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Admirers of moody European-made Gothic horror movies from the 60's rejoice! "The Long Hair of Death" has it all: sinister castles with numerous secret passageways and hidden vaults, malignant landlords and obedient servants, poor villages cursed with the black plague, the heavenly beautiful Barbara Steele, witches burning at the stake (whether innocent or not is irrelevant) and vowing revenge from beyond the tomb, uncanny thunderstorms and much more. And yet, it feels like a very atypical Gothic effort in comparison with the greatest contemporary classics of the genre like "Black Sunday", "The Red Masque of Death" or "The Virgin of Nuremberg" to just randomly name a couple. The setting and atmospheric are exactly right, but even though all the essential aforementioned ingredients are present, the rudimentary plot is unusual. In between all the witch's curses and acts of vengeance, "The Long Hair of Death" basically revolves on the bizarre triangular relationship between an obnoxious lord, his reluctant wife and her beautiful risen-from-the-grave sister. Of course, he – Kurt Humboldt - doesn't know his two muses are related, nor that one of them is actually a ghost and he definitely isn't aware of the fact they both despise and intend to kill him because Kurt (and his father) mercilessly burned their innocent mother like a filthy witch. Now it sounds as if I'm just carelessly revealing all plot twists for you here, and that's actually correct, but director Antonio Margheriti and veteran writer Ernesto Gastaldi don't even try to keep the denouement a mystery. We literally witness Helen Karnstein resurrect from the dead (in a gloriously macabre scene where flesh grows back onto the skull) and Elizabeth Karnestein openly declares her hatred against her husband, so it's only Kurt who doesn't know the outcome of the film. Oh well, the story usually isn't the main trump of this type of movies anyway. "The Long Hair of Death" is all about morbid atmosphere, nightmarish imagery and uncanny decors, stylish black and white cinematography and - of course – showcasing Barbara Steele's wondrous and penetrating dark eyes as much as humanly possible. Multiple sequences are downright astounding to watch, for example the witch burning near the beginning and the previously mentioned resurrection scene a bit later, and the suspense is even more emphasized through composer Rustichelli's creepy score and Riccardo Pallottini's tight cinematography. Antonio Margheriti's direction is magnificent. He never made any bad films and in my humble opinion he was Italy's most undeservedly underrated director. I could fill up another couple of pages talking about how mesmerizing Barbara Steele's looks are and how easily she owns every female Gothic character, but I'm guessing that part is already made clear. I have to congratulate the person who invented the title, as it was a brilliant idea naming film after the leading lady's beautiful long hair. I'll just add that, if you watch very carefully and don't blink your eyes, you'll catch a glimpse – like less than 1/3 of a second - of one of Steele's exposed breasts. Interesting, huh?
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