O Castelo das Portas de Fogo

Blood Castle (aka Scream of the Demon Lover, Altar of Blood, Ivanna--the best, but least exploitation cinema-sounding title, and so on) is a very traditional Gothic Romance film. That means that it has big, creepy castles, a headstrong young woman, a mysterious older man, hints of horror and the supernatural, and romance elements in the contemporary sense of that genre term. It also means that it is very deliberately paced, and that the film will work best for horror mavens who are big fans of understatement. If you love films like Robert Wise's The Haunting (1963), but you also have a taste for late 1960s/early 1970s Spanish and Italian horror, you may love Blood Castle, as well.

Baron Janos Dalmar (Carlos Quiney) lives in a large castle on the outskirts of a traditional, unspecified European village. The locals fear him because legend has it that whenever he beds a woman, she soon after ends up dead--the consensus is that he sets his ferocious dogs on them. This is quite a problem because the Baron has a very healthy appetite for women. At the beginning of the film, yet another woman has turned up dead and mutilated.

Meanwhile, Dr. Ivanna Rakowsky (Erna Schürer) has appeared in the center of the village, asking to be taken to Baron Dalmar's castle. She's an out-of-towner who has been hired by the Baron for her expertise in chemistry. Of course, no one wants to go near the castle. Finally, Ivanna finds a shady individual (who becomes even shadier) to take her. Once there, an odd woman who lives in the castle, Olga (Cristiana Galloni), rejects Ivanna and says that she shouldn't be there since she's a woman. Baron Dalmar vacillates over whether she should stay. She ends up staying, but somewhat reluctantly. The Baron has hired her to try to reverse the effects of severe burns, which the Baron's brother, Igor, is suffering from.

Unfortunately, the Baron's brother appears to be just a lump of decomposing flesh in a vat of bizarre, blackish liquid. And furthermore, Ivanna is having bizarre, hallucinatory dreams. Just what is going on at the castle? Is the Baron responsible for the crimes? Is he insane?

I wanted to like Blood Castle more than I did. As I mentioned, the film is very deliberate in its pacing, and most of it is very understated. I can go either way on material like that. I don't care for The Haunting (yes, I'm in a very small minority there), but I'm a big fan of 1960s and 1970s European horror. One of my favorite directors is Mario Bava. I also love Dario Argento's work from that period. But occasionally, Blood Castle moved a bit too slow for me at times. There are large chunks that amount to scenes of not very exciting talking alternated with scenes of Ivanna slowly walking the corridors of the castle.

But the atmosphere of the film is decent. Director José Luis Merino managed more than passable sets and locations, and they're shot fairly well by Emanuele Di Cola. However, Blood Castle feels relatively low budget, and this is a Roger Corman-produced film, after all (which usually means a low-budget, though often surprisingly high quality "quickie"). So while there is a hint of the lushness of Bava's colors and complex set decoration, everything is much more minimalist. Of course, it doesn't help that the Retromedia print I watched looks like a 30-year old photograph that's been left out in the sun too long. It appears "washed out", with compromised contrast.

Still, Merino and Di Cola occasionally set up fantastic visuals. For example, a scene of Ivanna walking in a darkened hallway that's shot from an exaggerated angle, and where an important plot element is revealed through shadows on a wall only. There are also a couple Ingmar Bergmanesque shots, where actors are exquisitely blocked to imply complex relationships, besides just being visually attractive and pulling your eye deep into the frame.

The performances are fairly good, and the women--especially Schürer--are very attractive. Merino exploits this fact by incorporating a decent amount of nudity. Schürer went on to do a number of films that were as much soft corn porn as they were other genres, with English titles such as Sex Life in a Woman's Prison (1974), Naked and Lustful (1974), Strip Nude for Your Killer (1975) and Erotic Exploits of a Sexy Seducer (1977). Blood Castle is much tamer, but in addition to the nudity, there are still mild scenes suggesting rape and bondage, and of course the scenes mixing sex and death.

The primary attraction here, though, is probably the story, which is much a slow-burning romance as anything else. The horror elements, the mystery elements, and a somewhat unexpected twist near the end are bonuses, but in the end, Blood Castle is a love story, about a couple overcoming various difficulties and antagonisms (often with physical threats or harms) to be together.

