The "other" early classic of the Italian Golden Age of Horror MILL OF THE STONE WOMEN comes to Blu-ray from Arrow Video.

Assigned to prepare a paper on the centennial of the "Mill of the Stone Women", a macabre carousel of wax statues of statues in a windmill in the village of Veeze designed by the grandfather of local art school professor Gregorius Wahl (Herbert Boehme, KNIGHT OF 100 FACES), young journalist Hans Van Arnim (Pierre Brice, SWEET ECTASY) catches the eye of (and catches sight of) Wahl's beautiful daughter Elfie (Scilla Gabel, MODESTY BLAISE). In spite of warnings from Wahl and mysterious live-in physician Dr. Bohlem (Wolfgang Preiss, THE TRAIN) that excitement could kill Elfie, Hans meets her in secret. Upon reconnecting with childhood friend Liselotte (Dany Carrel, THE HANDS OF ORLAC) and realizing that he loves her, Hans tries to gently let Elfie down, but she is angry and suffers an attack. Hans falls ill and is nursed back to health by Liselotte, having sworn to keep secret Elfie's death to preserve her reputation. Little does Hans suspect that Elfie suffers from a strange blood disease and has been died and been revived multiple times by Dr. Bohlem using the blood of unwilling human subjects. When Liselotte vanishes, however, Hans and Liselotte's classmate Raab (Marco Guglielmi, THE CARPET OF HORROR) question the resemblance between one of Wahl's new carousel statues and missing figure model Annelore (Liana Orfei, DJANGO KILLS SOFTLY).

Overshadowed by Mario Bava's BLACK SUNDAY, Giorgio Ferroni's MILL OF THE STONE WOMEN is dripping in gothic décor, macabre statues, medical experiments, and missing women. Although Carrel plays the good girl – and provides a glimpse of nudity in some versions of the film – Gabel's Elfie does embody the duality of woman in the Barbara Steele Italian horror mold, sheltered and sad yet sensual upon first meeting with Hans, and then jealous and violent when spurned, revealing herself to possess more carnal knowledge and cynicism than normal for a horror movie heroine of the period of genre cinema. Predating by BLACK SUNDAY by a couple of weeks in production following it in release, as well as other early examples of period medical horror like Jess Franco's THE AWFUL DR. ORLOF, MILL OF THE STONE WOMEN does pale in comparison, squandering the opportunity for stalking and abduction set pieces in the disappearances of Annelore and Liselotte that neither Bava nor Franco would miss; at best, terrorizing its male protagonist in a manner similar to that of Steele's heroine in THE HORRIBLE DR. HICHCOCK. The structure of the narrative is also rather odd, introducing the mysterious doctor early on but not really making much of Elfie's treatments until the third act, and the transformation of the victims into statues a seeming convenience of abducting and killing girls for medical use. While Hans is wrapped up in the drawn-out drama with Elfie and Liselotte, he and Raab cotton up to the mysterious goings on at the mill rather quickly in comparison. Ferroni's later horror film NIGHT OF THE DEVILS – an adaptation of Alexei Tolstoy's "The Family of the Vurdalak", the same source of the third story in Bava's BLACK SABBATH – was a more atmospheric and accomplished work, but he remained a jobbing director for the remainder of his career. If MILL OF THE STONE WOMEN is to be regarded alongside BLACK SUNDAY as the start of the Italian Golden Age of Horror, then it finds its analog on the other side of the Italian horror boom with Sergio Stivaletti's WAX MASK.

An Italian and French co-production – and possibly German given the German cast members who appeared in Italian co-productions – MILL OF THE STONE WOMEN was produced in a number of versions with star Brice being given various billing positions: the mostly-identical Italian and English export versions, the French version which included a flash of Carrel's nipple – a more indulgent view appeared in Japanese publicity material – as well as an exclusive scene, a shorter German version that billed Preiss above the title since it was released in Germany two years after THE 1,000 EYES OF DR. MABUSE, and a shorter American version supervised by Hugo Grimaldi that featured moved around scenes, some redubbed some dialogue, and some ridiculously misogynistic opening narration ("Trouble began with a women. Here in the country village of Veeze outside Amsterdam, Holland, you're about to meet a young man, a writer, who would deny that obvious truth. For he is naive; he respects, he loves women. He is about to change his mind"). Stateside, we got the American version on VHS and Beta from Paragon along with a later, poor quality VHS retitled ICON.

