Les Amants d'outre-tombe

All right, the writing is something to be desired, but this movie is so richly photographed and the great '60's Scream Queen Barbara Steele is so alluring that it hardly matters. This movie uses Steele to full advantage, and even casts the sultry, sinister star in a dual role, much like Mario Bava's classic BLACK SUNDAY. Babs stars as a faithless wife who, along with her lover, is tortured to death by her vengeful-husband. However, her hubby finds that this may not have been the great revenge he thought it would be because his wife left her inheritance to her mentally unbalanced sister(Steele again, this time in a blonde wig). Of course, being the sadistic, money-hungry, conniving little swine that he is, he decides to marry his sister-in-law, and drive her to complete hysteria so he can commit her to the local loony bin and claim the family fortune for himself. Naturally, things don't go exactly as planned, but I won't give the rest of this weird little gem away. Shown in the US in a severely cut version that is so butchered, it's hardly worth watching. The original full-length European version is rare, but definitely worth seeking out.

Most commonly known in the US as "Nightmare Castle", this 1965 shocker starts off with cinematic guns ablazin!! Barbara Steele plays a wicked woman married to a lunatic doctor. He discovers her in a heated trist with their gardener. Both Steele and her lover are chained to a lab wall, and given a slow, grimy, painful death via horrible surgical instruments. These scenes, disturbing as hell, remind one of crime scene photos of Lizzie Borden or Jack The Ripper. But then, the film becomes a talky soap opera, centering around the bad woman's mousy twin sister (played by a blonde Steele) Somebody should have told the director audiences don't want to see their character a colorless, cheerless, unemotional, unimaginative nothing. The first reel rates an A+, the rest a C-.

'Night Of The Doomed' is an excellent Gothic thriller, full of mystery, atmosphere and chills. The stunning Barbara Steele, arguably the most beautiful Scream Queen of all, plays a duel role as an unfaithful wife, who is tortured and murdered by her scientist husband (Jess Franco regular Paul Muller), and the wife's mentally fragile sister. Muller marries the sister in an attempt to keep his hands on his late wife's fortune, needing the money to help finance his experiments. His new bride finds herself going through some increasingly strange experiences, which unbeknown to her seem to be caused by her dead sister's attempts at revenge from beyond the grave. This is a first rate example of a melodramatic supernatural thriller. Steele and Muller are both excellent and well cast, and their performances added to the stylish black and white photography, and an above average Morricone score, make this is a real treat for fans of Italian horror and giallo.

I just got this on a triple-feature DVD with The Terror and Mania on it. I also saw Nightmare Castle on Count Gore's internet show. I love the look of this movie. Everything is very contrasty, the shadows are impenetrable and the sets are amazing. It succeeds in being a truly Gothic horror film. The dialogue is wanting and the characters aren't any beefier than most horror fare offers but that's half the fun. The film makes an effort to focus on an atmosphere of dread and it does it well. This is definitely a good film for late night viewing and, as another poster mentioned, I really miss having truly local television that would play this kind of stuff.

Of course Nightmare Castle used to scare the hell out of me as a kid when I saw it on late-night TV, it's not exactly scary anymore but it's still a lot of fun to watch as I discovered buying it on DVD. Brings back a lot of memories of staying up late in a dark room watching old horror movies on the late late show, TV certainly has lost a lot of charm since the late 70's as you rarely find gems like this on anymore. Heck you'd be lucky to even find a late late show anymore, let alone old horror movies. But anyhow, good to see this one again.