Ivana, a chemist, is hired by Baron Janos Dolmer to work in his secret laboratory in his big castle. The castle is located outside a small village, in which a series of brutal murders of young women has been committed. The townspeople all suspect Janos and his big doberman dogs (or is it rotweilers?). Ivana moves into the castle and pretty soon strange things starts to happen. Nobody of Janos' staff seems to want her around, her drink gets spiked and she has nightmares of a torture chamber in the cellar. Or is it really a dream? Janos himself is a bit suspicious, and the experiment he wants Ivana to participate in is far from normal.

It's quiet a good plot, and the characters are interesting. There are some logical gaps and the `scientific' discussions held between Ivana and Janos are laughable. The castle is beautiful and the atmosphere in the movie is very gothic. The flick features some nudity and sex.

I'd give this one a 6 out of 10. I'd recommend `La plus longue nuit du diable' by Jean Brismée instead if you're looking for an excellent 70's gothic horror movie.

Of course I was not familiar with the 1970 Italian horror movie titled "Il Castello Dalle Porte Di Fuoco" (aka "Scream of the Demon Lover") prior to stumbling upon it here in 2025 by random chance. And given my love of all things horror, of course I had to check out what director José Luis Merino had to offer. The English title of the movie was a bit odd, as the Italian title translates into "The Castle With the Door of Fire".

Was I harboring any grand expectations? No, not at all, as the movie was made five years before I was born, and the movie's synopsis wasn't exactly promising something extraordinary.

Writers Enrico Colombo, José Luis Merino and María del Carmen Martínez Román put together a fair enough script and storyline. It made for a watchable movie, for sure, but hardly a gem in the horror cinema.

Given my limited exposure to Italian cinema, much more so Italian cinema from before I was born, then I wasn't familiar with a single actress or actor on the cast list. The acting performances in the movie were definitely fair.

The version I had the chance to watch was dubbed in English, and yeah, I am not fond of movies dubbed in general, as I prefer to watch a movie in its original language. But at least the dubbing work in this 1970 movie wasn't as dubious as in many other dubbed movies, so that counted for something at least.

The movie doesn't really utilize special effects much, so there wasn't much to write home about there.

Watchable a single time, but the movie doesn't have the contents for more than that single viewing.

My rating of director José Luis Merino's 1970 movie "Il Castello Dalle Porte Di Fuoco" lands on a four out of ten stars.

A female scientist goes to work for a reclusive baron in an old castle. The previous baron of the castle has apparently been blown up in an experiment and the new baron, his younger brother, is continuing his work on "matter regeneration". Despite the dire warnings from the townspeople that the new baron has a voracious appetite for women and that several of his previous conquests have been found naked and apparently ripped apart by dogs, the protagonist finds the one man in town who will take her to the castle (and who, of course, tries to rape her in route). When she arrives the baron at first refuses to employ her because she's a woman, but he eventually relents. And if she doesn't have enough reason to leave yet, the first night there she is drugged and wakes up tied to a bed naked and being pawed by some kind of hideous monster! Of course, the baron convinces her that it was all a dream and that she should stay, so she does and naturally she falls in love.

Obviously, this is a pretty dumb movie and not too suspenseful as there really are only two possible solutions: the new baron is a Dr. Jeckyl.Mr. Hyde type, or his supposedly dead and grossly disfigured brother is still alive. Still this is an enjoyable if completely demented adult fairy tale (with a lot of gratuitous nudity from the lead Erna Schrurer and from Augustina Belli as a very sexual precocious and unbelievably naive maid). You definitely need to leave logic (and good taste) at the door--and if you're a scientist your head will probably explode when you hear some of ridiculous pseudo-scientific mumbo jumbo the characters speak with a straight face. Still as ridiculous as this movie is. it's a lot of fun. And if you like this, check out the director's other well-known movie, "The Hanging Woman" with Paul Naschy as a necrophilic gravedigger.

'Scream of the Demon Lover' stradles the time period when sex and gore were slowly becoming more explicit and extreme in European genre movies. Made in 1970, the cast is a hodgepodge of nationalities and names, leading one to wonder if anyone could understand each other during shooting...the dialog ie obviously dubbed, so it's possible that the wooden acting is really the result of too many languages being spoken at once. Similar in some ways to Bava's far superior "Whip and Body", this film presents the story of a young female chemist who comes to live in a town's gothic castle helping the young baron find a way to bring his dead brother back to life. Most of the plot twists come from Italian gothic horror films of the 60's , and there is really very little original or striking about the locations or performances. In short, 'Scream of the Demon Lover' is a well-paced but cliche-laden movie that probably will entertain completists only.