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Category: Giovanni Grimaldi

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Plot: journalist accepts wager to stay overnight at a haunted castle

All through the 1960s Edgar Allan Poe adaptations were in vogue. The movement was started by a slew of Roger Corman productions starring Vincent Price as The Fall of the House of Usher (1960), The Premature Burial (1962), The Masque of the Red Death (1964) and The Tomb of Ligeia (1965). This in turn led to Poe-inspired productions as The Blancheville Monster (1963) and the German production The Castle of the Walking Dead (1967). The credits insist on that Castle Of Blood is based on Edgar Allan Poe’s “Danse Macabre” but instead it bears more of a resemblance to Poe’s 1827 five-part poem “Spirits Of the Dead”. Castle Of Blood bases itself on the French superstition that the dead rise from their graves on All Souls Eve, the subject of the titular poem by Henri Cazalis which was put to music by French composer Camille Saint-Saëns in 1874.

Castle Of Blood was helmed by versatile workhorse director Antonio Margheriti from a screenplay by Bruno Corbucci and Giovanni Grimaldi (as Jean Grimaud). The project was initially slated to be directed by Sergio Corbucci but he passed it on to Margheriti due to scheduling conflicts. Second unit and assistant directing was future cannibal atrocity specialist Ruggero Deodato. The production was bankrolled to make optimal usage of the sets and locations that producer Giovanni Addessi had used earlier for the comedy The Monk Of Monza (1963). British horror queen Barbara Steele was in the midst of her conquest of Meditterranean horror cinema and Castle Of Blood is graced with breathtaking monochrome photography by Riccardo Pallottini (as Richard Kramer) and a waltzing harpsichord, piano and weeping violin score by Riz Ortolani. Castle Of Blood was shot in just 15 days and Margheriti remade it on a larget budget and in color as Web Of the Spider (1971) with Michèle Mercier in Steele’s role. Castle Of Blood is a spectacular little gothic exercise that overcomes it budgetary limitations through sheer talent, perseverance and ingenuity in using the resources that it has to its disposal.

In the gloomy Four Devils pub in Victorian era London vacationing American author of weird and macabre literature Edgar Allan Poe (Silvano Tranquilli, as Montgomery Glenn) is reciting his 1835 novel “Berenice” to his companion Lord Thomas Blackwood (Umberto Raho, as Raul H. Newman). Intersecting with the men is starving young journalist Alan Foster (Georges Rivière) who has been trying to secure an interview with Poe. Poe insists that all of his stories were based on events he experienced. The men discuss the nature of death and Foster explains his skepticism towards the supernatural. At this juncture Lord Blackwood proposes Foster put his skepticism to the test by staying the night at his remote castle. An easy enough wager that will score him 100 pound sterling for his trouble. Foster accepts the challenge, offering ten pound sterling as collateral and soon he is being transported to the fog-enshrouded manor by coachman Lester (Salvo Randone) in Lord Blackwood’s carriage. After passing through the huge iron gate, traversing a foggy graveyard and navigating through thick foliage and long tree limbs Foster, sufficiently spooked, makes his way into the Castle Of Blood.

After walking aimlessly through shadowy, cobweb-filled corridors with dusty candelabras and metallic suits of armor, desolate empty chambers with nothing but blowing, ghostly curtains Alan at long last makes his acquaintance with Elisabeth Blackwood (Barbara Steele). Foster is immediately smitten with Blackwood but he is spooked by a clock that chimes even though its pendulum doesn’t swing and an eerie looking portrait that acts as a centerpiece in the great hall. Julia (Margarete Robsahm) seems to materialize out of the shadows whenever he looks at her portrait. Julia warns Elisabeth not to befriend the handsome stranger, but Elisabeth insists that he will “bring her back to life”. As it turns out Elisabeth not only had a husband named William (Benito Stefanelli, as Ben Steffen) but also was in a tryst with strapping gardener Herbert (Giovanni Cianfriglia, as Phil Karson) and the unwilling recipient of Julia’s sapphic affection. Along the way Foster meets house guest Dr. Carmus (Arturo Dominici, as Henry Kruger), an expert in the supernatural. According to the good doctor every year on All Souls Eve the lost souls of Castle Blackwood re-enact their fates lest they are able to claim the warm blood of the living to sustain them until the next year.

