A crazy scientist catches his wife cheating and tortures both her and her lover to death, after he marries her sister because she inherits the castle and the ghosts come back for revenge.
The movie is full of horror clichés. Crazy scientists, castles, ghosts, screaming, but in the atmosphere of a 60's Gothic horror movie those clichés seem to be kind of charming. If this movie was done in our time with the same story and dialogues that made me giggle, but using modern special effects I would not be as generous with my rating.
The atmosphere of the movie is definitely its best part. It is very dark and beautiful. The castle and the fact that it is black/white make it look very chilling and one really feels the haunted atmosphere that is the positive part of this movie.
Another great thing that saves this movie from a 2/10 rating is the fact that the "Queen of Scream" Barbara Steele is actually playing a dual role. And she is great at it. We can see the strong difference between Muriel and Jenny. The only problem is that the part of Muriel is much better than Jenny. Muriel is the goth beauty with a dark and sexy side while Jenny is sort of a wall flower, and yet we only see Muriel in a few scenes at the beginning and the end. Those scenes are actually very powerful. It is of course not very scary for our time, but seeing Muriel play the organ in the castle at the beginning of the movie made me think that I will love it. Unfortunately the middle of the movie are badly written dialogues that make the movie go very slow.
The rest of the cast does a good job with this poor script as well. Paul Muller is great in the role of a crazy scientist and I was surprised to see that this is the only part Laurence Clift has played.
This movie is not something that I would consider a classic, but it is beautiful and something one could enjoy on a thunder night in in a dark room while eating candy. For a good old horror movie there definitely are better choices.
The movie is full of horror clichés. Crazy scientists, castles, ghosts, screaming, but in the atmosphere of a 60's Gothic horror movie those clichés seem to be kind of charming. If this movie was done in our time with the same story and dialogues that made me giggle, but using modern special effects I would not be as generous with my rating.
The atmosphere of the movie is definitely its best part. It is very dark and beautiful. The castle and the fact that it is black/white make it look very chilling and one really feels the haunted atmosphere that is the positive part of this movie.
Another great thing that saves this movie from a 2/10 rating is the fact that the "Queen of Scream" Barbara Steele is actually playing a dual role. And she is great at it. We can see the strong difference between Muriel and Jenny. The only problem is that the part of Muriel is much better than Jenny. Muriel is the goth beauty with a dark and sexy side while Jenny is sort of a wall flower, and yet we only see Muriel in a few scenes at the beginning and the end. Those scenes are actually very powerful. It is of course not very scary for our time, but seeing Muriel play the organ in the castle at the beginning of the movie made me think that I will love it. Unfortunately the middle of the movie are badly written dialogues that make the movie go very slow.
The rest of the cast does a good job with this poor script as well. Paul Muller is great in the role of a crazy scientist and I was surprised to see that this is the only part Laurence Clift has played.
This movie is not something that I would consider a classic, but it is beautiful and something one could enjoy on a thunder night in in a dark room while eating candy. For a good old horror movie there definitely are better choices.