* "In Barbara Steele's case, much like Marilyn Monroe who is viewed through the lens of a sex symbol, bestowing the title of Scream Queen
might be an honor considered by her passionate fan base, but it can
also be a curse for an actress of formidable intelligence, acutely
cerebral and worthy of an established movie career. Steele's
otherworldly beauty has been objectified by the genre that embraced her
uniqueness yet her acting skill never led her to become an idolized
Hollywood star, a beloved character actor, or a mainstream celebrity. Somehow she metamorphosed into a figure of fantasy and myth, chained
to an archetype and recreated as an icon. One thing's for sure, she has
no competition for her unique style and mesmerizing sorcery, though
there are many other genre superstars that are true, I would never
dismiss that. Barbara Steele is the ultimate enchantress. Queen of
shadows and the divine who suffer eternally. [The Last Drive In]"
And now, enjoy Part V of our typically meandering and all-over-the-place career review of a true Babe of Yesteryear and Scream Queen extraordinaire.
Also go here:
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Terror Creatures from the Grave
(1965, dir. Massimo Pupillo as "Ralph Zucker")
Released in Italy in June of 1965, Terror Creatures from the Grave — a.k.a. Cemetery of the Living Dead, Coffin of Terror, Tombs of Horror and Five Graves for a Medium — hit the screens in the USA in April 1966. Rest assured, the movie is not based on an Edgar Allan Poe story, regardless of what the credits might say.
Trailer to
Terror Creatures from the Grave:
If The Long Hair of Death (see Part IV) is obscure, then Terror Creatures from the Grave, encumbered with its overly schlocky English title, is positively forgotten. But then, [Domenico] Massimo Pupillo (12 July 1922 or 7 Jan 1929 or 1 July 1929 – 12 Dec 1999 or 29 Dec 1999) is also a more-than-obscure filmmaker about whom "the facts" are contradictory and who also did not seem to respect his own extremely paltry output (some sources claim he found his own films "disgusting").*
* According to one of the lead male actors of Terror Creatures from the Grave, Riccardo Garrone (i.e., "Richard Garret"), Pupillo's on-set (and probably behind-his-back) nickname was "The Wanker" [Tim Lucas].
For the tourists among you: the movie was shot at Villa Sacchetti, the same location used for Nightmare Castle (1965), which we look at after this film here.
With Terror Creatures from the Grave, his first of three Italo-horrors, Pupillo forewent his onscreen directorial credit, allowing the producer Ralph Zucker (1940 – 28 May 1982) to take the claim. Pupillo then took the name "Max Hunter" for his subsequent four movies: the enjoyable stupid Mickey Hagitay — below not from the film — vehicle Bloody Pit of Horror (1965 / trailer), which is Pupillo's best-known project, the intriguing if overlooked gothic horror Lady Morgan's Vengeance (1965 / trailer), which rehashes many plot points of Castle of Blood (1964, see Part IV), the somewhat generic spaghetti western Django Kills Softly (1967 / full movie), and the apparently lost mondo documentary, Love: The Great Unknown (1969).*
* Pupillo is also known to have contributed his scriptwriting skills to Luigi Scattini's dismal comedy/neo-mondo crossbreed Primitive Love (1964 / trailer), while some sources also claim that he had a hand in Scattini's Sweden: Heaven and Hell (1968 / a famous tune) and Romolo Marcellini's Taboos of the World (1964 / trailer). He has also been credited with having directed some couple of hundred shorts and educational films, but few of the titles are known.
Despite its cheesy US title, however, Terror Creatures from the Grave is an at-times surprisingly effective and well-shot gothic horror that is well worth giving a gander, particularly if you're a forgiving fan of the genre. It also has the added importance of being, along with War of the Zombies (1964 / trailer), one of the earliest Italian horror movies to feature tangible (as in "physically real") zombies, even if they were not yet called zombies...