As Foster comes to grips with the realization that he is doomed Lord Blackwood has invited a couple of newly-weds on the pretext of the same wager. Before they arrive Foster first has to see how Dr. Carmus met his demise as he walks through the ancestral crypt and is eventually overcome by the walking corpse of gardener Herbert as one of the coffins disgorges its decaying cadaverous contents. By this point Elsi Perkins (Sylvia Sorrente, as Sylvia Sorrent) and her husband (John Peters) have arrived and are all over each other. Elsi is frightened by the strange noises inside the castle’s bowels and urges her husband to investigate. This doesn’t stop her from taking off her bodice and changing to a see-through hoop skirt. Elsi is choked by the hulking Herbert as she takes off her clothes in front of the fireplace. Her husband befalls a similar fate when he comes to her rescue. Having witnessed the grisly ends of all residents Alan is barely holding on to his wits. Elisabeth urges him to escape the castle premises but insists that she cannot go with him. Alan forcefully takes her with him only for Elisabeth to dissolve to ghastly skeletal remains on her own gravestone. On his way out of the premises Alan is impaled by one of the spikes of the iron fence as the wind blows. In the morning Poe and Lord Blackwood arrive at the castle. “He’s waiting, so you can see he’s won the bet,” Poe intones jokingly. “The Night of the Dead has claimed another victim” retorts Blackwood sardonically. ”When I finally write this story…. I”m afraid they’ll say it’s unbelievable,” a morose Edgar Allan Poe concludes.

As a French-Italian production Castle Of Blood boasts two stellar leads and a number of prominent supporting players. Barbara Steele had established herself with her double role in Mario Bava’s excellent Black Sunday (1960), The Pit and the Pendulum (1961), The Horrible Secret of Dr. Hichcock (1962) and worked with Margheriti earlier on The Long Hair of Death (1964). Steele would continue her conquest of Meditterranean horror cinema with appearances in 5 Graves For A Medium (1965), Nightmare Castle (1965), An Angel For Satan (1966) and in the following decade in Shivers (1975), the debut feature of body horror specialist David Cronenberg. Georges Rivière had been in The Black Vampire (1953), The Longest Day (1962) and The Virgin Of Nuremberg (1963) prior. Arturo Dominici was a reliable supporting actor that was in The Labors of Hercules (1958), Caltiki, the Immortal Monster (1959), The Trojan Horse (1961) and the Angélique series (1964-1968). Silvano Tranquilli was in, among others, The Horrible Secret of Dr. Hichcock (1962), the Silvio Amadio comedy So Young, So Lovely, So Vicious (1975) with Gloria Guida and Dagmar Lassander as well as Star Odyssey (1979), the concluding chapter of Alfonso Brescia’s abysmal science-fiction quadrilogy following the success of Star Wars (1977). Finally, Umberto Raho was in The Last Man on Earth (1964), the superhero fumetti Satanik (1968), The Night Evelyn Came Out of the Grave (1971) and the Tsui Hark actioner Double Team (1997) with Jean-Claude Van Damme and Dennis Rodman.

Like a lot of gothic horrors of the day Castle Of Blood is a slow-moving affair that takes its time setting up its characters and building atmosphere. The Four Devils pub scene does some excellent economic storystelling. It sets up the main characters, lays out the premise of the movie and sets the plot into motion. Each character is given just enough shading to be believable. Foster is a man of reason and logic, Poe initially comes across as a raving lunatic (but in the third act will turn out to be the most sympathetic character) and Lord Blackwood is a member of nobility that will stop at nothing to take advantage of the poor classes for his own personal enrichment/entertainment. Written not quite as well as the love arc between Foster and Barbara Steele’s Elisabeth. Within moments of their initial meet-cute the two are declaring each other their eternal love. Margarete Robsahm’s stern villainess contrasts beautifully with Barbara Steele’s wide-eyed and innocent Elisabeth. The colors of their gowns should clue anybody in as to what their alliances are. The brief topless scene from Sylvia Sorrente in the international version is worth the price of admission alone. The entire framing device in the Four Devils pub, having all three principal male leads detailing what the movie will be about, is surprisingly effective given the ridiculousness of the central premise.

