Alan Foster (Georges Rivière), a journalist meets Edgar Alan Poe (Silvano Tranquilli) at a pub. In the film’s reality, Poe is not a writer of fictions, but a documentarian of actual supernatural occurrences. He tells Foster this, but the journalist is a skeptic. Poe makes him a bet that he cannot spend the night in a haunted castle. Foster agrees.
Once there he is accosted by the usual haunted house trappings – spooky noises, candles getting blown out, strange sounds, and paintings that seem to stare back at him.
Then the ghosts come.
Luckily two out of the three ghosts are beautiful women (Barbara Steele and Margarete Robsahm), the other is a handsome, musclebound man. They were each murdered on the premises sometime in the past and now, once a year they must take the soul of a living human in order to remain in existence.
Ah, but Barbara Steele’s character falls in love with our hero and decides to help him survive the night, even though that will mean her own destruction.
Castle of Blood is pretty light on plot, but oh is it heavy on atmosphere. The camera investigates and lingers on every gothic inch of the castle. It is cobweb-filled, shadow-dense, and incredibly creepy. It longingly gazes at Barbara Steele who has a face custom-built for films like this. She is both incredibly beautiful and eerily terrifying.
This is the type of horror film my squeamish wife can watch with me. It is exactly the type of film I love.
themidnightcafe.org 