One of D.M. Pupillo's documentaries,
Chirurghi in biblioteca (1960):
"You know you're in for a treat from the opening in which a man with the worst goatee you'll ever lay eyes on, leaves his house in the middle of the night, saddles-up a horse, climbs on, falls off and gets kicked in the face until he's dead. But never mind all that, okay? We don't need to worry about the Man with the World's Worst Goatee just yet! [Horror News]"
No, let's first look at the plot, as found At the Mansion of Madness: "The story is set in April in the year 1911. A lawyer, Albert (Walter Brandi [24 Jan 1928 – 28 May 1996] of The Vampire and the Ballerina [1960 / trailer], The Playgirls and the Vampire [1960 / trailer] and Slaughter of the Vampires [1962 / trailer]), receives a letter from a Dr. Jeronimus Hauff summoning his business partner Joseph Morgan (Riccardo Garrone [1 Nov 1926 – 14 Mar 2016]) to a shunned villa in a remote region in order to draw up his Last Will and Testament. Joseph is away, so Albert answers the call in his place. After travelling to the villa, he's surprised to learn that Jeronimus had been dead for nearly a year, despite the letter he received having the official seal of Jeronimus, a seal which had been buried with the body. It is related to Albert from Jeronimus's widow, Cleo (Barbara Steele), that Jeronimus had fallen down the long narrow stairwell in the villa to his death. Being present at the time of his death, five people, purported to be Jeronimus's friends, signed the death certificate. Those particular people are dying gruesomely under mysterious circumstances, one by one. One of the signatures is illegible, which constitutes a mysterious fifth person who needs to be warned and who could possibly be the key to solving the mystery (the fifth man?)."
The movie's Cassandra appears to be Cleo and Jeronimus's daughter, Corinne (Mirella Maravidi of Requiescant [1967]), who adds a thrill to the film with a split-second side-boob scene...
"This movie has a great atmosphere, graphic special effects makeup (for the time) and a wonderful soundtrack. If anything is lacking, the ending seems a bit rushed. I recommend the VHS version that Something Weird released a few years back. It is struck from an immaculate print and contains the European version of the movie — this includes a brief topless shot (unfortunately not of Barbara Steele but she does emerge from her bath in a subsequent tantalizing scene.) [...] This Italian shocker would be a welcome addition to any Euro film collection. [Dead Donkey]"
"The movie, like all 1960s Italian gothic horror movies, evokes the gothic mood rather effectively, but what this movie mostly has going for it is the presence of Barbara Steele as the dead man's widow. [...] Apart from that it's a perfectly competent example of 60s Italian gothic horror, with slightly more gruesome images than you would see in an American or British film of that era, and a hint of eroticism. Worth seeing just for Barbara Steele. [Cult Movie Reviews]"
The full movie —
Terror Creatures from the Grave:
"[T]his black-and-white period Gothic horror suffers from poor English-language dubbing and translations, plus an overly-familiar plot involving the usual blackmail, betrayal, adultery, murder and revenge from beyond the grave, but it has its moments, too. There are some stylish sequences in here, the music score (including a haunting lullaby about pure water) is pretty good and unlike many others of this type and from this era, numerous scenes are shot outdoors in scenic locations. There are also some surprisingly gruesome moments in here for the time. A man is kicked in the face by a horse until his eyeball falls out, guts are seen after a man impales himself with a sword, faces erupt with bubbling lesions when victims touched by the dead are given an advanced form of the plague and severed hands come to life and start slowly moving their fingers. [...] So while not a great film by any means, there's probably just enough here to satisfy fans of this sub-genre. [Bloody Pit of Horror]"
One person who definitely doesn't like the movie, however, is Scott Ashlin of 1000 Misspent Hours, who says: "It's got zombies, it's got the plague, and it's even got Barbara Steele! How could you go wrong with a lineup like that? Well, for starters, you could be Massimo Pupillo. This is a guy who has turned dropping the ball into something like a form of art, and as he demonstrates here, sometimes that anti-talent swings both ways. While missing the mark for quality by a country mile, Five Graves for a Medium lamentably never swerves as far into utter lunacy as Bloody Pit of Horror (1965 / trailer), and its most glaring, staggering fuck-up is one that most people will find detracts from its entertainment value rather than magnifying it. [...] So what's the biggest, most incomprehensible blunder you've ever seen a director make in a zombie movie? Well how about never showing the zombies? You heard me. The closest thing we ever get to a look at the living dead in Five Graves for a Medium comes on two occasions when the camera shows us their hands. [...] Otherwise the zombies are represented solely by POV cams and sound effects. [...]"
Scriptwriters Romano Migliorini (i.e., "Robin McLorin") and Roberto Natale (i.e., "Robert Nathan") went on to help craft one of a wasted life's favorite Bava movies, Kill, Baby... Kill! (1966 / trailer)...
If you understand Italian,
here's a short interview of Pupillo:
As evident by the poster below, somewhere along the way in the USA, Massimo Pupillo's Terror Creatures from the Grave got released as a double feature with Massimo Pupillo's Bloody Pit of Horror.
