Castle of Blood (1964)

I need to preface my review of Castle of Blood (La Danza macabra) with a disclaimer. I ended up watching this film in a somewhat irritated mood due to the particular DVD production I was watching. Most descriptions of the film describe it as an Italian film by the Italian director, Antonio Margheriti. Thus I was slightly surprised when I started watching it and discovered it to be an inexplicable mixture of English and French. And I mean inexplicable - a character would be speaking in English and suddenly switch to French for a few sentences and then go back to English. The English was an obvious dubbing, as the words didn’t come close to matching the movement of the lips, but it didn’t even seem like the French was matching up entirely either. I’ve since done some research, and this is my best guess into the matter. Castle of Blood apparently was an Italian-French co-production. I don’t know what exactly that means, but I’m guessing maybe they did it originally in Italian and then, perhaps, dubbed a version into French. I’m not sure. At any rate, the DVD that Netflix sent me apparently was the American version dubbed into English. Then, because the American censors removed several scenes, the scenes originally deleted have been reinserted using the original French track. The result is a very confusing and disorienting production that you can’t fix no matter how many times you attempt to return to the DVD’s language menu. Thus my irritation. I say all this because I know some people really like Margheriti’s work and Castle of Blood in particular, but I only had a so-so opinion of the film – so I think there’s a chance that my mood affected my overall take on the film. 

It seems somewhat random, but Edgar Allen Poe is one of the characters in Castle of Blood. The film opens with him having a discussion with a young journalist named Alan Foster, who doubts that Poe’s stories have any basis in truth. A third gentleman present then challenges Alan to stay in his haunted castle that very night, which happens to be All Souls Eve, a night when the dead are purported to relive their deaths. Alan takes up this challenge, but will he survive the night?

Parts of this film were really good. In particular, I really enjoyed it when Alan first arrives at the castle. The camera work obscures the surroundings so that, like Alan, you can only see what’s in the candlelight’s immediate vicinity. Things certainly don’t seem to be quite right in this initial investigation, and Margheriti really does a good job of building the tension. I also thought the ending, which I won’t give away, was pretty good. It was the intervening middle part that I didn’t enjoy quite as much. The best way I could think to describe it was as a Halloween version of A Christmas Carol, as Alan must witness reenactments of past murders but is unable to do anything to actively change the events. These events are important to the story, but they are slow to develop and they seem to distract the viewer from the tension of Alan’s present predicament.

Castle of Blood certainly wasn’t a bad film, and in fact, it’s better than many of the horror movies coming out today. It’s also interesting from a historical perspective to see some of the scenes that were deemed inappropriate for American audiences. In particular, there is a brief scene of lesbian intrigue that is somewhat unexpected in the film’s Gothic setting. And yet, I certainly wouldn’t say this is a must-see film. If you haven’t seen it and you’re wanting to check out something new, then it’s probably worth a viewing. . . particularly if you enjoy a multi-lingual aspect to your scary movie experience.