It is the dead of night, and in the tomb of this castle the lid of a coffin stirs and a hand is seen grasping from the gap... Meanwhile, there’s a bus driving along the nearby country road which contains a group of exotic dancers and their manager Lucas (Alfredo Rizzo) who are travelling to their next job, but unfortunately their path is obstructed by a fallen tree up ahead. They are forced to stop and after consulting with the workman who is trying to solve the issue, decide to take an alternative route, ignoring his warnings that nobody goes to that castle, with even the locals giving it a wide berth. But Lucas has no time for that, they must have somewhere to stay the night...
So to the castle they go in a peculiarly Italian take on the Gothic horrors revitalised by the success of Britain’s Hammer studios, the same flush of interest in the genre that gave the nation its true classic of the form, Black Sunday. But the director here, Piero Regnoli, was noticeably no Mario Bava, and what you had here were essentially some very warmed over clichés with the promise of a little sexual content added, as the censorship began to loosen as this decade progressed. Nothing too explicit, but enough to secure the production the old reliable of the "Adults Only" tag to put on the posters or trailer, no matter what version (there were a number) you would have seen of it way back when.
Producer and distributor Richard Gordon released the version seen in most English-speaking territories, taking the source and dubbing it, and possibly delivering the longest incarnation into the bargain, though it still was a good ten minutes shy of an hour and a half. Gordon had a habit of refashioning foreign language efforts for American audiences, so something like this, a shade stronger stuff than what the companies in his adopted United States were bringing out in the main, was a gift to him. Not that it comes across as particularly shocking now, though it did have a lady vampire who walks around without any clothes on some twenty-five years before Mathilda May in LifeForce.
Although don't get too excited, for strategic lighting and shadows in tandem with carefully chosen camera angles meant in this case you didn't get to see very much. Creeping about some pretty basic castle sets, the cast ranged from halfhearted comic relief courtesy of Rizzo and Maria Giovannini who played the ditzy but too curious Katia, from more sober readings of doomed romance in a horror context from the lead actors, shocker staple Walter Brandi as the head of the estate Count Gabor Kenassy and Lyla Rocco as the miserable-looking Vera who he takes a shine to. Perhaps Vera was unhappy about her unflattering hairdo, or perhaps she was conveying a wistful longing that only the Count can salve thanks to her being the possible reincarnation of a lost love of his ancestor?
But who's this vampire who will be preying on Lucas' coterie of nubile lovelies? There were two answers to that question, and each were given some very prominent fangs that could possibly have been bought from a local joke shop, but the one the title presumably referred to was the Count – or was it? You see, Brandi was playing a dual role as both the current Count and his bloodsucking ancestor, and you could tell the difference between them because one had black hair and the other grey (oh, and he was the one with those fangs) that led to an all-in wrestling match of a showdown as Gabor attempts to rescue Vera from a fate worse than death. Before that there was a lot of emoting in front of some very stock sets, so this looked fairly cheap, though occasionally they would push the boat out for a special effect just to give the film a bit of a kick, and if that failed Regnoli would have his female cast dress in skimpy attire, the two staples of a certain type of horror from then on. He would go onto fresh depths of sleaze mostly as a writer, making this amusement look quaint in comparison. Music by Aldo Piga.
[Nucleus Films has released this on DVD with extras: an analysis by expert Kim Newman, the trailer, the 8mm version and the French credits plus a deleted scene.]
