They Have Changed Their Face

A middle-ranking employee of a large car company is called to his boss's villa in the mountains. He is told he is being promoted. The villa is large, silent and very clean; the people working in it are odd, and the boss is named Giovanni Nosferatu. The longer the man stays, the more he understands that what is being offered has a heavier price than he thought and that getting out is not easy. Corrado Farina's first feature won the prize for best first film at Locarno in 1971. It turns the image of the vampire inside out: what drains the blood here is not a seductive revolt but conformity and consumption. Advertising, buying on instalments and corporate culture are the direct targets. Adolfo Celi plays the boss. The shape of a horror film is used to carry a criticism of the Italy of its time.