for a joy-ride. Liv appears to be able to matter transport herself. Despite the sisters' obvious eccentricities, David stays, and beds both Samantha and Bibiana.

Waking in the night, David sees the three women talking to a man. He sneaks out of the house to follow the mysterious visitor, but is knocked unconscious by a lightning strike during a sudden storm, after which he has a very strange dream in which the sisters wear crazy wigs and body paint. Regaining consciousness in bed, having been found in the woods by the women, David enquires about the stranger: they tell him that the man is the owner of a nearby castle, and that they have all been invited to a party there that night. At the gathering, David feels intimidated by the rich weirdo guests and their incessant questions, and flees into the welcoming arms (and between the welcoming legs) of Liv. After shagging the youngest of the sisters, and renouncing his hippie principles, all three women turn on David, hacking him to death with a variety of sharp implements.

The final scene reveals the owner of the castle - the very same man who David met on the road at the beginning of the film - to be none other than the devil, who uses the three sisters to help him do away with hippie folk like David who have no moral code, for how can the devil exist if the concept of sin no longer exists?

Although not quite as wonderfully weird as The Spider Labyrinth, which was produced by this film's director Tonino Cervi, Queens of Evil features its fair share of fun strangeness, the film a dark, surreal art-house fairytale that must surely have involved mind-altering substances during its making. It's a frequently perplexing tale, the directorial style and bizarre story not always easy to decipher, but those who dig obscure cult Euro-horror should find enough to enjoy here.

I rate the film 6.5 random shots of a seagull out of 10, rounded up to 7 for that amazing kitchen.

Queens of Evil is a completely obscure Eurotrash flick, and that's not surprising at all as this film has zero mass market appeal and will appeal only to fans to obscure cult cinema - and even then, not all fans. Queens of Evil is a simply bizarre movie and I really don't know what the point of it is. It can't really be pigeon holed into any of the main genres of Italian cinema - it would probably fall somewhere between a sex flick, an exploitation film and a cult themed Giallo (a la All the Colours of the Dark) - but even that definition doesn't really fit it. Our main character is David - a hippy travelling aimlessly on his motorcycle. After a strange encounter with a man who needs his tire changing, David rides on and soon comes across an apparently deserted house. He decides to spend the night in the shed and is surprised the next morning to be awoken by a beautiful young woman named Liv. Liv seems keen to get rid of David, but after her sisters catch sight of him; they ask him to stay and David soon discovers that he has bitten off more than he can chew...

The atmosphere is the key thing about this film. Director Tonino Cervi handles the film well and ensures that it's always mysterious. The locations used make the film feel isolated and claustrophobic and this adds well to the atmosphere. The film boasts a good cast, with the handsome Ray Lovelock fitting into the lead role well and convincing as a hippy. You'd expect some nice female talent too considering the plot here, and the film doesn't disappoint. All three of the leading ladies (Evelyn Stewart, Silvia Monti and Haydée Politoff) provide nice eye candy and also manage to create a foreboding chemistry between themselves and Ray Lovelock. The film is very slow to start and not a lot happens for the first hour or so; but to be honest, I preferred this part of the film to the build up to the climax. Considering how slow the first two thirds are, you would think that the film would kind of explode at the end, and while we do get something of a twist; the ending actually isn't all that interesting and doesn't make a lot of sense. Overall, this is an interesting mood piece and I did enjoy it, but I'm not sure why and I wouldn't recommend it.

Man, Ray Lovelock can't catch a break. Of the films I've seen him in, he never makes it to the final frame. Then again, he also gets nearly every girl that gets put in front of him, so while his final luck isn't always great, he does fine along the way.

Queens of Evil AKA La Regine is a 70s occult-infused end of the hippy movement sun-drenched nightmare of a film that will find its way into my blu ray player multiple times this year. Lovelock is David, a motorcyclist who searching for answers until he meets a man in a Rolls Royce who has a flat. That old man pays back David's selfless act by stabbing one of our protagonist's tires. A chase ensues and the rich driver crashes his car and dies. David, fearing the inevitable legal issues, runs right into a dark forest.

He awakes to three gorgeous women named Liv (Haydée Politoff, Interrabang),Samantha (Silvia Monti, A Lizard In a Woman's Skin) and Bibiana (Evelyn Stewart, The Whip and the Body) all watching him. They live in a huge house in the woods that is filled with impossible angles and gigantic full wall photos of their faces. They're also given to serving huge meals and conducting rituals in the night.

This is the kind of movie where three women tell a guy that they have a ritual to attend in the middle of a lake to meet with the fish, then pulling hundreds of them and he's like, "Nope. Nothing strange at all."

Of course, he sleeps with every single of them before things descend into madness, filled with dream sequences, dragons painted onto nude flesh, a sinister party and finally a feminist-driven decimation, followed by time lapse flowers sprouting from a shallow grave. In a word - incredible.

Director Tonino Cervi somehow made a film in which three strange women seduced and are seduced by one man not sleaze at all, but instead strangely innocent and totally infused with the fantastic. He also produced one of the weirdest - imagine what that entails - Italian horror films, Il Nido del Ragno (The Spider Labyrinth).