Castle Of Blood was prescient of where gothic horror was headed in the ensuing decade and pushes the envelope in terms of violence and eroticism. Barbara Steele looks absolutely dashing with her pulled back ravenblack hair, huge eyes, lowcut dresses and heaving bosom. Norwegian actress Margarete Robsahm has that stern, icy Scandinavian look and Sylvia Sorrente is by far the most curvaceous of the assembled cast. Several of Steele’s love scenes are a lot more explicit than others from the period and Sorrente’s brief topless moment in the French print considerably raises the temperature. The sapphic liaison between Julia and Elisabeth was quite risqué for the decade for the same reason. It are not mere allusions that Robsahm’s character makes towards Steele’s Elisabeth but overt advances. The explanation for the castle’s curse is something straight out of H.P. Lovecraft or Nathaniel Hawthorn instead of the supposed repertoire of Edgar Allan Poe and Algernon Blackwood. In the following decade gothic horror would remain a staple in continental European cinema and experience an infusion of bloodshed and erotica to make it more appealing for the new decade. Castle Of Blood, as these old gothic chillers tend to go, delivers exactly what it promises.

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Plot: will the old De Blancheville family curse claim another victim?

The Blancheville Monster isn’t a direct Edgar Allan Poe adaptation, instead it weaves together plot elements from Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher, A Tale Of Ragged Mountains, Some Words With A Mummy while thematically borrowing from The Premature Burial. The Blancheville Monster isn’t a gothic horror classic as  infinitely superior genre pieces as the Barbara Steele monochrome chillers Castle Of Blood (1964) or Nightmare Castle (1965). Instead it is something of a glacially paced portentous potboiler that is redeemed by its thick cobwebbed, decayed atmosphere. Doomed to be a footnote in the annals of gothic horror history were it not that the principal players of The Blancheville Monster are Gérard Tichy and Helga Liné in her first major role. If one were to look at the beginning of kitschy gothic horror pulp The Blancheville Monster is a good place to begin, although the dynamic duo of Playgirls and the Vampire (1960) and The Vampire and the Ballerina (1960), both with Walter Brandi as the bloodsucker, truly started it all.

In late 19th century Brittanny, in northern France, comely blonde Emilie De Blancheville (Ombretta Colli, as Joan Hills), evidently the scion of an unspecified aristocracy, returns to her ancestral home a week before her 21st birthday. Coming along are her best friend Alice Taylor (Irán Eory), whom she met while in college in America, and her brother John (Vanni Materassi, as Richard Davis). In the interim while Emilie was away in college her father died in a fire and since then the day-to-day business of the castle has been handled by her brother Rodéric De Blancheville (Gérard Tichy). Rodéric has replaced all of the house staff with new servants. Emilie is almost immediately creeped out by stern and icy-looking housekeeper Miss Eleonore (Helga Liné) and butler Alistair (Paco Morán, as Frank Moran). The family physician, who has loyally treated three generations of De Blancheville, has been replaced by strapping young practitioner Dr. LaRouche (Leo Anchóriz).

During dinner the guests are intrigued by strange noises emitting through the castle. Rodéric assures the visitors that it are merely the guard dogs. Later that night Alice awakes from sleep and strolls through the castle bowels only to stumble upon Miss Eleonore whipping and syringing a wailing, disfigured “monster”. Overcome by the horror she witnessed Alice passes out, only to awaken back in her bed and is told that everything she saw was a mere dream. The incident forces Rodéric to gather his houseguests and to come clean about the strange things happening in the castle. As it turns out their father wasn’t killed in a fire, but he was severely burnt and disfigured – an affliction that turned him into a grotesque maniac in constant need of heavy sedation. The old De Blancheville patriarch escaped into the nearby woods since Alice’s nocturnal interruption and now The Blancheville Monster is said to be prowling the castle surroundings.

On the family tomb a prophecy is carved. According to the carvings the De Blancheville bloodline will end this generation, when its latest female descendant reaches the age of 21. Her father, now reduced to a grotesque madman, believes the prophecy will be fulfilled. A search party is mounted but the extended search of the woods proves futile. That night The Blancheville Monster pays Emilie a bedroom visit leading her to the family tomb while under hypnosis. Both Alistair and Dr. LaRouche saw Emilie leave the castle and decide to follow her to the family crypt, all of which is enough to scare The Blancheville Monster back into hiding. The next day Emilie wakes up in a muddy nightgown, disoriented and with no recollection of the previous night, which quickly results into fainting spells and her eventual spiral into depression. Believed to have expired the family inters Emilie in one of the family crypts. Alice and her brother John have their doubts about Emilie’s passing and decide to conduct their own investigation into the mysteries that hide in the castle’s towers, the blackcaped shadow that stalks the abandoned hallways and how much of the De Blancheville curse is actually true.

