Bezenby
Gothic Horror rises from the grave with this tepid tale with a plot you've perhaps watched several times before, maybe. I don't know you.It plays out like many a gothic horror - a recently graduated scientist (and woman - progress!) passes through a village looking for a lift to the nearby mysterious and creepy castle. Strangely, no one wants to give her a lift and everyone's too busy mourning over the coffin of 'another victim' to help her. Only one kind man gives her a lift, only to tell her she'll be killed in the castle before trying to rape her. She gets away, however, but doesn't get an nice welcome at the castle. The Count there is carrying on research his brother was doing before the brother turned himself into a kebab and died. The new Count isn't happy that his new assistant is a woman, but she convinces him that her credentials are as legit as any man's, so he reluctantly lets her stay. The lady he lives with isn't so happy, however. This film was really boring so let's get it over with - Girls are going missing and turning up dead and everyone's blaming the Count, the scientist lady falls in love with him and we spend too much time with the police getting hassled by the citizens of the town to do something about the killings. There's also a twist so obvious that you'll receive and email about it a week before you watch the film and very little happens until about an hour of the film has passed.If you want to watch a film with a similar plot, but also completely mental, watch the 1974 film Mania.
Coventry
The handsome Baron Janos Dalmar is believed to be a homicidal maniac who rapes the girls he lures to his castle before feeding the bodies to his monstrous dogs. Still, these are just rumors nobody can prove. Dalmar then recruits the beautiful and intelligent female chemist Ivanna and, through her dreams, she discovers that there are much deeper secrets hidden behind the castle's walls. "Blood Castle" is mediocre Gothic horror with a lot of routine plotting and only one or two really ingenious moments. The castle setting is terrific, though, and the make up effects on the actual murderer are quite eerie and convincing. The lead actress drivels way too much and she doesn't only seem to bore her male counterpart but also us; viewers. All the clichés are there, with the beast in the cellar, the ominous servants and the superstitious villagers who only just survived a plague-epidemic. This film is watchable enough, but there are many other Gothic horror classics available, so you don't really need to waste your time on this average installment. The better choices include "The Virgin of Nuremberg", "The Whip and the Body", "Nightmare Castle", "Baron Blood" and "Danse Macabre".
archive1
'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.
macabro357
(aka: BLOOD CASTLE or SCREAM OF THE DEMON)*spoiler*This was a drive-in feature, co-billed with THE VELVET VAMPIRE. A Spanish-Italian co-production where a series of women in a village are being murdered around the same time a local count named Yanos Dalmar is seen on horseback, riding off with his 'man-eating' dog behind him.The townsfolk already suspect he is the one behind it all and want his castle burned down. The murders first began around the time Count Yanos' older brother, Count Igor Dalmar was horribly burned and killed in a lab accident.Then a woman Ivanna (Erna Schuer) that Igor hired before his death to assist him in his experiments shows up. Yanos agrees to hire her in place of his brother and together they seek the formulae for the regeneration of dead cells. Yanos wants to bring Igor's charred corpse back to life.But of course Igor is still alive (although horribly burned) and stalking and killing the women in the village. We see his char-broiled face appear at various points in the film, so we know he's still alive, making the whole thing seem a little bit too obvious.Igor meets another fiery end when he gets into a fight with Yanos over Ivanna, with the burning candles falling on to the same bed that Igor stumbles on to, meeting yet another, final char-broiled end.The Retromedia DVD is taken from a VHS source and looks quite grainy and bad. Other than an even scratchier trailer, no other extras are included. Although it has a nice, creepy Spanish castle and good atmospherics, I found it to be fairly boring and predictable, with no excitement or mystery, whatsoever. 3 out of 10.
AD
