Robert J. Maxwell A reporter, Georges Riviere, accepts a bet that he can not spend the night alone in a broken-down castle. He loses.The story opens in a shabby London ale house with a chubby Edgar Allan Poe telling a horrifying tale. You can tell that it's horrifying because his eyes are practically popping from their sockets. Of his two listeners, the reporter, Riviere, scoffs. The other man owns a mansion two hours from the city. The place is supposed to be uninhabited but those who visit it -- which happens once a year -- are never seen again.Riviere is dropped off at the castle's gate by the owner and Poe, whose carriage then trundles off into the night in the film's most unsettling scene. Riviere enters the grounds and stumbles through a nightmare of thickets and bare hanging branches. Inside, the castle is filled with shadows and cobwebs. It's all reminiscent of Renfield's being dropped off at the Borga Pass and being taken by carriage to Dracula's castle.Well -- "Dracula" was itself a bit confusing. You will remember that Dracula shooed his female consorts away from the unconscious victim and sucked the blood himself. So what did the females eat or drink? How long could they exist without drinking blood? Why was Dracula such a hog? If Renfield was turned into a vampire, how come he could subsist on flies? "Castle of Blood" is even less logical. The castle turns out to be filled with spirits. Most of them walk around like zombies but at least one of them, Barbara Steele, of the enormous eyes and magnificent mammaries, is pretty lively. She no sooner meets Riviere than she throws herself at him, has the reporter declaring his love for her, and they spend some time in the sack together. (The camera pans to the fireplace, where the logs send up brighter flames.) I don't know what the attraction is. Okay, Barbara Steele isn't bad looking, but Georges Riviere seems kind of plain to me and gives a particularly ligneous performance.That's nothing, though. The spirits come and go. Their peregrinations make no more sense than they did in "The Shining." There can be a ballroom full of whirling, well-dressed, waltzing men and women, and in the next moment they're gone. One is a lesbian. The reporter shoots one of them, a dim muscle man, and he apparently dies, only to show up later thirsty for blood.They're all thirsty for Riviere's blood. It's going to keep them alive for another year, until the next visitor brings next year's supply. But just as the reporter seems cornered, Steele appears, sobbing out her love for him, and shows him the door to the outside, where it will soon be light.Riviere drags her along, screaming. Once outside, though it is still night, she drops to the grass and dissolves into a skeleton. Riviere beats it to the gate and slips through it to wait for the carriage that will pick him up that morning.Too late, though. Being outside the castle may have skeletonized Steele but it doesn't prevent the other spirits from following the reporter and slamming the gate shut behind him, impaling him on one of its spikes. Their voices keep repeating, "We need your blood. Now you are one of us." In fact, there is no blood from the puncture of the spike and nobody around to drink it. And if the spirits can wander around at will outside the castle, what's to stop them from wafting into London and treating themselves to a real repast of Dickensian losers? And, not that it matters much, but the elderly fellow who owns the castle shows up with Poe at dawn to pick up the reporter and they find his body held upright against the gate. Both Poe and the owner are properly shocked. Yet, what is the owner playing at? He seems to know nothing of what's up, but he sends the ghosts a fresh victim on the same night of every year? Riviere keeps checking his anachronistic pocket watch to see how much painful time has passed. I felt his pain. Castle of Tedium.Want to see a good, scary movie without a cascade of gore? Watch "Dead of Night." Want to see a good, scary, CHEAP movie? See "Carnival of Souls."

