Castle of Blood (1964)

Yawn. Poorly Filmed Snooze Fest.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

This Gothic Horror contains a few firsts, for me at least. It has the earliest example I know of boobs in an Italian horror film (not Barbara Steele's I'm afraid), it also has the earliest example of erotic undead lesbianism, and sadly it has the earliest example of the Italians killing an animal on screen. That bit wasn't so good.A journalist enters a pub to interview Edgar Allan Poe and ends up being involved in a wager by Umberto Raho to spend the night at a haunted castle that no one has returned alive from. The journalist is all like 'sure buddy, don't see anything wrong with that' and I was all set up to see doors moving on their own and all that jazz.That happens for a little while, but then Barbara Steele turns and starts putting the moves on the guy! Naturally, the guy's willing to disregard the metaphysical psychobabble coming out of her mouth in order to get her into bed, but imagine his surprise when another chick turns up and shows an interest too! At first the guy is pinching himself but then of course there's two women in a room together so they start arguing with each other. Things get even stranger when more people turn up and our journalist starts wondering if it was a good idea to take that wager, as these folks are dead and reliving their last moments over and over again. Can he escape perhaps maybe? This film didn't grab me right away but it does pick up as it goes along so you can forgive the dull spots. It reminded me a lot of Umberto Lenzi's House of Lost Souls (1988) only nowhere near as funny. You also get Barbara Steele with her heaving cleavage and six inch long eyelashes. Could have done without the snake being killed though - not sure why they had to include that.It now makes more sense to me that Margheriti's Giallo Seven Deaths In The Cats Eye has a Gothic setting (that's a good one - an ape is one of the suspects!).

It was only recently that I discovered the wonder of the Italian Gothic genre, and I'm happy to say that this film is indeed one of the best. The crisp use of black and white photography makes the events portrayed appear stark and effective (Bava would have been proud), and the tone too is genuinely nasty. By the end of the film, the viewer is left unsure of what has occurred, only that in some way evil has won again, and will go on winning and winning for eternity. Added to that, it also manages to be extremely unsettling and very frightening in some moments.Director Antonio Margheriti (who later turned to adventure flicks like THE LAST HUNTER) keeps things moving along at a swift pace, ensuring that there is always something interesting happening on screen to keep the viewer occupied. While the plot is of the standard haunted house variety, there are plenty of neat flourishes, such as one of the actors actually playing Poe himself, researching material for a new story! The setting is excellent, a large and Gothic building full of fine furniture, layered in thick dust and cobwebs, where the stench of death is heavy in the air and terrible occurrences are played out in full.We see people die in violent ways, and although we know that they are merely playbacks and cannot harm the hero of the film, they still manage to be frightening. Especially the mysteriously half-naked muscular man, a murderer who goes around with a knife and stabs people, for what reason, who knows? The lack of knowledge about the ghosts makes it all the more frightening, as we only see what the character of Foster sees, nothing more, we are as left in the dark as he is.Georges Riviere gives a solid performance as the male lead, charismatic, romantic and heroic when the time calls for it. However it's the wonderful Barbara Steele who steals (sorry) the film as a ghost who wants to help Riviere, but in the end is unable to leave the building and crumbles away. Even darkness is thrown on Steele's apparently honourable intentions towards the living man she loves, as we hear her voice quite happily whispering "now we can be together" at the very end of the film, after the hero has been killed in a genuinely shocking way, just after we think he's safe. The rest of the cast all perform well, the actors and actresses portraying the spirits of the castle all intone their characters with just the right level of menace without exaggerating, especially the sinister Dr. Carmus character who first acts as our narrator but then turns out to be seeking Foster's blood like the rest of the castle's inhabitants.If you're in the mood for a good atmospheric chiller, then this knocks spots off even well-made competition like THE HAUNTING. Gruesome and frightening, CASTLE OF BLOOD comes across as something of a tragedy as its become lost in time to modern audiences, undeservedly so. It's a film which shows that budget and special effects aren't important, just strong camera-work and storytelling are needed to make an effective horror film, which this indeed is.

