With her firey red hair, empty green eyes and freckled complexion, little Nicoletta Elmi was a natural to make lasting impressions in such 1970s horror films as TWITCH OF THE DEATH, BARON BLOOD (both directed by Mario Bava), Aldo Lado’s terrific giallo WHO SAW HER DIE?, Paul Morrisey’s FLESH FOR FRANKENSTEIN, and later, Dario Argento’s DEEP RED. Shot in 1974, THE NIGHT CHILD is the film that gave her a starring role and called for the young performer to act her adolescent heart out (not to mention, the American credits used the “introducing” tag when listing her name). By the time it was released here by Film Ventures (who had already enjoyed a massive success with BEYOND THE DOOR), the film was hyped as another EXORCIST clone (which it’s not) and has pretty much become lost after initial TV airings and an obscure VHS release, and it now makes its U.S. DVD debut courtesy of Code Red.

Michael Williams (Richard Johnson, THE MONSTER CLUB), a British BBC filmmaker is working on a documentary entitled “Diabolical Art”, having to do with demonic imagery in old paintings. His young daughter Emily (Nicoletta Elmi) is having recurring, traumatic nightmares about her late mother’s tragic death, a demise caused by fire. On the suggestion of the family doctor (Euro trash favorite Edmund Purdom in a walk-on cameo), Michael takes Emily with him to Spoleto, Italy, along with gloomy governess Jill (Ida Galli, SYNDICATE SADISTS) so he can shoot his film, but strange occurrences begin to take place and his daughter is at the center of it all.

Michael is greeted at the airport by American production manager Joanna (Joanna Cassidy, BLADE RUNNER), and they immediately take a liking to each other, much to the dismay of nanny Jill (who is also in love with him) and daughter Emily (who is totally obsessed with her father in near-Freudian terms). Contessa Cappelli (Lila Kedrova, THE TENANT), with her psychic sensibilities, serves as an authority on the subject of these devilish paintings, but warns Michael not to use the image of the one painting he’s fascinated with most; it depicts the death of a woman before the eyes of child, wearing the same medallion Emily now possesses, which belonged to her mother. A blue apparition is mysteriously found in the film negative of Michael’s documentary, and Emily’s brat-like behavior is boosted by what appears to be demonic possession, and she may be responsible for the “accidental” death of someone near to her.

Although the first part of the film concentrates too much on travelogue scenes (moving around from England to Italy and then back) of scenic Spoleto, with much of the demonic and supernatural occurrences happening later, you might say that the sum of its parts is greater than the whole, but it still gets a hardy recommendation, especially to anyone who has a soft spot for 1970s Italian demonic films, even if they are admittedly dated. Massimo Dallamano (billed in the American credits as “Max”) directs the film with a Bava-worthy quality (there's a passing resemblance to LISA AND THE DEVIL), with the usual zooms and effective lighting in check, and such nightmarish imagery as a dead character seen as a living statue in the eyes of a cursed child, being quite daunting. This is Elmi’s finest hour (as she’s seen imitating in adult in the mirror with a lit cigarette, hysterically tormenting her repressed nanny, crying her eyes out, and having numerous heavy-handed fever dreams) and the score by Stelvio Cipriani (CITY OF THE WALKING DEAD) compliments the film with its memorably haunting main theme, repeated throughout.

THE NIGHT CHILD used to show up on local television as THE CURSED MEDALLION (a literal translation of the Italian title, "Il medaglione insanguinato") and was released here on VHS in the 1980s by a Canadian company known as Cocktail Video with a rather murky transfer. Code Red’s DVD (through its “Septic Cinema” banner) presents the film widescreen (1.78:1) and anamorphic in a sharp detailed, crisp transfer with strong colors, even if the print source has some dirt and debris on it. The mono English audio (with Johnson’s and Cassidy’s real voices used in the post sync, and Elmi dubbed by an adult woman with a Brit accent) is flawed in that it has some hiss and pops, but it’s perfectly passable on a whole.