Amanti d'oltretomba

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-.

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.

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.

Laughable dialogue doesn't detract too much from this moody, sometimes disturbing Italian Gothic. The story seems to be loosely adapted from an M.R. James ghost story called "Lost Hearts". Although the torture scenes in the uncut version are remarkably strong for their time, there are other things that are more disquieting. Most hideous of all is the character of Solange, the maid, whose youth has been restored by a dead woman's blood. When she speaks of how the blood grows cold and heavy in her veins, it's a very unsettling moment. The black-and-white photography is beautifully atmospheric. Ennio Morricone's music is more conventional than usual -- especially the mazurka that represents Muriel, which is too simple and sentimental for a Barbara Steele character... but the tremendous Fugue for organ which dominates the soundtrack deserves special mention. In spite of its lapses, and with apologies to Mario Bava, this is still my favorite Italian Gothic horror film!

NIGHTMARE CASTLE (Mario Caiano - Italy 1965).

Barbara Steele is the wife of a brutal count. Brutal counts don't take half measures and when he finds out that his wife has been unfaithful, he tortures her and her lover and puts them to death, removing their hearts from their bodies in retribution. Time passes and he remarries a beautiful and unsuspecting young woman. Soon she is experiencing horrendous dreams and apparitions. It appears the spirits of his former wife and her lover have returned to exact their revenge. Then various forms of torture, electrocution(!) and distorted dream images follow.

This film is 80 percent atmosphere and some scraps for story and acting. The first twenty minutes will get your attention, but the middle part is slow and talky with some "plot elements" being played out. But still worth seeking out for lovers of early Gothic horror with quite a haunting Gothic atmosphere and an unusual strong cast for this kind of film. The fine score by Ennio Morricone is a major bonus in this interesting little mystery.

Camera Obscura --- 6/10