Trailer to Massimo Pupillo's
Bloody Pit of Horror:
Nightmare Castle
(1965, writ. & dir. Mario Caiano as "Allan Grunewald")
Also known as: Lovers From Beyond the Tomb, The Faceless Monster, Night of the Doomed and, of course, by its original Italian title, Amanti d'Oltretomba. In the US, Nightmare Castle is in the public domain and can easily be found (usually cut by around 20 minutes) on the internet; the uncut version is known as Night of the Doomed.
"If you're a Barbara Steele fan, the following motion picture is a must have! [House of Fradkin-stein]" Released in Italy in August 1965, it hit the screens in the USA on 5 July 1966.
"Known in U.S. distribution as Nightmare Castle, this eerie Gothic thriller offers two Barbara Steeles for the price of one.* [...] This film's pervasive feeling of impending doom is aided by shadowy, low-contrast cinematography and a robust score from Ennio Morricone, and features a riveting performance from Steele, whose large eyes pierce the screen with dangerous beauty. [Cavett Binion @ All Movie]
* As in a number of her Gothic horrors, Barbara Steele plays two roles: the brunette Muriel Arrowsmith and her blonde sister, Jenny Arrowsmith. Of her double role, Ms Steele once said: "I loved the duality of it. First to play the victim, and then use that energy to turn it into the revenge part, that's good. It's got power. It's good to have both because we all need justification in our lives. Duality makes drama, and not just in horror films. [The Last Drive-In]"
Aside from Barbara Steele, Nightmare Castle also stars another female Eurostar of note and a wasted life favorite, Helge Liné, whose biography is as noteworthy as her filmography: born Helga Lina Stern in Berlin in 1932, her Jewish roots resulted in the family fleeing to Portugal, where she eventually became a dancer and circus contortionist (see the photo below, when she was still young and blonde), and then a model and actor. Her acting career petered along until she moved to Spain, whereupon it took off like a rocket, particular in the field of horror and genre films. If her name is on the credit list, the movie is usually worth a gander — for example, check her out in Horror Express (1972), one of our favorite PD horror classics.
Helge Liná's final scene in Nightmare Castle is one of our fondest and most psychologically scarring sights that we here at a wasted life had the pleasure of being psychologically damaged by as a pre-peachfuzz child...
What's more, Nightmare Castle also features one of the great under-sung, not-so-attractive male actors of Eurotrash, a man found in an untold number of trash and true classics (as well as a lot of shit and normal stuff), the Swiss actor Paul Muller (11 March 1923 – 2 September 2016), as the movie's truly bad Bad Guy, Dr. Stephen Arrowsmith. Over his 50-odd-year career, Muller worked with directors ranging from Bava & Brass to Fellini & Margheriti and beyond — he participated, for example, in a grand total of 18 Jess Franco flicks! If his name is on the credit list, the movie is usually worth a gander, particularly if you're a fan of "Bad Film" or Eurotrash. Check him out, for example, in Lady Frankenstein (1971), one of our favorite PD trash classics.
Trailer to
The Night of the Doomed:
In Roberto Curti's book Italian Gothic Horror Films 1957-1969, director Caiano says, "The film was born out of my passion for the Gothic genre, and for Barbara Steele, who has a wonderful face — beautiful yet frightening, vampire-like. Furthermore, we had to make a low-budget film and my father [Carlo Caiano] was the producer. I had just discovered a wonderful villa with a friend of mine [...], Bruno Cesari.... We had the main location and the actress, so all I had to do was make up a story, taking inspiration from my childhood fears."
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Lest you think that the movie is some half-assed nepo-baby project, let it be known that the Italian director Mario Caiano (13 Feb 1933 – 20 Sept 2015) was very much a talented genre film director who already had about a decade of industry experience by the time he wrote and directed Amanti d'Oltretomba. While possibly lacking the stylistic talents of diverse acknowledged Italo masters, he nevertheless delivered a variety of great genre movies throughout his career beyond just Nightmare Castle. If in doubt, the give any of these titles a go: Nazi Love Camp 27 (1977 / trailer) or Shanghai Joe (1973 / trailer) or Eye of the Labyrinth (1972 / trailer) or Shadow of Illusion (1970 / full movie) or Ringo, the Mark of Vengeance (1966 / trailer) or, or, or... Mario Caiano is, in any event, a somewhat underappreciated and relatively unknown Italo genre specialist.
