Il castello dalle porte di fuoco / Blood Castle / Ivanna / Scream of the Demon Lover

This turn of the decade Italian-Spanish co-production from Jose Luis Merino is very much the product of its time, having one foot in the 1960s past and the other in the 1970s future. As a 1960s film, it is rich in Gothic atmospherics. As a 1970s film it is that bit more explicit in terms of nudity, violence and perversity.

Set around the turn of the 20th century, the plot sees biochemist Dr Ivanna Rakovski (fotoromanzi fixture Erna Schurer) hired to assist Baron Janos Dalmar in his researches. The baron has a bad reputation amongst the locals, being suspected of the murder of several young women and of his older brother, Ygor.


Schurer voices off

But it is hard for Ivanna to know how much credence to put in these peasant stories, not least because the man who agrees to take her to the Dalmar castle attempts to rape her en route.

Whatever the case, Baron Janos is initially reluctant to employ Ivanna, having apparently not realised that she was female, beautiful and eligible when he contracted her via an agency. She is equally reluctant to leave, however, and soon wins him over with a display of professionalism, although predictably their relationship equally quickly begins to extend beyond work.


The Baron's first appearance, via Dracula and Black Sunday.

It emerges the Baron is continuing his late brother's research into tissue regeneration; having died when his laboratory blew up Ygor is also the experimental subject, with his charred remains being preserved in a vat of chemicals.

The Baron tries to blame these chemicals for inducing the extraordinarily vivid hallucinations or nightmares Ivanna soon experience, which see her being taken to the castle dungeon and tormented by an unseen figure...

Blood Castle's greatest assets, besides lead Erna Schurer's breasts and her willingness to display them at every opportunity which presents itself, are its visuals. Take out the scenes of Schurer wandering around the passages and chambers of the castle and the film would probably be half the length. But they are so beautiful to look at that it almost doesn't matter.

This is all the more so since the film is, like many of its kind, decidedly less satisfactory when it actually comes to telling a story. Besides the usual infelicities of translation and dubbing (some of the supposedly Slavic characters speak with Cockney accents in the English version) we get an awkward kitchen sink of supernatural, mad science and mad man motifs that recall superior predecessors and intertexts featuring only one or the other: The Virgin of Nuremberg, via the torture chamber and a (not so) mysterious disfigured figure; The Whip and the Body, via the ambiguous S&M scenarios and the Byronic baron; and The Horrible Secret of Dr Hichcock, via a Hitchcockian glass of drugged milk.

It's this aspect which also demonstrates how Blood Castle is a perfect illustration of the division between Anglo-American and European approaches to fantasy-horror, as proposed by Tohill and Tombs in Immoral Tales, that between the narrative logic of the former and the cinematic logic of the latter.

Le Tue mani sul mio corpo

A bourgeois family gathers at their home by the sea for the holidays. There is Andrea (Lino Capolicchio), the neurotic student haunted by memories of his dead mother; his father, a publisher (Jose Quaglio); his new trophy and / or gold-digging wife, Mirelle (Erna Schurer), who is far closer to Andrea's age than her husband's; Mirelle's mother and, before long, her friend, Carole (Colette Descombes) and her partner Jean.


Andrea on his motorcycle, fantasising about taking a death trip




Male and female voyeurs

It soon emerges that Andrea is obsessed with and secretly spies upon Carole, whilst Mirelle – who knows of Andrea's obsession – alternatively flirts with and mocks the already confused young man.




Some of the images produced by Andrea

Later, following a party, Andrea introduces a black woman, Nivel, indicating that she is his fiancee in a bid to shock his father and stepmother: “Nivel will be a splendid wife. I want many, many children. Lots of little cannibals that eat you all up”; subsequently Nivel performs an interpretive dance in which she dresses as both a KKK man and his victim.




Playing with identity

The intrigues and games continue, gradually becoming more serious until, eventually – literally the last scene of the film – there is a murder.

Technically accomplished and well constructed, Le Tue mani sul mio corpo – i.e. your hands on my body, although with the 'you' and 'me' references remaining free floating and shifting – is a challenging film that demands more of the viewer's active involvement than is often the case, with director and co-writer Brunello Rondi preferring to make his points elliptically rather than obviously.

At the start there's a considerable degree of uncertainty over the characters' relationships to one another belied by the neat who's who summary above such that, for example, when we first see Mirelle, we're possibly inclined to think that the man she's with is her boyfriend and / or that she's Andrea's sister.