If you're a fan of Gothic horror, then you're definitely absolutely guaranteed to LOVE this wondrous Italian 60's film "Castle of Blood". We're really talking about creepily creaking doors, eerie portraits that appear to be moving, spontaneously dying candles although there's no wind and smoke coming from underneath heavy wooden chamber doors. Speaking in terms of atmosphere and style, this masterful piece of Gothic film-making is one of the best out there; just one tiny league below landmarks such as "Black Sunday", "The Three Faces of Fear" and "Curse of the Crying Woman". The prominent directors duo Sergio Corbucci ("The Great Silence", "Django") and Antonio Margheriti ("Cannibal Apocalypse", "Killer Fish") are successful in all areas, including a powerful plot (one that is genuinely nightmare inducing), ultra-sinister scenery and filming locations, stylish black and white photography, spine-chilling music and a brilliant gathering of talented performers. Barbara Steele, starlet of the aforementioned "Black Sunday" and Italian goth-muse number one, shines brightly again as a spiritually tormented character and she's literally surrounded by excellent co-players. One of them, Silvano Tranquilli, even gives away a fairly credential depiction of author Edgar Allan Poe. The story involves him and another wealthy visitor of a countryside tavern challenging a brutal young journalist to accept a morbid wager. If he – Alan Foster – would survive spending one night in the infamous Blackwood Castle, he receives the astonishing reward of $10 and a newspaper interview with Poe. Needless to say the ordeal is much more dangerous than it sounds, even for somebody like Alan Foster who's a firm non-believer in ghosts and vampires. The night starts out great for him, as he even meets up with the stunningly beautiful woman of his dreams, but gradually he learns that Blackwood Castle is a hellish place where the ghosts of the previously deceased visitors are trapped for all eternity. I don't know about you, but this is seriously one of my favorite horror movie premises of all time. Co-director Antonio Margheriti clearly was proud of this film as well, because he remade it himself a couple of years later as "Web of the Spider". That movie had a handful of trumps, like for example the casting of no less than Klaus Kinski in the role of Edgar Allan Poe, but in general this original is vastly superior. "Castle of Blood" literally oozes with atmosphere and maintains a thoroughly unsettling ambiance throughout. This truly is one of the rare films that can make the hair on your arms and back of the neck rise with fear if you watch it in the right circumstances. Watch it late at night, preferably alone and in a candle lit room, and you'll get an idea about the true definition of horror.

It's the Samhain and a young journalist meets up with Edgar Allan Poe in a London tavern and agrees to spend a night in a haunted castle from where no one comes out alive for a wager. True to its title, this is a macabre dance as the journalist staggers around the castle with a candelabra at hand and meets up with a variety of characters that may or may not be ghosts, including a seductive Barbara Steele in a nightgown, a creepy bearded Dr. Carmus whose name recalls Camus the writer but whose appearance has something of Ze Do Caixao/Coffin Joe, and a shirtless buff guy who seems to have wandered off a Maciste set. There's not much plot to speak of (in a script co-written by Sergio Corbucci no less, who'd go on to have a great career in the spaghetti western field, where Margheriti also dipped later in his career with AND GOD SAID TO CAIN) and whatever plot thereis is deliberately handled in the manner of a spooky story told at midnight around a campfire, the details intentionally vague and simplistic and with only a semblance of reality as is often the case with oral stories that pass from mouth to mouth and have to be easy to tell and remember for that reason. I like movies where characters wander through weird/surreal/eerie architecture (MARIENBAD, THE TRIAL) except DANZA MACABRA sabotages that hypnotic quality with goofy shenanigans such as candelabras being knocked over to the sound of cymbals and the protagonist tripping over stairs. Whatever the movie has going for it comes from those very qualities that mark it as an Italian Gothic horror film. The eerie dreamlike atmosphere and b/w cinematography capturing images of cobweb-strewn catacombs and skulls. Passable but not a patch on BLACK Sunday.