My take: Have you seen a Barbara Steele movie before? If so, you’ll feel like your’ve seen this one before.
Rating: 2.5 out of 4 stars
At this point in my endeavor to watch all the movies in Studies in Terror, I am starting to get a sense of what a Barbara Steele movie entails. It is usually a period piece. She plays a strong, sexy female who has a propensity for walking into terrifying or macabre situations. There are probably some ghosts or a mad doctor.
Poster for Nightmare Castle with Barbara Steele.
Such is the plot of this film. Here, Barbara Steele plays Muriel, who is married to a mad doctor. He murders her after catching her in flagrante with her gardener/lover.
But she knew what was coming. She changed her will to leave her fortune and castle to her distant relative, Jenny, who happens to look exactly like Muriel. The doctor marries Jenny with the intent of also killing her, but Jenny is not as stupid as she seems and she has the ghost of Muriel on her side.
If you like Barbara Steele movies, then you will enjoy this one too. But it is pretty typical of the gothic Italian horror movies of the 1960s. For this reason, I would only recommend it to fans of that era and type of film.
This is the first film in a while that was able to find on YouTube. Here’s the trailer, replete with castle, mad doctor, and the illustrious Barbara Steele:
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