It's a strategy that works well to foreground Andrea's sexual and other confusions and makes his state more intersubjectively shared by the audience, whilst also providing a more perverse cast to the family as a whole.




The fragmentation of space and identity

Much the same can be said of the general lack of attention to time, place and state within the film, cumulatively giving a somewhat dreamlike quality to the proceedings – what is objectively real and what is in Andrea's mind's eye – and again conveying his lack of purpose and direction.

Individual scenes displaying a carefully thought and worked through mise en scène in which the placement of the characters within the frame – alas often compromised by the pan and scan presentation on the copy I watched – and the decoupage tell us as much about what is going on as the well-crafted dialogue and situations.


Pieces of the puzzle – woman as enigma and piece of meat

Thus, for example, Andrea tries to show his sophistication to the slightly older Carole by making her a cocktail, but then finds he cannot remember the recipe and, pouring her a whisky instead, fills her glass more as if it were wine, with extreme close-ups of Carole apparently returning his gaze suggesting a connection, whether real or imagined, between them.

If there's thus a definite method to the film, the question the giallo enthusiast may find himself asking is whether it is really for him, emerging as it does more as a bourgeois melodrama / psychodrama than as a thriller in the conventional sense. While it's certainly true that the likes of Lenzi's psico sexy films of the period – Colette Descombes having actually appeared in Orgasmo the previous year – also have considerable dramatic elements and a similar tendency to focus on outwardly respectable bourgeois types, they counterbalance this with conventional conspiracies motivated by passion or financial gain and a willingness to present obvious set pieces alongside the more mundane narrative. (In this regard Le Tue mani sul mio corpo is perhaps more reminiscent of Death Laid an Egg for the way in which it too fuses narrative and set-piece, albeit in a more restrained, 'tasteful' and bourgeois way than Questi and Arcalli's masterpiece of Marxist satire.)

This said, the persistent emphasis on traditional giallo scenarios of past trauma erupting into the present, of the pleasures and dangers inherent in voyeurism voyeurism, and the persistent foregrounding of blocks of yellow within the mise en scène – if there's a curtain, a towel, a telephone or piece of swimwear it is almost guaranteed to be yellow – clearly indicate that the film is sullo stesso filone, albeit in its own north by northwest manner.

Capolicchio makes us empathise and sympathise with his character even as we necessarily retain a greater degree of distance from him than we would another more typical protagonist, while Jose Quaglio – also excellent as the blind fascist ideologue in The Conformist – plays the bourgeois patriarch as if to the manner born. Erna Schurer turns in one of her better performances as Mirelle, the character demonstrating a self-awareness about what she really represents to her husband and step-son, and the actress that she possessed brains as well as beauty thereby.

Giorgio Gaslini provided the score, an effective mixture of lyrical and jazzy cues, while the cinematography by Alessandro D'Eva, art direction by Oscar Capponi and the editing by future director Michele Massimo Tarantini are uniformly accomplished, never detracting from Rondi's vision.

[Thanks again to the good folks at Cinemageddon for making the film available and doing the English subtitles.]

La Bambola di Satana

Following the death of her uncle, Elizabeth (Erna Schurer) arrives at the family castle with her fidanzato Jack (Roland Carey), a journalist, for a reading of the will.


Dolls and black gloved killers, what more could one want?

After dinner with the other guests and servants, in which the history of the castle and the family are discussed, Elizabeth and Jack are taken to their rooms – a conservative touch which provides an early indication of the film's at times awkward straddling of 60s and 70s styles, whilst also serving as an important plot point insofar as it allows for the easier terrorisation of Elizabeth at night.












Schurer's characteristic expressions

Instinctively heading for the room she used to stay in when she visited the castle as a child many years ago, Elizabeth is shocked to discover the first of the castle's many secrets. An old servant whom she had been informed was dead is in fact very much alive, albeit wheelchair-bound and apparently insane.




Bava they are not

The next day uncle's will is read, naming Elizabeth as the principal beneficiary to no-one else's particular surprise.




Black gloved hands at work

Later the housekeeper takes Elizabeth, Jack and some of the others on a tour of the castle's dungeons, complete with reproduction torture chamber and identified as being like something out of a giallo novel by another guest; meanwhile another young woman, ostensibly a landscape painter vacationing in the vicinity, proves to be searching for something in the castle grounds along with some unidentified confederates with whom she communicates by walkie-talkie...


