3/10
Good atmosphere yet predictable
27 June 2003
(aka: BLOOD CASTLE or SCREAM OF THE DEMON)

*spoiler*

This was a drive-in feature, co-billed with THE VELVET VAMPIRE. A Spanish-Italian co-production where a series of women in a village are being murdered around the same time a local count named Yanos Dalmar is seen on horseback, riding off with his 'man-eating' dog behind him.

The townsfolk already suspect he is the one behind it all and want his castle burned down. The murders first began around the time Count Yanos' older brother, Count Igor Dalmar was horribly burned and killed in a lab accident.

Then a woman Ivanna (Erna Schuer) that Igor hired before his death to assist him in his experiments shows up. Yanos agrees to hire her in place of his brother and together they seek the formulae for the regeneration of dead cells. Yanos wants to bring Igor's charred corpse back to life.

But of course Igor is still alive (although horribly burned) and stalking and killing the women in the village. We see his char-broiled face appear at various points in the film, so we know he's still alive, making the whole thing seem a little bit too obvious.

Igor meets another fiery end when he gets into a fight with Yanos over Ivanna, with the burning candles falling on to the same bed that Igor stumbles on to, meeting yet another, final char-broiled end.

The Retromedia DVD is taken from a VHS source and looks quite grainy and bad. Other than an even scratchier trailer, no other extras are included. Although it has a nice, creepy Spanish castle and good atmospherics, I found it to be fairly boring and predictable, with no excitement or mystery, whatsoever.

3 out of 10.
2 out of 6 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? Sign in to vote.
Permalink

Recently Viewed