BA_Harrison The Long Hair of Death opens at the end of the 15th Century, with Helen Karnstein (horror icon Barbara Steele) begging Count Humboldt for mercy regarding her mother Adele Karnstein, who is to be tried as a witch (trial by fire), having wrongly been accused of killing the count's brother. As the Count takes advantage of Helen, promising that nothing will happen to her mother until he is present at her trial, his son Kurt (George Ardisson) goes ahead and burns Adele in front of her youngest daughter Lizabeth. As she goes up in flames, Adele curses the count and his son. Later, the Count disposes of troublesome Helen by pushing her over a waterfall, but allows Lizabeth to live, the girl growing up on his estate.Years later, the now adult Lizabeth (lovely Halina Zalewska) attracts the attention of loathesome Kurt, who pressurises her into marrying him. What he doesn't know is that Helen has returned from the grave and, with Lizabeth's help, is out for revenge. Despite stylish direction from Antonio Margheriti and impressive black and white cinematography by Riccardo Pallottini, Italian gothic horror The Long Hair of Death is a dull affair, with a deathly slow pace and a hum-drum plot that delivers clichés by the creaky cart-load: a creepy castle complete with secret passageways, vengeful descendants of a woman wrongly executed for witchcraft, a plague laying waste to the population, and a murderous aristocrat with designs on a beautiful but unwilling maiden. While such tried and tested horror ingredients can equal a lot of fun, here it proves boring and disappointing, Margheriti failing to bring much life to proceedings. The director did the whole gothic thing much better the very same year with Castle of Blood.

kai ringler a woman is being put to trial for being accused of being a witch,, a man who has some other interests, makes sure she dies, the eldest daughter get's tricked to her death,, now it's the younger daughter's turn to take vengeance for her mother. our villain has his eyes on a younger girl, so he sees her and starts to neglect his wife,, the younger girl and him decide that they wanna do away with his wife so they concoct a plan to get rid of her,, this wasn't a bad movie,, it had interesting twists, and turns, but I found it hard to watch in spots as the movie seems to drag on , and not move the plot forward. it almost seemed like two different movies.

ferbs54 In a taped interview that she gave at Toronto's Festival of Fear 2009, cult actress Barbara Steele mentioned that of her 40-odd films, only 11 have been in the field of horror (the clip is currently viewable on YouTube), the inference being that Babs today wonders just WHY her legion of fans insists on calling her "the Queen of Horror." By my count, however, Steele has appeared in at least 14 horror pictures, and is perhaps best remembered for the string of nine Italian Gothics that she appeared in, from her breakthrough appearance in the 1960 Mario Bava masterpiece "Black Sunday" to 1966's "An Angel for Satan." The picture in question here, "The Long Hair of Death" (just one of eight films that Steele appeared in in 1964!), is a perfect demonstration, however, of just why Steele remains the undisputed Queen of Horror to this day, despite her pooh-poohing of the title.In the film, as in several of her others, Babs plays what are essentially two roles. In the late 1400s, in what seems like a Germanic kingdom, young Helen Karnstein (our Barbara) sees her mother burned as a witch (interestingly, NOT at the stake, but rather at the center of a ring of entwined branches). The cruel nobleman Kurt Humboldt (very well played by handsome George Ardisson) had recently killed his own uncle and blamed it on this supposed daughter of Satan, but Helen's dreams of vengeance are cut short when Kurt's father, the Count (Giuliano Raffaelli), kills her shortly thereafter by tossing her down a waterfall! Flash forward 10 years or so, and Helen's sister, Elizabeth (Halina Zalewska, who looks very much to me like Kirstie Alley, of all people!), also harboring thoughts of a long-deferred vengeance, is forced into an unholy marriage by Kurt, the very man who killed her mother! And shortly after, on a stormy night, a woman named Mary, the spitting image of the deceased Helen (Babs again, natch), appears at the castle door, capturing the fickle Kurt's heart and paving the way for poisonings, deceit and assorted mayhem...."The Long Hair of Death" (the title is triply significant!) was the second collaboration between Steele and director Antonio Margheriti; their first, the truly spooky "Castle of Blood," had been released earlier that same year. In both films, Margheriti exhibits a definite flair for these Gothic affairs, and he is hugely abetted here by the art direction and set design of, respectively, Giorgio Giovannini and Henry Fraser. The castle chambers and underground crypts on display in the film are things of morbid and dreary beauty, wonderfully shot in B&W by cinematographer Riccardo Pallottini (who had also served as the DOP on "Castle of Blood"). And while I'm name-dropping, I may as well add that the truly creepy score by famed composer Carlo Rustichelli (who, that same year, worked on Mario Bava's protogiallo "Blood and Black Lace") adds immeasurably to the sinister goings-on, despite the fact that it IS repeated at least a dozen times during the course of the picture. The film features any number of startling sequences--including several burnings and the awesome sight of Babs' decayed corpse being reanimated in her newly opened grave by lightning--and various gross-out shots (Babs' maggot-filled corpse face, reminiscent of the puss she sported in "Black Sunday" as the witch Asa, as well as a skeleton being jittered by some frisky rodents). There is also a surprising flash of toplessness on display here (again, as in "Castle of Blood"), probably thanks to Barbara's body double, and I must add that the vengeance that the two sisters ultimately wreak on Kurt is a doozy, prefiguring a classic scene in 1973's "The Wicker Man" by almost a decade. Essentially an exemplar of the Italian Gothic, "The Long Hair of Death" has both style and atmosphere to spare, and is of course stolen by the magnificent Barbara Steele, who is both captivating and beautiful in every scene that she graces. And how chilling she is, when she appears to Kurt near the film's end and intones "You're going to die"! Wonderful stuff, indeed! The further good news is that this film can now be found in a nice-looking print (although poorly dubbed) on a DVD from a company known as Midnight Choir...AND paired with the Steele rarity "An Angel for Satan," her last Italian Gothic! Watching these two films together will certainly satisfy any viewer that, despite her denial in Toronto, Barbara Steele really IS the Queen of Horror!

wes-connors "A woman is put to death after bring accused of witchcraft. Her daughter confronts the man who accused her mother of the crime, and discovers the true reason for the accusation, but loses her life in doing so. The youngest daughter is taken in by the man's family and raised by them, with the intent to marry her off to the man's son. When the girl comes of age, her decreased sister returns to exact her revenge upon the family," according to the DVD sleeve's synopsis."This story takes place at the end of the fifteenth century," we are advised. Director Antonio Margheriti and the crew give it a great look. That, an attractive cast, and the moody atmosphere can't make up for the fact that the film plays itself out very slowly, and winds up nowhere special. Barbara Steele (as Mary / Helen Karnstein) looks particularly stunning; probably, she inspired the US title: "The Long Hair of Death" (but, what a way to go). Strange how drastically Halina Zalewska (as Elizabeth Karnstein) changes her mind about George Ardisson (as Kurt Humboldt), after Ms. Steele (re)emerges on the scene.**** I lunghi capelli della morte (1964) Antonio Margheriti ~ Barbara Steele, George Ardisson, Halina Zalewska