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Nightmare Castle (1965)

Amanti d'oltretomba, Gli
Lovers Beyond the Tomb
Lovers from Beyond the Tomb
Night of the Doomed
Orgasmo
The Faceless Monster


Cast:

Barbara Steele is Muriel Arrowsmith/Jenny Arrowsmith
Paul Mueller is Dr. Stephen Arrowsmith
Helga Line is Solange


What the box says:

When a brutal count finds that his wife has been unfaithful, he tortures her and her lover to death and puts them to death, removing their hearts from their bodies in retribution. Time passes, and he remarries a beautiful and unsuspecting young woman. Soon she is experiencing horrendous dreams and apparitions. It becomes apparent that the spirits of the slain lovers have returned to exact their bloody revenge.


Plot:

Dr. Steven Arrowsmith is arguing with his wife about going to a scientific conference. He storms out unaware the handyman, David, is watching Muriel.

She starts playing the piano and then gets ready for him. Let the face sucking ensue. The old creepy maid spies on them.

In the greenhouse, Muriel and David are about to get to the business of fertilizing. Arrowsmith (Dude Looks like a Lady) spies on them and clubs David. Later, Muriel is getting flagellated. Steven will torture them long before letting them die. Muriel vows to haunt him and reveals she changed her will to leave everything to her sister, Jenny. Steve will let them go if Muriel gives him the will.

Later, creepy maid chews out Steven because he can�t get the money. The evil doctor has a plan.

Back in the lab, David and Muriel are getting finer torture treatment though not quite on par with John Tesh level. Dripping acid is used on Muriel. The unfaithful wife and handyman are electrocuted. Experimentation ensues.

Steve brings Jenny to the castle. The creepy old maid is now a hot creepy maid. Steven announces he has married Jenny. Later, Solange, the maid, wants Steven to get a doctor to declare Jenny insane and then gain control of the fortune.

That night, Steven and Jenny get down to nocturnal activities. I guess he�s Back in the Saddle Again�Jenny awakens hour later hearing a noise. The Gaslighting ensues. She dreams that Steven takes her from a coffin to the greenhouse and clubs the handyman in slo-motion. Jenny awakens and has her hands wrapped around Steven�s neck. Distraught, she claims to have seen blood.

Solange and Steven are drugging Jenny. It is almost time to commit her. Steven chews out Solange when he learns Jenny didn�t get her last dose. He surmises that Jenny actually is crazy but not haunted by ghosts. They look for Jenny. A scream leads them to Jenny scared stiff.

She tells them of being trapped in a room, buried alive. Steven wants her better and will even bring Dr. Joyce out to check on her.

The next day, Jenny shows Dr. Derek Joyce around the castle. She claims to have been fine until coming to the castle. Steven checks on Jenny who promptly freaks out again.

Dr. Joyce and Jenny start to decipher her nightmare. In the greenhouse, Jenny finds an earring but not hers.

Steven wants to show Dr. Joyce his lab. Dr. Joyce thinks the earring must have belonged to Muriel. Solange claims Muriel started hiding her jewelry around the castle.

Solange sneaks the earring into Jenny�s jewelry box. Jenny shows her jewelry and seeing the earring makes her run off.

At dinner, Steven takes Solange to the lab. She has a rare blood disorder. Injection fu ensues in the lab.

Jenny hears Muriel talk of blood in the lab.

Dr. Joyce sneaks out to the mausoleum and examines the crypts.

A sleepwalking Jenny heads to the lab. Grabbing a scalpel, she attacks Steven. Dr. Joyce rushes in and takes Jenny back to her room. Solange claims that it wasn�t Jenny but Muriel.

Dr. Joyce tries questioning Jenny who claims to be Muriel and tries putting the movies on him. They see something floating away. The next day, Dr. Joyce wants to take Jenny away from the castle.

Solange and Steven know that Dr. Joyce knows that Muriel�s coffin is empty. Dr. Joyce arrives and talks with Steven about sending Jenny to a clinic.

Later, Dr. Joyce is writing. Steven rigs a bathtub with an electric current. The castle butler, Jonathan, brings some clean towels for Joyce. He spots the bar of soap in the tub and reaches in to pull it out. Electrifying butler ensues.

Later, after attending to Jonathan�s body, Dr. Joyce just assumes he had a heart attack.

Jenny is huddled in her room. She tells Steven she�s leaving with Dr. Joyce for the clinic. Steven browbeats her and accuses Derek of entrancing her. He pleads for her to stay. They�ll leave the castle together.

Derek is convinced Steven�s plan to take her on a long vacation would be good though the clinic would be better. The good doctor will be ready to help Jenny in any way he can even though she has lost faith in him.

Solange is starting to age and is sure that Muriel is after her. She needs Jenny�s blood.

Jenny has another nightmare. Dr. Derek questions her about Muriel�s death. He hides before Steven checks on the seemingly catatonic Jenny.

In the morning, Dr. Joyce leaves the castle back for the clinic.

Solange needs a new refill of blood soon. Steven readies the equipment.

Jenny is packing when Steven sneaks up behind her and knocks her out. Taking her to the lab, Jenny is tied to a bed, and Steven drugs her.

Dr. Derek sneaks back to the castle.

Lab, Steven begins draining Jenny�s blood and pumping it into Solange.

