This is a hard film to write about.
Well…at least if you are worried about spoilers.
After all, we are almost half-way through a horror film before any of the horror stuff actually starts.
Yeah, yeah, there are little hints before that. The mysterious woman the hero sees, things like that. But it could just as easily have been building to a romance film.
And it is a full hour into Mill of the Stone Women before we finally get to the part with which the average review of the film starts.
It would be possible to sum up the beginning of the film and only hint at what happens next: sometime during the Nineteenth Century, Hans van Arnim returns to his hometown in Holland to write an article about the 100th anniversary of a rather strange tourist attraction. The locals call it the Mill of the Stone Women, and it houses a wind-powered carousel, displaying the sculptures of famous women. Professor Gregorius Wahl, a respected sculptor and art teacher, wants to restore the mill to its former glory, and has been working to replace or repair the missing statues.
He isn’t exactly happy that Hans has arrived, but agrees to allow him to see the old records, but only gives him four days to do the work.
However, there is a strange, beautiful young woman living in the Mill, watching him. He later discovers that this is the Professor’s daughter, Elfie, who is being kept alone and isolated in the Mill.
But the next day, she asks him to come and meet her at the Mill, late at night, and reveals that she is in love with him…
This takes us nearly twenty-five minutes into the film and only misses the sinister doctor lurking about the mill, and Hans’ meeting with his best friend, Ralf, and the girl he’s known since they were both children, Liselotte.
But it takes us nowhere near any of the more-or-less science fictional elements of the film.
Mill of the Stone Women was officially an Italian/French co-production, but a surprisingly large part of the cast is German, including Wolfgang Preis, who is best remembered as Dr. Mabuse in the German series of the Sixties; and Herbert Böhme as Gregorius (who reminds me strongly of Donald Wolfit in Blood of the Vampire).
Which, I suppose really isn’t that surprising for a Euro Horror from the Sixties. Even if it is trying to invoke the basic ambience of the classic Hammer Horror films being made at the time.
While the time period isn’t exactly clear, we have a period setting in a unique but picturesque place. The design of the interior of the Mill — which seems far too large and sumptuous to fit inside the very standard looking Dutch windmill that is its exterior — is decidedly creepy. They filled it with a lot of strange artworks and odd bits of statuary, with a lot of period furniture and accessories, and there are a lot of strangely shaped rooms, with odd corners, lots of exposed but rough-looking wood, and bits of machinery in the biggest rooms.
I’ll confess that I got a little impatient during the long sequence which is the first clear Horror element in the film. It is nearly fifteen minutes long and it is very clear from the start that it is some sort of weird hallucination. I just wanted to get past it and back to the story, so it seemed very long.
Even if it does include one very important clue which will become important later on.
As annoying as that may have been, it really doesn’t hurt the film that much. Perhaps more of a problem is how long it takes to introduce some of the most important pieces of information: it is well over half an hour into the film before we learn that Elfie suffers from some mysterious disease. Nor is there ever any mention of missing girls (which seems to have attracted absolutely zero interest in a small college town) until well over an hour has passed. I can understand being mysterious about the first one as Elfie is only introduced gradually, in little glimpses and a few intense scenes, but the second is inexplicable and could easily have been dropped into the story with only a minimum of effort.
Still, as Hammer copies go, Mill of the Stone Women is not bad, even if you’ll get impatient waiting for the mad scientist parts to begin. It looks good, has a lot of suspenseful scenes, and three beautiful women. Preis and Böhme are both excellent, and the acting is as good as one expects of an international production of the era. The production design is impressive, strange and mildly spooky, without looking exactly like any of Hammer’s films from the same era. It even ends in a big scale, Hammer-esque climax in a [Mild Spoiler] burning windmill. It is one of the better Euro Horrors of the era.
It just takes far too long to get to the good stuff, that’s all…
rivets on the poster 
“NOT BAD” ? You’re kidding, I hope… This film remains one of the best horror films ever made in Europe, the direction is perfect and the timing excellent. I don’t know how old you are, but your review is typical of today’s young audiences, who constantly demand action, while this whole film is based on clever suspense. And the cast is excellent.
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As I’ve listed Tarkovsky’s classic Solyaris (https://rivetsontheposter.wordpress.com/2018/03/05/solaris-solyaris-1972/) as one of the greatest science fiction films ever made, I suspect that I probably am not typical of those young audiences you mention. BTW, you didn’t address what seems to me the largest fault of the film, that it doesn’t set up the missing women storyline before it is revealed. A few lines of dialogue would have sufficed.
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