Outside of Helga Liné - a German former model and contortionist that debuted in 1941 and played her first role of note here - there aren’t a lot of familiar faces. Ombretta Colli was a fixture in peplum and science fiction. Like so many starlets of the day Colli became a singer after her tenure in cinema had ended. She eventually graduated into politics. In 1999 Colli was elected president of the Centre-Right Forza Italia party in the province of Milano. Irán Eory, who is of Iranian descent, won a beauty pageant in Monaco before picking up acting in continental Europe and Mexico. Upon emigrating to Mexico Eory became a singer and later theater producer. Earlier in the decade Gérard Tichy was in respectable productions as King of Kings (1961), El Cid (1961) and Doctor Zhivago (1965) but his presence here is already indicative of where his career was heading. Leo Anchóriz was a regular in peplum, swashbuckling and spaghetti westerns.

The reason to see The Blancheville Monster is, of course, Helga Liné. Liné would play a similar role in Mario Caiano’s atmospheric chiller Nightmare Castle (1965), a part that solidified her position as one of the new pillars of continental European exploitation. In the seventies Liné made appearances in atmospheric genre pieces as Horror Express (1972) and Amando de Ossorio’s The Loreley's Grasp (1974) as well as collaborating with with Spanish horror icon Paul Naschy on Horror Rises From The Tomb (1973) and The Mummy's Revenge (1975). Likewise she appeared in various productions from Argentinian transplant León Klimovsky with The Dracula Saga (1973) as an absolute highpoint as well the similar The Vampires Night Orgy (1973). Liné was among the star-studded ensemble cast in Terence Young’s peplum sendup The Amazons (1973). Late in her career Liné had roles in mainstream movies from Pedro Almodóvar as Labyrinth of Passion (1982) and Law of Desire (1987) where she played the mother of Antonio Banderas’ character. Even though she was fifty at the time Liné appeared in nudity-heavy exploitation titles as José Ramón Larraz’ Madame Olga’s Pupils (1981), Black Candles (1982), and the Harry Alan Towers and Playboy Channel co-producrion Black Venus (1983). Today Liné is involved with her grand-daughter’s lucrative career in gymnastics.

Suffice to say there are enough scenes of thunderstorms, lightning, shadowy corridors, mysterious figures stalkings the candlelit hallways, frightened maidens in tight-fitting lowcut transparent dresses brandishing candlelabras, eerie family portraits, dream sequences and basement-bargain Vincent Price equivalents ominously playing church organs and a book by Franz Anton Mesmer serving as a plot point. In other words The Blancheville Monster leaves no stone unturned in its slavish adherence to gothic horror convention. Ombretta Colli and Irán Eory both are serviceable enough in their respective parts, but never were big names for a reason. Gérard Tichy is given ample opportunity to do a skid row Vincent Price impression. The locations for The Blancheville Monster include the Monasterio del Cercón in Madrid that was later used in Paul Naschy’s The Werewolf Versus the Vampire Woman (1971) and Amando de Ossorio’s Templar Knight zombie epic The Tombs Of the Blind Dead (1972). The exterior and coach scenes were shot at Castle Coracera in Madrid, Spain. Despite having all that going for it compared to the far better produced Barbara Steele gothics of the period The Blancheville Monster is torturously slow-moving and on the wrong side of cheap.

That doesn’t make The Blancheville Monster any less effective when it fires on all cylinders. Like its Filipino forebear The Blood Drinkers (1964), The Blancheville Monster is both highly atmospheric and campy in equal measure. Ombretta Colli and Irán Eory don’t leave much of an impression and the brunt of the movie is carried by Gérard Tichy, Vanni Materassi and Leo Anchóriz. It’s more than obvious that The Blancheville Monster was bankrolled to capitalize on the success of the Barbara Steele gothics of the period – and in comparison to those it is rather elegiac and slow-moving, even for 1960s standards. What little there is of story takes far too long to book any meaningful progression and when the long-awaited conclusion finally arrives it is steeped in cliché. The Blancheville Monster is nothing if not reliable when it comes to adhering to genre conventions. It is professionally directed and even custodian to a few scattered artsy shots here and there, but the indefensibly bland writing and no-name cast tend to make it rather underwhelming on the whole. You know a movie is in deep trouble when the various romantic entanglements are more interesting than the main plot. The Blancheville Monster is perfectly serviceable for what it intents to do, but it is far from mandatory viewing for fans of European gothic horror and/or Edgar Allan Poe.