A Cross to Bear (Literally)
Every now and then, cinema coughs up something so bizarre, so unhinged, so proudly inept, you wonder if the whole production wasn’t part of an elaborate prank. Cross of the Seven Jewels (La croce dalle 7 pietre) is one of those films—a werewolf epic that doubles as a vanity project and triples as a masterclass in how not to make a movie. Written, directed, and starring Marco Antonio Andolfi (credited under the more Hollywood-sounding pseudonym Eddy Endolf), the film is the kind of fever dream you get when an amateur theater kid grows up, finds state funding, and decides to mix demons, organized crime, werewolves, Jesus Christ, and his own autobiography into a single cinematic hairball.
This isn’t horror. This isn’t even camp. This is the cinematic equivalent of watching your neighbor’s garage band cover Iron Maiden with broken amps—painful, but so weirdly sincere you can’t look away.
Satan, Sadomasochism, and Sewing Machines
The film begins with a satanic ritual led by a priest who looks like he wandered in from a high school production of The Exorcist. There’s leather, there’s chanting, there’s a demon named Aborym who gets evoked like a guest at a wedding. This sequence sets the tone: amateur theatrics lit like a department store basement, sound design that suggests a microphone left inside a tin can, and pacing so sluggish you wonder if Satan himself nodded off.
It’s worth noting that Andolfi didn’t begin as a filmmaker. He started out working for a sewing machine company. Watching this film, you wish he’d stayed there. At least sewing machines produce something useful. Instead, what we get here is a stitched-together Frankenstein of half-baked ideas: part demonology, part Camorra crime drama, part soft-core sex flick, part werewolf movie, and finally—because why not?—a Christian redemption arc starring Jesus Christ himself in a ghostly cameo. It’s like The Godfather, Teen Wolf, and The Passion of the Christ all got thrown into a blender, then someone forgot to put the lid on.
Marco Sartori: Wolfman or Woolman?
Andolfi casts himself as Marco Sartori, a Roman bank employee whose life goes to hell after four muggers steal his precious jeweled cross. (This is based, apparently, on a real-life incident in Naples where Andolfi himself had a cross stolen. Imagine having a mugging so traumatic you build an entire horror movie around it. Imagine then making yourself the tragic werewolf hero. That’s commitment.)
Marco’s descent into lycanthropy is supposed to be tragic. In practice, it looks like a man slowly succumbing to indigestion. Every night at midnight, he transforms into a werewolf—unless he’s wearing the titular cross. This is, perhaps, the cheapest werewolf makeup ever committed to celluloid. Think less Rick Baker’s An American Werewolf in London and more “man fell face-first into a shag carpet.” His “transformation” is conveyed with such minimal effort you half expect to see a stagehand with a glue gun in the background.
Marco’s acting, meanwhile, is a spectacle in itself. Andolfi doesn’t so much perform as he announces emotions: sadness is wide-eyed staring, anger is frantic gesturing, lust is… well, sweaty and deeply uncomfortable. He delivers lines like a man reading ransom notes off cue cards. In a just world, the Academy would’ve invented a new category just for him: “Most Enthusiastic Failure.”
Camorra vs. Creature Feature
In most werewolf films, the monster is enough of a problem. Here, Marco also tangles with the Neapolitan Camorra. Because nothing says supernatural horror like mobsters offering to exchange your magical cross for a list of bank accounts. One minute, Marco is begging a gangster for leads; the next, he’s sprouting fur and slaughtering henchmen. It’s like Goodfellas if Ray Liotta had to worry about fleas.
This subplot goes on and on, with Marco wandering through Naples like a dazed tourist while gangsters smack him around. The dialogue sounds like it was written during an espresso binge: blunt, repetitive, endlessly circling the same point. And when the action comes? Let’s just say the Camorra’s biggest crime here is being forced to share screen time with this script.
Sex, Blood, and the Wrong Kind of Howl
No Euro-horror is complete without gratuitous sex, and Andolfi makes sure to cast himself as irresistible to women. Marco beds Maria, Elena, and even a fortune teller named Armisia. One encounter turns bloody when Marco transforms mid-coitus and tears into her. It’s supposed to be terrifying. Instead, it looks like a PSA against dating directors who cast themselves as the lead.
Annie Belle, a once-respected actress battling alcoholism at the time, admitted later she had no memory of filming this. Honestly? That feels like the healthiest way to process Cross of the Seven Jewels: total amnesia.
Jesus Walks (Through a Transparency)
After a slog of mob meetings, nightclub scenes, and fur-faced rampages, the finale finally offers resolution: Marco regains the cross, regains his humanity, and strolls happily through St. Peter’s Square with Maria. But wait—this movie isn’t done humiliating itself. Suddenly, Jesus Christ himself appears in transparency, floating above the square like a celestial afterthought, giving Marco the spiritual thumbs-up. The message is clear: werewolf or not, everything’s fine now. You half expect Christ to lean down and whisper, “Don’t worry, my son. Nobody’s watching this garbage anyway.”
Cultural Aspiration, My Ass
Here’s the kicker: this disaster was funded by the Italian state. Thanks to a 1965 law that handed out money for “films with cultural or artistic aspirations,” Andolfi secured financing. Taxpayer money went into this. Italians paid for a man to glue fur to his face, kill mobsters, grope women, and then be blessed by spectral Jesus. Imagine explaining that to the Parliament.
Andolfi, for reasons only he understands, re-edited the film in 1995 under the title Talisman, padding it with documentary footage and clips from The Serpent and the Rainbow. That version is less a “re-edit” and more a cinematic ransom note. It’s like he realized he couldn’t fix the film, so he just duct-taped more garbage to it.
The Horror, The Humor, The Hair
What makes Cross of the Seven Jewels special isn’t just that it’s bad—it’s that it’s bad in such a personal, autobiographical way. This isn’t a studio disaster or a cash-grab sequel. This is one man’s passion project, born of a stolen necklace, a bruised ego, and a head full of demons. Every frame screams, “This is important to me,” while the audience screams, “Please stop.”
As horror, it’s laughable. As drama, it’s painful. As a cultural artifact, it’s baffling. And yet, in a way, it achieves a kind of immortality. You’ll forget most horror movies within weeks. But once you’ve seen a man in shaggy carpet fur blessed by ghost Jesus, you’ll never forget it.
Final Judgment
If Roger Ebert had been forced to review Cross of the Seven Jewels, I suspect he’d have filed it under “Dog of the Week” and then quietly asked his editor if there was a way to sue Italy. For me, it earns zero crosses out of seven—though I’ll give it half a star for sheer lunacy.
It’s a film that shouldn’t exist, and yet, here it is: a cursed relic, a cinematic werewolf that keeps coming back no matter how many silver bullets critics fire at it. If you’re a connoisseur of bad cinema, you owe it to yourself to check in. Just don’t expect to come out clean.
