At the start of this otherwise dreary Italian gothic, two teenagers sneak into a familial castle and encounter its owner, the "nasty old witch" Countess Elizabeth. The Countess' moronic servant Hugo captures the girls, tortures, and kills them.
This impressively strong opening is tacked onto a seemingly unrelated, absurd and slow-moving story about an heiress who visits the castle and is haunted by a ghost. Her entourage -- including a comic-relief doctor, an Indian, and a bumbling journalist -- talk a lot about who-killed-who and a treasure buried on the estate.
I wanted to see more scenes of Hugo, the token thing-in-the-cellar who has one eyeball down around his cheekbone, drools, and cackles a lot. The mad Countess dresses up in knight's armor and orders Hugo around, cracking a whip. There's also a laughing skeleton and a bizarre enema joke.
In U. S. theaters, this movie occupied the lower half of a double bill with the campy German-made vampire flick, CAVE OF THE LIVING DEAD. TOMB OF TORTURE was Boccacci's only film.
This impressively strong opening is tacked onto a seemingly unrelated, absurd and slow-moving story about an heiress who visits the castle and is haunted by a ghost. Her entourage -- including a comic-relief doctor, an Indian, and a bumbling journalist -- talk a lot about who-killed-who and a treasure buried on the estate.
I wanted to see more scenes of Hugo, the token thing-in-the-cellar who has one eyeball down around his cheekbone, drools, and cackles a lot. The mad Countess dresses up in knight's armor and orders Hugo around, cracking a whip. There's also a laughing skeleton and a bizarre enema joke.
In U. S. theaters, this movie occupied the lower half of a double bill with the campy German-made vampire flick, CAVE OF THE LIVING DEAD. TOMB OF TORTURE was Boccacci's only film.