Note how the candelabra is shedding absolutely no light at all

That night Elizabeth finds her sleep troubled by extraordinarily vivid nightmares involving the castle, its staff and Jack – if, that is, they are in fact nightmares and not a carefully stage-managed reality designed to drive her mad or to her death...

Released at the end of the 1960s, La Bambola di Satana – not to be confused with the later, more explicit and supernatural horror themed La Bimba di Satana – is one of those entries that hedges its bets by throwing in just about gothic horror and giallo motif the filmmakers could think of into a plot that's half Agatha Christie and half Scooby Doo; fans of the latter style of giallo may care to note that the film climaxes with the literal unmasking of the hitherto disguised chief villain.

Besides the aforementioned madwoman (not) in the attic, torture dungeon and sinister servants, we also have plenty of dark corridors illuminated only by the light from a candelabra; a black-gloved figure whose face we never see until late on; wolves howling outside in the dark; storms every night and a beautiful heroine / damsel in distress who spends much of her time in nightwear that leaves little to the imagination.

Obviously also inspired by the wider fumetti culture of the time, with the credits even being presented as a series of posed stills from later in the film – many also in black and white rather than colour – La Bambola di Satana is perhaps better as a collection of static images than as an actual movie.

While director Ferrucio Casapinta – whose sole film credit this seems to be – definitely has an eye for an arresting composition and tries hard, with the nightmare sequences well rendered, the technical aspects of the film are lacking at times elsewhere, with the zoom lens work sometimes stop-start rather than smooth and far too many attempts at atmospheric and / or realistic lighting going awry as the use of a candelabra, the switching of a bedside light, or a flash of lightning fail to produce an appreciable changes in illumination.

This in turn serves to distinguish La Bambola di Satana from other films of its kind, such as The Virgin of Nuremberg and The Bloody Pit of Horror, albeit to its detriment insofar as they each really work as films in their own right; perhaps the most telling aspect here is the way the makers of Bloody Pit of Horror have the confidence to incorporate the making of a fumetti into the film's narrative, poking fun at what they themselves are doing and indicating that it's all in good fun, not to be taken too seriously.

As Elizabeth, Erna Schurer doesn't have too much to do except look pretty, vulnerable and scared along with screaming on cue. She's adequate to each task, with her background as a photomodel in fumetti clearly giving her the kind of expertise in creating one-dimensional characters needed by the film.

Roland Carey's Jack is similarly flat, the kind of traditional hard-headed hero whom one is never really inclined to doubt or consider as having ulterior motives, with this again serving to give the film a distinctly old-fashioned and comforting feel when compared to the likes of The Night Evelyn Came Out of the Grave (with its similar gothic / giallo crossover) or what a George Hilton type might have brought to the role.

Much the same can be said of the rest of the performers, with the absence of an eccentric character actors of the Luciano Rossi or Pigozzi type being felt along with that of more recognisable female glamour presences beyond Schurer herself.

In line with the general 60s / 70s crossover, Franco Potenza's score is a mixture of contemporary rock pieces and jazzy cues – the former playing diegetically in the nearby trattoria – and old fashioned horror mood music.

Le Deportate della sezione speciale SS / Deported Women of the SS Special Section

Though featuring the expected elements of sex, sleaze, sadism, shocks and showers, this 1977 Nazisploitation entry from Rino De Silvestro is unusual in other regards, evincing a comparatively serious and sombre tone at times and featuring a few scenes which hint at a challenge to the viewer's pleasure in watching the film.


De Silvestro makes his bid for authorship

Set in the dying days of the Third Reich, the film begins with the transportation of a mixed group of female prisoners by a filthy but perhaps surprisingly roomy cattle car.

Flashbacks establish our main protagonist, Tanya Nobel, an aristocrat of German extraction who has renounced the Reich and the Volk in favour of her Polish resistance lover; as is usually the case in the filone story takes priority over history.




Erna Schurer and John S

Tanya immediately earns the enmity of Trudy, who is determined to become a Kapo once they arrive at their destination. Trudy's character is more sketchily drawn, however. While there is an element of class resentment to her remarks – “Leave her alone” “Oh yeah! Just who the fuck do you think you are! Your aristocratic background doesn't mean shit here! You're up to your neck in it just like the rest of us!” – it isn't that clear why she is a prisoner rather than a Nazi in this regard beyond her lesbian proclivities, though I certainly suspect that she is something of an anti-social element who could not be relied upon to put the values of the Reich above her own gratifications rather than a leftist.

