Format: Streaming video from Tubi TV on Fire!
Old Gothic horror movies are very much their own thing. There’s a sense that they desperately want to be scary and while they often come with a weird sense of torture behind the scenes with a soupçon of Poe-style necrophilia, but they’re not really scary in the modern sense. There may not be a more gothic-y Gothic horror film than Nightmare Castle (Amanti d’Oltretomba, if you prefer, sometimes called The Faceless Monster, and for some reason called The Night of the Doomed on Tubi), in large part because of the presence of the great Barbara Steele, the queen of the 1960s Euro-trash castle-based horror film.
We’re going to dive head-first into the illicit sex angle with this one. Scientist Stephen Arrowsmith (Paul Muller) has a loveless marriage with his wife Muriel (Barbara Steele). He plans a trip away from their estate, but actually doubles back to catch Muriel making the beast with two backs in the greenhouse with the gardener David (Rik Battaglia). Not willing to stand for such treatment, Arrowsmith tortures both of them and eventually kills them, only to discover that he has not been named the heir to Muriel’s fortune. The actual heir is Muriel’s step-sister Jenny (also Barbara Steele). Needing a new plan, Stephen takes the opportunity to remove the hearts of Muriel and David (for, honestly, plot reasons). He also uses their blood to create a serum to rejuvenate his servant Solange (Helga Liné).
