Ketrivie It isn't all that great, actually. Really cheesy and very predicable of how certain scenes are gonna turn play out. However, I guess that's the charm of it all, because I would consider this one of my guilty pleasures.

StyleSk8r At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

Teddie Blake The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Walter Sloane Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.

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.

Leofwine_draca A fun little Gothic horror movie in the tradition of Antonio Margheriti and Riccardo Freda which may be a little slow-moving for some. This Spanish/Italian co-production (filmed in Spain) borrows heavily from the atmosphere of the exceptional early '60s Italian Gothic era, with candlelit corridors, dank and cobwebbed rooms, and a castle which holds a terrible secret. For Euro-horror fans there is much to enjoy; from the fetching leading lady who regularly disrobes for the camera, to the brooding atmosphere of hidden tension and underlying danger.Things begin in a cod-European village (familiar to fans of Naschy work from the period) as the town drunk discovers the mutilated corpse of a young woman, whose throat has been gashed with claws or fangs. At the funeral of the girl, rather hilariously, a sound of women crying has been looped and thus plays over and over again, giving a rather odd effect as you listen to the same sound repeatedly - it's certainly weird! The police are rather ineffectual, aside from the chief detective (who looks like Nicholas Farrell and is a pretty good actor) who suspects that something dodgy is going on at the local castle.Here we are introduced to the lead, a pretty young blond scientist who has applied for a job at the castle. She's rather a brash young lady who still manages to end up as a screaming victim, due to movie convention (Spanish movies are notoriously dependent on previous movies and influences rather than looking forward and creating their own, which is why the country's horror product is usually passed over in textbooks). The scientist is taken to the castle by a local driver, who then attempts to rape her before driving off when the Baron arrives. This leads to a hilarious scene where the police convict the man of attempted rape WITHOUT actually speaking to the victim or hearing the testimony of any witnesses! How they came to their conclusion is beyond me - unless the castle is equipped with CCTV which I somehow find unlikely.The Baron - a bearded, 40-ish bloke who is introduced atmospherically with a pair of slavering dogs in a storm (rather like Barbara Steele in Bava's BLACK Sunday, come to think of it) is a short-tempered chap. He takes on the blonde lady and the pair slowly - think very slowly - fall in love. In the meantime the Baron's research is into giving life to dead flesh. You see his brother - Igor - was burnt previously in a fire and his charred corpse is kept in a water tank in the hope that he will be restored to life. A load of nonsense, sure, but it makes for a good and grisly visual plot element.Meanwhile, the blonde has repeated nightmares of being chained up (naked of course) and groped by a figure which is hideously mutilated - or burnt. At the same time a series of young girls are being murdered in the village, all by the same method. As one policeman says, "I saw lots of murders in the city but never one that made me vomit"! Eventually it transpires that the Baron's brother was never really killed in the fire, only hideously burnt, so he has to be kept locked up in a disused room (just like in THE OBLONG BOX). He harbours a jealous grudge against his brother which leads him to murder his brother's succession of lovers.All rather average stuff, you may think, and you'd be right. There aren't many surprises or clever plot twists in this film, although it does mislead you at first into thinking the monster and the Baron are one and the same before going off on a tangent. In the end it turns into a predictable series of murderers punctuated by conversation. There are a couple of good scenes (like when the Baron is shot by an angry villager during his marriage!) and scares, such as the arm reaching up from the side of the bed to menace the blonde woman, but this is predictable stuff. The film isn't very gory, instead concentrating on displaying flesh rather than blood; just about every female member of the cast is required to go topless at some point.It does without saying that the acting tends to be wooden, although the leading actor and actress are pretty good in their respective roles. The dubbing is quite funny, with a range of amusing regional British accents. There's a repeated theme on the music track which is quite effective too. Merino's direction is nothing to write home about, pretty static as it happens, and occasionally he seems to have some trouble with getting his actors in focus! However, the reason I enjoyed watching this film was the atmosphere. The Gothic village and castle sets are brilliant and expensive-looking, the costumes authentic too. The film is really brimming with atmosphere and suspense which make even the clichéd bits - a lightning storm, the action ending - exciting. To conclude, this is nothing that an experienced horror fan won't have seen before, but it's a more than adequate Spanish attempt at a Gothic horror which does the job well, and will be enjoyed by Euro-horror fans.

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.