By Orrin Grey
Castle of Blood (1964). Director: Sergio Corbucci, Antonio Margheriti. Cast: Barbara Steele, Georges Riviere, Silvano Tranquilli. Country: Italy/France.
Not actually based on any particular Edgar Allan Poe story, Castle of Blood (aka Danza Macabre) seems to take as its primary inspiration Poe’s famous quote that, “The death of a beautiful woman is unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world.”
The story opens with Poe himself (Silvano Tranquilli) telling his tales to an enraptured group in a tavern. A journalist (Georges Riviere), who has come to interview Poe, expresses his admiration, but also his disbelief, that Poe’s tales could possibly be based on reality, something Poe hotly contests. This leads a nobleman who has also been listening to the tales to wager that the journalist can’t spend even a single night in his haunted castle. After some dithering, the journalist takes him up on his wager and things go rather predictably downhill for him from there.
Once inside the titular castle, our protagonist spends a long time wandering around in the dark before finally encountering the first of the castle’s resident spirits (Barbara Steele). Unfortunately for him, the ghosts are not just doomed to reenact the tragedies that took their lives, but are also vampires who need his blood in order to continue their existence (such as it is). He and Barbara Steele fall instantly in love, and she attempts to help save him from the curse of the castle, but since she’s already dead, it’s a losing proposition.
Not only is the castle haunted by Barbara Steele and her entourage of would-be paramours, but also by those other poor unfortunates who came to the castle over the years to attempt to spend the night, including the strange Dr. Carmus (who delivers a lot of exposition about different kinds of death) and a pair of young newlyweds whose interlude provides a brief-but-genuinely-sexy moment of nudity that was apparently cut in many censored versions of the film.
It’s all nicely gothic, but, in spite of a few clever sequences (the hanged bodies in the graveyard calling out to the protagonist as he tries to escape are a particularly nice touch), there’s not really a lot to recommend Castle of Blood. Though, as you can see in the previous installment of this very column, if you’re looking around for vintage movies inspired (however loosely) by the stories of Edgar Allan Poe, you could certainly do a lot worse.
You can purchase Castle of Blood from Amazon.com.