ShangLuda Admirable film.

Stoutor It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

Abbigail Bush what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

Deanna There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

jadavix "Il castello dalle porte di fuoco", also known as "Scream of the Demon Lover", is a tedious horror flick with a plot that would have better suited a half-hour length blown up to an endless hour-and-a-half.The story is about an allegedly young and beautiful woman who goes to stay with a mad scientist in Victorian times. While there she is repeatedly menaced by a flaky hand while trying to sleep and apparently dreams or hallucinates herself stretched out topless on a rack.We end up getting the idea that this is a Jekyll-and-Hyde type story. Or is it? Who cares? I didn't. You probably won't either.For fans of sleazy Euro-horror, the nudity in the film is fairly negligible, either glimpsed from a distance or shot with something in the way so you don't get a good look. There is also really no violence.

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.

melvelvit-1 This is the second José Luis Merino film I've seen this week and comparing the two, SCREAM OF THE DEMON LOVER is much more sexual in nature than TERROR OF THE LIVING DEAD due, no doubt, to the Italians being involved. DEMON LOVER is also set in the nineteenth century and stars Erna Schürer as a kittenish chemist who's come to Baron Dalmar's medieval estate to assist him in trying to bring his dead brother back to life. The villagers warn her that the Baron is killing women and ripping them to shreds after consensual sex but she stays on anyway, even after being drugged nightly and put on a rack in the dungeon (?!).Although it's nowhere near as atmospheric or entertaining, the movie owes something of a debt to Mario Bava's THE WHIP AND THE BODY and it's fascination with sadomasochistic mise-en-scène. The Baron and his hounds cut a dashing figure atop the grand staircase and sexy Schürer shows her globes a lot but she's outshone by the exquisite Agostina Belli, who also bares her boobs in the secondary role of a castle servant.Erna Schürer was born Emma Costantino in Naples, Italy and modeled for "Vogue" and "Harper's Bazaar"before appearing in the popular "fumetti" foto-comic "Satanik" in the mid-60s. Placed under contract by movie producer Alberto Grimaldi, Erna spent most of the '70s cranking out "classics" like EROTIC CONFESSIONS FROM A WOMEN'S PRISON, YOUR HANDS ON MY BODY, STRIP NUDE FOR YOUR KILLER, MY PLEASURE IS YOUR PLEASURE, and DEPORTED WOMEN OF THE SS SPECIAL SECTION before more-or-less disappearing from the cinema scene. There's no birth or death dates given for Erna on IMDb and there's precious little about her on the worldwide web, either, for that matter. Today, Schürer's sure as sh!t a GILF somewhere (unless she's split the scene, if you know what I mean).

Brandt Sponseller Blood Castle (aka Scream of the Demon Lover, Altar of Blood, Ivanna--the best, but least exploitation cinema-sounding title, and so on) is a very traditional Gothic Romance film. That means that it has big, creepy castles, a headstrong young woman, a mysterious older man, hints of horror and the supernatural, and romance elements in the contemporary sense of that genre term. It also means that it is very deliberately paced, and that the film will work best for horror mavens who are big fans of understatement. If you love films like Robert Wise's The Haunting (1963), but you also have a taste for late 1960s/early 1970s Spanish and Italian horror, you may love Blood Castle, as well.Baron Janos Dalmar (Carlos Quiney) lives in a large castle on the outskirts of a traditional, unspecified European village. The locals fear him because legend has it that whenever he beds a woman, she soon after ends up dead--the consensus is that he sets his ferocious dogs on them. This is quite a problem because the Baron has a very healthy appetite for women. At the beginning of the film, yet another woman has turned up dead and mutilated.Meanwhile, Dr. Ivanna Rakowsky (Erna Schürer) has appeared in the center of the village, asking to be taken to Baron Dalmar's castle. She's an out-of-towner who has been hired by the Baron for her expertise in chemistry. Of course, no one wants to go near the castle. Finally, Ivanna finds a shady individual (who becomes even shadier) to take her. Once there, an odd woman who lives in the castle, Olga (Cristiana Galloni), rejects Ivanna and says that she shouldn't be there since she's a woman. Baron Dalmar vacillates over whether she should stay. She ends up staying, but somewhat reluctantly. The Baron has hired her to try to reverse the effects of severe burns, which the Baron's brother, Igor, is suffering from.Unfortunately, the Baron's brother appears to be just a lump of decomposing flesh in a vat of bizarre, blackish liquid. And furthermore, Ivanna is having bizarre, hallucinatory dreams. Just what is going on at the castle? Is the Baron responsible for the crimes? Is he insane? I wanted to like Blood Castle more than I did. As I mentioned, the film is very deliberate in its pacing, and most of it is very understated. I can go either way on material like that. I don't care for The Haunting (yes, I'm in a very small minority there), but I'm a big fan of 1960s and 1970s European horror. One of my favorite directors is Mario Bava. I also love Dario Argento's work from that period. But occasionally, Blood Castle moved a bit too slow for me at times. There are large chunks that amount to scenes of not very exciting talking alternated with scenes of Ivanna slowly walking the corridors of the castle.But the atmosphere of the film is decent. Director José Luis Merino managed more than passable sets and locations, and they're shot fairly well by Emanuele Di Cola. However, Blood Castle feels relatively low budget, and this is a Roger Corman-produced film, after all (which usually means a low-budget, though often surprisingly high quality "quickie"). So while there is a hint of the lushness of Bava's colors and complex set decoration, everything is much more minimalist. Of course, it doesn't help that the Retromedia print I watched looks like a 30-year old photograph that's been left out in the sun too long. It appears "washed out", with compromised contrast.Still, Merino and Di Cola occasionally set up fantastic visuals. For example, a scene of Ivanna walking in a darkened hallway that's shot from an exaggerated angle, and where an important plot element is revealed through shadows on a wall only. There are also a couple Ingmar Bergmanesque shots, where actors are exquisitely blocked to imply complex relationships, besides just being visually attractive and pulling your eye deep into the frame.The performances are fairly good, and the women--especially Schürer--are very attractive. Merino exploits this fact by incorporating a decent amount of nudity. Schürer went on to do a number of films that were as much soft corn porn as they were other genres, with English titles such as Sex Life in a Woman's Prison (1974), Naked and Lustful (1974), Strip Nude for Your Killer (1975) and Erotic Exploits of a Sexy Seducer (1977). Blood Castle is much tamer, but in addition to the nudity, there are still mild scenes suggesting rape and bondage, and of course the scenes mixing sex and death.The primary attraction here, though, is probably the story, which is much a slow-burning romance as anything else. The horror elements, the mystery elements, and a somewhat unexpected twist near the end are bonuses, but in the end, Blood Castle is a love story, about a couple overcoming various difficulties and antagonisms (often with physical threats or harms) to be together.