Credited cast: | |||
Mickey Hargitay | ... | Jack Nelson | |
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Rita Calderoni | ... | Isabella / Laureen |
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Raul Lovecchio | ... | Occultist (as Raoul) |
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Christa Barrymore | ... | Christa (as Krista Barrymore) |
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Consolata Moschera | ... | (as Moschera Consolata) |
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William Darni | ... | Richard Brenton |
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Max Dorian | ... | Doctor |
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Marcello Bonini Olas | ... | Gerg (as Bonini Marcello) |
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Cristina Perrier | ... | Glenda |
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Stefania Fassio | ... | Steffy |
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Gabriele Bentivoglio | ... | Priest |
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Vittorio Fanfoni | ... | (as Fanfoni Vittorio) |
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Anna Ardizzone | ||
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Marisa Indice | ||
Rest of cast listed alphabetically: | |||
Tano Cimarosa | ... | (scenes deleted) |
In the late-1300s, the beautiful and innocent Isabella is tortured and burned at the stake for supposed witchcraft, in front of her lover who swears revenge. Several hundred years later, the well-off Jack Nelson and his niece, Laureen, celebrate the latter's engagement at their newly-acquired and fully renovated castle, unbeknownst to them that in the château's dank cellar, evil occultists participate in ancient black magic rites, sacrificing youthful virgins. What are their intentions? Is Laureen next in line? Written by Nick Riganas
A group of people are having a party in a castle one of them (Mickey Hargitay) has just bought. The castle is haunted by the malignant presence of a witch who was burned 500 years earlier and who, not surprisingly, looks just like one of the guests (Rita Calderoni). Yet another rip-off of Mario Bava's "Black Sunday"?--of course, but this movie is much, much more than that. All the male guests are either reincarnations of the earlier historical figures or vampires who have been living for centuries waiting for the opportunity to reincarnate the witch, Isabel. The women meanwhile are all virgins because, not only are virgins necessary for the ceremony, but as one character eloquently puts it, "Vampires need blood uncontaminated by human semen." (This leads one dumb girl in a particularly hilarious scene to give up her virginity to her nymphomaniac friend and a fat, ugly guy with a severe facial twitch).
Obviously, the main appeal of this movie is sex and nudity, but anyone watching it SOLELY for that purpose might be a little frustrated as this a Renato Polselli film, a man whose directorial style can best be described as completely deranged. While there are acres of flesh on display here, Polselli often seems more interested in the bizarro camera angles, the staccato editing sequences, and the pulse-pounding score than he is in lingering on the action like some of his hack contemporaries (or more modern-day "erotic" filmmakers) would have done. All the actors and actresses from Polselli's more famous film "Delerio Caldo" show up again here, and while the latter are even more naked than they were in "Delerio Caldo", some of them turn out to be pretty untalented as thespians(and Polselli doesn't have the good sense to kill them off quickly like he did in the other film). Meanwhile, the stronger actors like Hargitay, Calderoni, and Krysta Barrymore are pretty much wasted in the incomprehensible chaos the film quickly descends into.
Regardless of whether you like this film or not, however, I GUARANTEE you'll never see anything else like it.