5 tombe per un medium

Another of those Barbara Steele Italian horror movies. I guess it's the dark black hair that always gets her cast as a heavy. She is always quite striking and a pretty good actress. This one is full of revenge, plague, and pestilence. Apparently, the lord of the manor has been mistreated or privy to the shenanigans of about five people and seeks revenge from the grave on them. One is his unfaithful wife, Steele. Each murder is set up in some bizarre way, each person murdered in an ugly, undignified way. There's always something in me that says, "Did they really deserve to die, or could he have cast them into some legal trap, like the Count of Monte Cristo. But death it is. Some of the people who die are not horrible people, but it doesn't matter. This guy has powers in the great beyond. What about his soul, one full of vengeance. Why have the spirits allowed him to be so heartless and venomous. The two good people, are a young lawyer and the daughter of the castle's former resident. She is tiresome and rather insipid. He is mostly confused. Nobody in his right mind should still be in that castle. But it is quite scary and visually impressive. It's worth an hour and a half.

Medieval plague victims return from the dead to terrorise a group of people who were enemies of a dead man with expertise in the occult.

This is another in the cycle of Italian Gothic horror films that were especially popular in the 60's. It stars the queen of Italian horror from this period, Barbara Steele. She was hardly a scream queen however. She was rarely the one doing the screaming, she was usually the aggressor. In this movie she again is no victim and like always she provides some real class to proceedings. The story itself is fairly standard stuff, with nothing out of the ordinary. It's really pretty decent stuff though if you have an appreciation for horror films with a Gothic atmosphere. There are plenty of well used locations and the mood is effective enough. I enjoyed it and recommend it to fans of Italian Gothic.

Even my third generation, dubbed copy of this Italian made creature feature can't obscure the fact that this is a prime slice of Gothic cinema. Walter Brandi (Playgirls and the Vampire) stars as a lawyer sent to a gloomy castle to meet a client...who turns out to have been dead for a year! Barbara Steele is here as the widow of the deceased, and there's a plentiful supply of red herrings, gruesome make-up (all the more suggestive in black and white), thunder and lightning, and terrific atmosphere. The English language print seems to have suffered some cuts (though it is, surprisingly, letterboxed correctly), so I await a DVD restoration.

5 tom be per UN medium directed by Massimo Pupillo, is a lackluster spaghetti horror (as in spaghetti western?)! Also known as Cemetery of the Living Dead, this Italian chiller thriller benefits largely from the presence of the stunning queen of horror flicks Barbara Steele. Generally a bunch of nonsense about a terrible plague, in which the victims are then summoned from the dead by an idiot for some vague reason. The transfer is good, but then film was dodge and dubbed to begin with so beware. Still for Steele fans a nice treat at this price.

Reall old and good horror with a great actors and great less directing. Original Italian horror film and really good one.

Starring: Walter Brandi, Mirella Mravidi, Barbara Steele. Director: Massimo Pupillo.

An attorney (Walter Brandi) arrives at a castle to settle the estate of its recently deceased owner. The owner's wife (Barbara Steele) and daughter reveal that he was someone who was able to summon the souls of ancient plague victims and, in fact, his spirit was roaming the castle at that very moment.

Not surprisingly for an Italian film of 1965, the quality (at least in the copy released by Mill Creek) is of average or below average quality. And unlike Mario Bava's "Planet of the Vampires", which came out the same year, this film is in black and white. Hopefully some day a company will invest in cleaning up an original print. (Dark Sky Films would be perfect for this, if we use their version of "She-Beast" as a template. Comparing the Mill Creek version of that film with Dark Sky's is the difference between trash and treasure.)

The most redeeming element of this film is Barbara Steele, who steals the show with her large, mesmerizing eyes. Walter Brandi, who plays the attorney Albert Kovac, is a formidable lead, and it is a shame I am not better acquainted with him. He appeared in other horror gems of the era: "Bloody Pit of Horror" and "Curse of the Blood Ghouls", and acts as sort of a poor man's Giacomo Rossi-Stuart. Interestingly, the actress who showed the most potential -- Tilde Till, who played the maid -- never acted in anything else.

Director Massimo Pupillo gave producer Ralph Zucker the directing credit, despite Zucker having no directing responsibilities at all. Why Pupillo found this film not worthy of carrying his name is beyond me... it is a solid story, allegedly based on the work of Edgar Allan Poe (though I do not know which story and rather doubt the source). To say Pupillo was a rival of Bava would give him too much credit, but he is an important figure in the early Italian horror scene.

Perhaps, in fact, Pupillo was a colleague of Bava's. The film's writer, Romano Migliorini, also wrote the Bava classics "Kill Baby Kill" and "Lisa and the Devil"... not to mention the original "Inglorious Bastards". So maybe they were all within the same circle? Yet, Bava now has the glory while this atmospheric Gothic horror -- easily on par with Roger Corman's Poe films -- is left forgotten.

Luca Palmerini's review consists of two words: "good stuff". Ignoring the occasional audio problems and lackluster video quality, this is a fair statement. The plot, acting and directing are all superb, and any fan of classic film will really enjoy it. Again, I hope a better copy surfaces, but until then there is still enough to appreciate here.