Scream of the Demon Lover (1970)

Scream of the Demon Lover (Il castello dalle porte di fuoco) was also released under various other titles including Killers of the Castle of Blood. It’s a 1970 Spanish-Italian co-production directed by José Luis Merino.

It’s a gothic horror movie set presumably in the late 19th century but with so many anachronistic elements that it would probably have been better to have given it a contemporary setting.

Of course all movies with period settings are riddled with anachronisms, it’s just a bit more noticeable in this film.

The heroine Ivanna Rakowsky (Erna Schurer) is a 1970s independent ambitious career woman totally out of place in the period setting. She’s a biochemist and she’s applied for a job working for the mysterious baron Janos Dalmar (Carlos Quiney).

A number of young women from the village have been brutally murdered and the villagers are quite keen on the idea of burning the castle to the ground with the wicked baron in it. They have no evidence that the baron really is wicked, but burning the castle to the ground would certainly make them feel better.

Baron Janos is clearly a bit strange. He’s irritable, unstable and obsessive. Ivanna is not at all sure she approves of him. On the other hand he’s a young, handsome rich nobleman and she obviously thinks he’s a bit of a dish.

Janos is a mad scientist but in Ivanna’s romantic imagination he’s a dedicated scientific visionary whose genius has been misunderstood. As you might expect this makes him even more desirable in her eyes.

There are two other women living in the castle - the baron’s former mistress Olga (Cristiana Galloni) and a cute sexy maid named Cristiana (Agostina Belli). They’re both madly in love with the baron.

So we have a crazy wildly unstable baron living in a castle with three women who are crazed with lust for him, and insanely jealous of each other. That should produce interesting results.

There’s a whole wing of the castle that is closed off, allegedly because it’s falling apart and is therefore dangerous. Of course we know that there dark secrets hidden in the forbidden part of the castle, and we know that the heroine is going to explore that part of the castle even though she’s been warned not to.

There certainly are secrets here. The baron tells Ivanna a story about the nature of his scientific research and the reason for his interest in the possibilities of regenerating dead tissue but that story is not strictly true, although it’s not entirely a lie either.

There are some obvious borrowings from Jane Eyre but to say more on that subject would be to risk spoilers. There are also some interesting red herrings - Ivanna thinks she’s found out the secret that Janos is hiding but she’s on the wrong track.

There is a strong gothic horror plot here but (like Jane Eyre) this is also a gothic romance. Ivanna and Janos are falling in love but there are huge obstacles to be overcome. Their love may or may not be doomed, depending largely on how determined they are to confront the very real horrors concealed in the castle. The love story is at least as important as the horror story.

This was a very low-budget film but director Merino wasn’t going to allow that to cramp his style. He throws in every gothic visual trapping he can think of.

And it works, and it has to be said that he does it with a certain style and the movie does have some very nice gothic imagery. The baron’s initial entrance, accompanied by his two gigantic savage hounds, is very cool. We get lots of shots of pretty young women wandering through gloomy corridors in their nighties, carrying candelabras. Not terribly original but I don’t think any gothic horror fan is going to complain about the inclusion of such scenes. They always work.

There really isn’t anything at all wildly original in this movie, either visually or in the script, but it’s all put together with energy and flair. There’s some nudity and there are very real hints of strange sexual kinks. And there are some effectively creepy moments.

The acting performances are all perfectly competent.

This is a well executed gothic horror/gothic romance movie and it’s highly recommended.

Scream of the Demon Lover is included in Severin’s Danza Macabra boxed set. The transfer is very good given that the original 16mm negative was in poor shape. The highlight of the extras is a typically informative and perceptive visual essay by Stephen Thrower.