Drink from this and may your thirst be quenched...it is blood from the house of Karnstein.
Count Ludwig Karnstein (Christopher Lee, in a rather colorless performance) hires an "investigator", Friedrich Klauss (José Campos), to "reconstruct" the history and life of an ancestor who was condemned by her people, her entire past cleared due to her supposed witchcraft and foray with the black arts. Count Karnstein wants him to also construct a face of what this witch might have looked like. Before suffering her horrifying demise, the witch cursed the Karnsteins' children, and, sure enough, two hundred years have passed and members of the Karnstein family are dropping dead. Ludwig's daughter, Laura (Adriana Ambesi), is having nightmares about dying relatives and the witch might be tormenting her, believing she might be going mad, wanting the maid to kill her (after a ceremony performed has Laura remembering in exact detail the events prior to the witch's death) if a possession were to happen. Friedrich falls in love with Laura literally like a day later...
Other characters emerge: you have an inquisitive, snooping "maidservant" (and the Count's young lover), desiring to become a Karnstein, Annette (Véra Valmont), her youth and lack of affluence (not to mention, her polarizing presence) strikes against her. a hunchbacked peddler (A. Midlin) with a scarred face, spreading news of death with a delight that leaves those in the Karnstein fold unsettled and perturbed, and a young female arrival, Ljuba (Ursula Davis), who almost immediately bonds with Laura, welcomed at the castle while her relative is away.
The use of a decrepit bell tower which works as a beacon of past horror (a village near the Karnstein castle suffered a ghoulish tragedy) as a means to surprise us with the death of a minor character, a hanging with a dog pulling at his foot, ringing the bell, is a rather macabre visual cluing us to the fact that a menace is around. This leads into an even more wicked scene where the Karnstein maid, a worshiper of Satan, uses the dead man's hand, cut from his arm while dead and hanging, as a type of candelabra (a candle representing each finger; it is particularly unsettling, but on the same token rather cool), is summoning the prince of darkness to reveal to her the killer. There's a later scene, my favorite, where the dead corpse of another victim, stabbed in the back upon learning of the killer's identity, who is in her open coffin, candles lit around her current placement, the lightning ferocious and alive, the wind's sudden outburst exploding the window's doors, the room going dark, bursts of light unveiling the body in an upright position, pointing directly at someone with implication. It is really a stunner if you like this sort of thing (and I flat do.).
Any movie with "Vampire" in the title and Lee's name in the credits will be certain to draw their own conclusions. Lee, however, has a straight, rather nondescript, not-too-showy part. He is the concerned Karnstein, worried about his daughter's mental state, concerned that their castle estate and the nearby village ruins, the decaying bell tower (reminders of the horrors of long ago), are having an adverse affect on Laura.
This was also called, "Terror in the Crypt", and I think maybe this is more of an apt title. To me, director Camillo Mastrocinque's Italian slice of Gothic horror is less a vampire film and more about a possible ghost, in the same vein as Mario Bava's Black Sunday (there were a slew of these films, taking what Bava did and crafting their own films, using the castles of the past, their grounds and estate, and what they contain (when you have a castle, the decor only heightens the effect) as it deals with a vengeful witch's spirit possibly preying on a family for religious fanaticism. I loved the lesbian undercurrent: while the script has Laura and Ljuba calling each other friends, and talking about spending future time together, I think their attraction and adoration for each other is quite visible. I think this is purposely so. Also, there are so many moments where they look lovingly, affectionately, tenderly into each others eyes, hugging, softly embracing, a definite sense of enchantment going on. The ending has the two "escaping" into the windswept grounds outside of the castle, their gowns fluttering and flowing in a fury, a trip to a crypt where the body of the witch lies entombed awaiting a stake to the heart stopping a possible danger to Laura. You have the men (including a weird sequence where Lee and Campos find another intruder who has connections to the Karnstein family) searching for the tomb of the witch, finding a hall with a five pointed star that proves it was a place of devil worship at one point in the past, eventually finding it walled in. The tomb's opening, showing a clinched hand and a face frozen in fright is quite an unveil.
I dig this movie. I won't lie, I can watch these flicks all the time. I understand the Gothic horror subgenre is just not everyone's cup of tea. It really is about the idyllic decadence of a place that wears its past glory, the elegance not worn from centuries of existence. Lit by candles, portraits in every room of ancestors long gone, corridors and rooms and mirrors and large windows. I find substance in "history candy", the backdrop adds to the plot..hell, to me it is as important as the plot because the past is of such vital performance in everything taking place during the film's present.
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