Dr. Derek finds Muriel�s hidden heart. Suddenly, the ghosts of David and Muriel appear. Steven heads into the castle and knocks Derek unconscious.

Ghost Muriel versus Steven. She has learned the pleasure of death and wishes to share it with her murderer.

In the lab, the bloody David cuts off the blood supply to Solange.

Muriel will stay with Steven until her heart is destroyed. Plot point. Steven learns that Muriel�s face is half disfigured by the acid. She ties him to a chair and sets him on fire.

David trashes the lab. Solange has quickly aged to only a skeleton.

BBQ STEVEN ARROWSMITH ensues. I guess they didn�t want to miss a thing�

Dr. Derek awakens.

David slowly heads to Jenny when Derek rushes in and pushes him through a wall. Derek carries Jenny out of the lab into the castle.

Derek and Jenny are trapped by Muriel and David. Derek grabs Muriel�s heart he found earlier and throws it into the nearby fireplace. Suddenly, the ghosts disappear.

Derek and Jenny run out of the castle.


What I say:

Sorry, for all the lousy Aerosmith jokes...Couldn't help myself..

Not had much experience with these 60s Euro-horror movies. However, they may not have much logic but revel in atmosphere. If I believed from these movies, Europe has at least 3.4 castles per square mile. Excuse me, per square kilometer. Excuse me, per square kilometre. There is a simple reason why horror movies love castles. They can be so run down and creepy looking. Many castles seem to promote the ghost haunting the grounds for tourism dollars or pounds, lira, or francs.

Roger Corman is known in some circles for his schlocky b-movies of the 1950s. In other circles, the man is considered an artiste for the style of his Edgar Allen Poe movies with Vincent Price. Several references reveal someone elsse directed this movie. However, the word of the DVD that proclaims Nightmare Castle as a Corman movie like the other movie on the disc which will be reviewed eventually. Corman didn't direct Nightmare Castle. Cheap DVDs just don't have very good fact checking.

The dubbing is on par with that of a Mexican wrestling movie or a Japanese monster movie. A few kaiju movies have ben badly dubbed. However, I can't recall seeing any Euro Horro movie so badly dubbed. The lip flaps are so far out of timing with the dialog Stevie Wonder could see it.

A mad scientist should be mad like Marie Frankenstein in Jesse James Meets Frenkenstein's Daughter or Simon Trent in Curse of the Swamp Monster. A true mad scientist tampers in domains best left alone. De-aging your girlfriend doesn't seem like a mad enough abuse of science. Give her some plastic surgery and Bo-Tox and let her look like plastic scary-faced woman in Millennium or the creepy neighbor lady in There's Something About Mary.

A crazed scientist kills his wives. Using their blood to rejuvenate the maid who is crazy enough on her own. That plot is awfully close to the Corpse Vanishes. Granted, Bela Lugosi was using women to keep his wife young. The part how Dr. Arrowsmith is somehow rejuvenating the creepy maid into a hot maid doesn't make much sense. Couldn't he have found a woman who wasn't going to whine about needing to be "younger" ever 5 minutes? Wait that's physically impossible, I kid. Really bad joke on my part which is the only kind of joke I know. Besides, if the process needed to be done ever few days, shouldn't that be considered a good reason to go back to the drawing board and try to improve the formula. Though, what exactly makes creepy maid so good to study how to physically retard aging?

Sure, I could see understand him being angry about his wife cheating on him. Crazy scientists must also be hypocritical. Arrowsmith was cheating on his wife...So he loses the moral high ground and his justification for chaining and bricking her into a wall. I'm bound to get some strange email questioning the morality in the movie.

Barbara Steele played the roles of both sisters. Muriel had dark hair while Jenny had blonde hair. I didn't notice in the movie it was the same actress. George Zucco played different roles in Dead Men Walk. In that movie, both roles played at same scene. This movie only has one scene and Muriel and JEnny are on opposite sides of the room so no split film scenes.

I can't quite see why the mad scientist guy is so obsessed with Solanage, the maid. When she's young, she doesn't sore the eyes but is so whiny whenever she talks. Any doctor that could discover a way to retard aging would have anything he wanted the way society becomes more and more youth-oriented every day. If human blood could be purified to turn back the clock 20 years, every rich 40-something chick would be trying to buy American Red Cross bloodmobiles in proverbial "New York Minute" according to Don Henley.

Jenny is supposed to be haunted by her sister and was thought to not be quite right in the head for her entire life. It is understandable how Steven could manipulate her so easily with the entire bit about how he tricks her into thinking that Dr. Joyce is only after her for her body and money not to actually cure her. The next scene with Jenny and Joyce has her practically repeating verbatim what Steven told her in the previous scene.



3 NINJAS

Quotable Dialogue

"I'm going to get rid of your vulgar ways."
"The secrets of the castle, I have never met any."
"Take this mild drug and you'll have a nice sleep without any nightmares.
"I realize what happened to Jonathan was a painful shock to you."


Morals of the Story

Fish tanks are good places to store human hearts.
Mattress frames that are rigged to run an electric current for torture are easy to make.
Hats cause headaches.
Plants grow bigger when given human corpses for fertilizer.
Electrocutions cause you to fall over slack.
Psychiatrists climb into bed with their patients to question them for therapy.




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