Whatever the case, it soon emerges that this is another one of those films where the activities of the Nazis themselves don't seem particularly geared towards the instrumentally rational goal of winning the war nor the value rational one of ridding the Reich of those they deem undesirable; while the two goals were perhaps not altogether incompatible when the war was going well by the time the film is set they almost certainly were in terms of suggesting conflicting deployments of men and material.




A Suspiria-style lightbulb shot and a row of less than happy campers

As the train pulls into the station, Tanya and another prisoner make a bid for freedom. Trudy notices and alerts the guards. Tanya is thus recaptured while the other woman is gunned down; again, students of Nazi crimes rather than their representation in the Nazisploitation filone might have cause for pause here as to the probability of this scene.

From the station, the prisoners are transferred to the camp, apparently located in an old castle. Trudy gets her wish to become a kapo and thus gets to dish out rather than receive the same humiliation and brutalisation as the others as they are processed and assigned new duties.

Tanya is earmarked to be a field whore serving in the Joy Division until the camp commander Erner notices her name on the roster. As another flashback explains, Erner is infatuated with Tanya, althought she had always refused his attentions.

Erner thus decides to keep Tanya in the camp and resolves to make her love him, resulting in a battle of wills between the two as the other inmates struggle to survive amidst the capricious wardens and kapos that all builds to a dramatic and suspenseful climax...








Kapo Trudy wielding her phallic baton

As is often the case in the filone, the reasons for the prisoners being in the camp – whether their 'crimes' are ethnic/religious, sexual, political or otherwise – are not specified with the exception of Tanya.

Unsurprisingly the incidence of homosexuality – as a 'perversion' – is presented as be far higher amongst the Nazis and their confederates than the prisoners, with two wardens getting into a catfight over their respective claims over one piece of live property:

“She's my whore”

“Oh yeah, fuck you. What are you going to do about it?”

“I'll show you! [slap]”

Far more surprising and interesting, however, is the scene of male homosexual activity between Erner and his devoted underling, Dobermann [sic] by virtue of giving the implied male heterosexual audience something they didn't expect or desire; as one IMBD reviewer remarks: “This was the last thing I was expecting to see [...] Needless to say, a big turn off.”


Ernst and Dobermann

Significantly this scene is also presaged by one of the battles of wills between Tanya and Erner, as she pointedly refuses to gaze at his humiliation of two other field whores by compelling them to make out with one another and then fellate him, before then moving to seduce Dobermann – a combination cumulatively suggesting a somewhat Sartean dynamic of looking and refusing to look that, while being about power, cannot be reduced to male / female, active looking / passive to be looked at ness. (“You have to look! You can't refuse my spectacle!,” as Erner screams at Tanya.)

Despite this difference, one of the problems with the Nazisploitation filone more generally that again emerges is that of scale. These low-budget films lacked the resources to convincingly depict a larger-scale camp with hundreds or thousands of prisoners, only ever being able to present small-scale and somewhat specialist facilities with only a couple dozen inmates at most at a time.

Their production design also tends to be that bit off, as when the rows of improbably comfortable looking beds and the showers with abundant hot water and soap for those long shower scenes come across as more appropriate to a prison, convent or girls' school – a lack of specificity which further highlights the ease with which the same basic stock scenario, situations and sets could so often be redressed by a simple substitution of mother superior for head warden or SS doctor.




Tanya refusing to gaze...


... making a defiant, resistant gaze of her own...


... and as the laughing woman...

On the plus side, the direction is more accomplished than many others of its kind, with some effective camera set ups and movements. Likewise although the inmates – including Stefanio D'Amario and Sara Sperati – are as usual that bit too healthy and well-fed looking to really convince as the real thing, they and the other performers – including Erna Schurer, Solvi Stubing and John Steiner amonst the Nazi contingent – are uniformly committed to their roles and, within the melodramatic, operatic and campy boundaries of the filone, more than adequate.

Stelvio Cipriani' score is another asset, although some of his cues are recognisable from elsewhere, such as the lush, romantic piano piece that build ups to the Countess's murder in Bay of Blood.