When Mondo Macabro released the film on DVD in 2004, they utilize an anamorphic transfer of the French version, substituting the American title sequence and moving the French-exclusive scene to the extras along with the American version’s psychedelic optical-treated version of Hans' delirium to the deleted scenes. This version included both the export dub and the modified American dub along with the French track and English subtitles. France's Neo Publishing DVD featured separate French and so-called "American" versions – the latter actually the same composite as the Mondo disc – while Germany's NEW label also included Mondo's composite version.

Germany was also the first territory to release the film on Blu-ray with Subkultur's Blu-ray featuring the export, French, Italian, and German versions with English options for the export and Italian versions as well as a German-language commentary and an archival interview with Preiss (who died in 2002). Unfortunately, Subkultur elected to do four separate encodes on one disc, resulting in low bitrates for the all but the international version. France's Artus Films put out a mediabook of a composite version with the French track fitted to it along with a new interview with actress Orfei, a piece by critic Alain Petit, and two selections of alternate scenes from the Italian and American versions.

Arrow Video's Blu-ray comes from a 2K restoration of the original 35mm camera negative, and the first disc utilizes branching to present approximations of the Italian version (95:36) and English export version (95:37), differentiated by the Italian or English credits, audio in those respective languages, and either English or SDH subtitles. I say approximations because both versions include the nipple scene only used for the French version, and the English version lacks the English-language insert of Elfie's letter to Hans which is translated via a separate subtitle track if the SDH track is disabled. The 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.66:1 widescreen transfer is a big improvement on the earlier DVDs, greens and reds are saturate without seeming boosted, giving a sense of naturalism to other colors than draw one's eye to the likely inspiration from Flemish paintings. The enhanced resolution does draw attention to the use of models and miniatures as well as the rough edges of some double exposure shots.

Included with this first pressing limited edition is a second Blu-ray featuring separate encodes of the French version (89:51) and the American version (94:29) – a shorter version was shown on television and the British theatrical version was also pruned down – and these are more faithful to the contents of those versions. The French version not only includes French credits, alternate French-language inserts of the text on Raab's drawing – which remains in Italian on the English versions – and Elfie's letter to Hans, as well as the nipple shot. The American version includes the American titles with the more stylized title card and the rest of the credits in an ugly comic font, and it does include the English-language text insert of Elfie's letter; however, this transfer appears to be from a different source than the Italian master used to reconstruct the other versions, with slightly different colors and a brighter image that almost blows out highlights in some shots. The French LPCM 1.0 mono track includes English subtitles while the English LPCM 1.0 track on the American version only includes an SDH track, so there is no translation for the Italian text on Raab's drawing unless the SDH track is enabled.

Since disc two is limited, all of the extras are on the first disc, starting with an audio commentary by Tim Lucas, author of MARIO BAVA: ALL THE COLORS OF THE DARK, who describes it as the first serious Italian horror film in color (UNCLE WAS A VAMPIRE being a comedy) and noting that its prolonged production started before and finished after BLACK SUNDAY, and that Bava being at Galatea might have been called in as cinematographer for reshoots, as Lucas cites shots and lighting comparisons between the work of Bava and the film's credited cinematographer Pier Ludovico Pavoni (GLADIATOR OF ROME), as well as the suggestion that Bava's sculptor father Eugenio – who carved the likenesses of saints for the Catholic church – might have been responsible for the wax statues in the film. He also points out other aspects o the film's Italian horror patronage in props that appear in other films as well as the film's own borrowings from the art world and the non-existent "Flemish Tales" literary source.

"MILL OF THE STONE WOMEN & The Gothic Body" (24:10) is a visual essay by author and critic Kat Ellinger who examines the nineteenth century fascination with sickliness and near-death as signifiers of delicate femininity as well as the motif of bodies encased in wax or clay to freeze death and its origins in Victorian death photography and the opening of Madame Toussaud's wax museum. She also draws parallels between the notion of Elfie as a sort of vampire and Wahl's choice of victims from a lower social status with the later unconventional vampire films THIRST and SHOCK TREATMENT (the Alain Jessua film). "Turned to Stone" (27:07) is a reedited piece based on the 2019 interview with actress Liana Orfei conducted by film historian Fabio Melelli for the Artus disc, in which Orfei recalls being in a circus act with her brothers when she was asked to audition for Fellini. The audition did not go anywhere but it did get her some exposure, and appeared in small film roles, television, and the theater before MILL OF THE STONE WOMEN. Of the film, she discusses her dim recollections of Ferroni but most vividly recalls having her head cast for the film. Melelli appears throughout to provide some background on Ferroni, making the case that he could have been as much a genre stylist as Bava but only did two horror films.