Coventry If you're a fan of Gothic horror, then you're definitely absolutely guaranteed to LOVE this wondrous Italian 60's film "Castle of Blood". We're really talking about creepily creaking doors, eerie portraits that appear to be moving, spontaneously dying candles although there's no wind and smoke coming from underneath heavy wooden chamber doors. Speaking in terms of atmosphere and style, this masterful piece of Gothic film-making is one of the best out there; just one tiny league below landmarks such as "Black Sunday", "The Three Faces of Fear" and "Curse of the Crying Woman". The prominent directors duo Sergio Corbucci ("The Great Silence", "Django") and Antonio Margheriti ("Cannibal Apocalypse", "Killer Fish") are successful in all areas, including a powerful plot (one that is genuinely nightmare inducing), ultra-sinister scenery and filming locations, stylish black and white photography, spine-chilling music and a brilliant gathering of talented performers. Barbara Steele, starlet of the aforementioned "Black Sunday" and Italian goth-muse number one, shines brightly again as a spiritually tormented character and she's literally surrounded by excellent co-players. One of them, Silvano Tranquilli, even gives away a fairly credential depiction of author Edgar Allan Poe. The story involves him and another wealthy visitor of a countryside tavern challenging a brutal young journalist to accept a morbid wager. If he – Alan Foster – would survive spending one night in the infamous Blackwood Castle, he receives the astonishing reward of $10 and a newspaper interview with Poe. Needless to say the ordeal is much more dangerous than it sounds, even for somebody like Alan Foster who's a firm non-believer in ghosts and vampires. The night starts out great for him, as he even meets up with the stunningly beautiful woman of his dreams, but gradually he learns that Blackwood Castle is a hellish place where the ghosts of the previously deceased visitors are trapped for all eternity. I don't know about you, but this is seriously one of my favorite horror movie premises of all time. Co-director Antonio Margheriti clearly was proud of this film as well, because he remade it himself a couple of years later as "Web of the Spider". That movie had a handful of trumps, like for example the casting of no less than Klaus Kinski in the role of Edgar Allan Poe, but in general this original is vastly superior. "Castle of Blood" literally oozes with atmosphere and maintains a thoroughly unsettling ambiance throughout. This truly is one of the rare films that can make the hair on your arms and back of the neck rise with fear if you watch it in the right circumstances. Watch it late at night, preferably alone and in a candle lit room, and you'll get an idea about the true definition of horror.

ferbs54 I have never seen a Barbara Steele movie that I haven't liked, and have always been a sucker for a good haunted-house story (especially for such wonderful pictures as "The Legend of Hell House" and the original versions of "The Haunting" and "House on Haunted Hill"), so I had a feeling that "Castle of Blood" would be right up my alley. And boy, was it ever! This French-Italian coproduction, while perhaps not the classic that Steele's first horror film, "Black Sunday," remains to this day, is nevertheless an extremely atmospheric, chilling entry in the spook genre. Filmed in black and white, it manages to convey a genuinely creepy miasma. The film concerns a journalist who bets one Lord Blackwood and an author named Edgar Allen Poe that he can spend the night in Blackwood's castle on the night of All Saints Day, when the spirits of those killed in the castle reenact their fate. The viewer gets to see these deaths, and they ARE pretty horrible, for the most part. The film does indeed send shivers up the viewer's spine, and in the uncut DVD that I just watched--thanks to the fine folks at Synapse--even features a surprising topless scene and some mild lesbianism! And Barbara is wonderful in this movie; her otherworldly beauty is put to good advantage playing a sympathetic spectre. Her mere presence turns a creepy ghost story into something truly memorable. Not for nothing has she been called "The Queen of Horror."

The_Void Italy produced a lot of really great and original horror films in the 1960's - and this is certainly one of them! The first thing you will notice about Danse Macabre is the style of the film. Shot in beautiful black and white, and due to director Antonio Margheriti's use of lighting; the film almost looks like it could be a German expressionistic horror film. This, coupled with the horror-filled plot line ensures that Danse Macabre is a film that truly captures the essence of horror. Of course, the fact that the beautiful Barbara Steele appears in the film doesn't harm matters - and the good news continues as, in this film, she gets to flex her acting muscles more than she did in the films that made her famous. The plot is very aware of the time in which this was released, and so incorporates the great Edgar Allen Poe. We follow Alan Foster, a writer who accepts a bet from Poe himself and Lord Blackwood that he can't spend an entire night in the latter's creepy old castle. Everyone that has spent the night there previously has died...and our hero is about to meet the previous wager-takers! Nowadays, horror films don't tend to focus so much on each shot and the result is that there isn't much beauty left in the genre. It is refreshing, therefore, to see this film. Many of the shots here are incredibly beautiful - from the female side of the couple wearing just a see-through skirt, to my personal favourite - a shot of smoke creeping in from under a door. This my first Antonio Margheriti film, and even after seeing just this one; it's obvious that he was one of Italy's premier directors. Also interesting is the fact that screenplay was co-written by another of the Italian greats; Django creator Sergio Corbucci. The plot can meander a little too much at times, but there's always enough atmosphere on hand to make sure that the film never becomes boring - and the fact that it is always intriguing, even when the plot slows down, ensures the same thing. The way that Danse Macabre utilises the 'haunted house' theme is both well done and original, and helps to keep the story as eerie as possible. On the whole, fans of Italian and/or cult cinema will not want to miss this little gem!