Nightmare Castle:
Killer Kittens, which gives Nightmare Castle "5/5 Kitty Skulls" — saying the movie is the "Pick of the litter!" — has the plot: "Dr. Stephen Arrowsmith (Paul Muller) has just discovered that his wife, Muriel (Barbara Steele) is having an affair. When he catches the two lovers in the amorous act, they find themselves chained to a dungeon wall. Unfortunately for Muriel and her companion, David (Rik Battaglia [18 Feb 1927 – 27 Mar 2015] of White Slave [1985 / trailer] and Deported Women of the SS Special Section [1976 / trailer]), [...] Dr. Arrowsmith is a clearly-mad scientist [...] and he uses poor Muriel as a subject in a bizarre experiment which claims her life. He also has a plan in store for Muriel's stepsister, Jenny (Barbara Steele), who Muriel named as the sole beneficiary of her sizable fortune shortly before she died. Somehow, Arrowsmith is able to convince Jenny to become his wife [...]. What the flaxen-haired, doe-eyed young woman does not know is that Arrowsmith and his faithful servant, Solange (Helga Liné of José Ramón Larraz's Los ritos sexuales del Diablo [1982], Madame Olga's Pupils [1981] & Estigma [1980], Umberto Lenzi's The Biggest Battle [1978], So Sweet… So Perverse [1969] & Kriminal [1966], and so much more), intend to push her already-fragile mental state over the very brink of madness in order to gain control over Muriel's fortune. Dr. Arrowsmith enlists the help of a dashing, young psychiatrist, Dr. Derek Joyce (Laurence Clift a.k.a. Marino Masé [21 Mar 1939 – 28 May 2022] of The Red Queen Kills Seven Times [1972 / trailer] and so much more), to attend to his new bride. Jenny is ill at ease while inside the castle, and [...] begins to have disturbing visions and bizarre nightmares, gradually becoming more aware of the presence of her dead stepsister, Muriel, who seems to have the power to possess her very soul. [...] Beyond simply being Dr. Arrowsmith's servant, Solange was also the recipient of blood that had been taken from Muriel [...] in order to restore the housekeeper's appearance and vitality to that of a woman in her twenties. After Derek begins poking around, they decide that they must get rid of him at once. The stolen blood flowing through Solange's veins is weakening her, and they must expedite Jenny's descent into madness so that they can gain access to her sweet, red essence. [...]"
Ennio Morricone's music to
Nightmare Castle:
At Zisi's Emporium for B Movies, Zisi raves: "Will the insane, but lovely Jenny, find love and happiness amidst the carnage that will transpire at her castle? Will a homicidal mad scientist be able to out maneuver a vengeful ghost? No one is safe in this European horror yarn, directed by Mario Caiano. The torture scenes are difficult to endure, and so is the excruciatingly gory ending... but that's just how we like it. This is one of Ms. Steele's best films, which is saying a lot."
More of Ennio Morricone's music to
Nightmare Castle:
But Final Girl Stacy might disagree: "Horror icon Barbara Steele stars in Nightmare Castle, a gothic tale of revenge from beyond the grave. The 1965 film [...] oozes sexuality and blood in about equal doses. [...] The first and last 15 minutes of this flick were great — there was some startling imagery, some creepy sequences, some interesting notions about the nature of life and death, and enough gore to be intriguing without being explicit or gross. The film really suffers in the middle hour or so when the pace slows to a crawl. It's unfortunate, because it keeps Nightmare Castle from being the great old gothic horror movie it could have been. [...] I give it 5 out of 10 hearts afire."
Ryan learned some lessons by watching Nightmare Castle: "1. When making out with your gardener, make sure your husband is not watching, and consider using a location less visible than a greenhouse, which consists of many, many windows. 2. There is such a thing as identical stepsisters. 3. Don't marry your identical stepsister's evil mad scientist widower. 4. Electrocution by bathtub is a horrible way to die."
As for the "wonderful villa" in which the Nightmare Castle was shot, it is the Villa Parisi in Frascati, a private mansion (and personal event location) built in 1605 that was once used as the summer home of Napoleon's youngest sister. It served as the location for Andy Warhol's Blood for Dracula (1974 / trailer, with Udo Kier) and the indefinitely trashier Bianchi movie, Burial Ground (1981 / trailer).
As can be seen by the poster below, in the UK Nightmare Castle (a.k.a. The Faceless Monster) was shown as part of a double feature with Harald Reinl's The Blood Demon a.k.a. The Torture Chamber of Dr Sadism (1967). The dark-haired lass of that film is not Ms. Steele, but Reinl's then wife Karin Dor (22 Feb 1938 – 6 Nov 2017) of The White Spider (1963), Hotel der toten Gäste (1965), The Forger of London (1961), and so much more.
Trailer to
The Blood Demon:
(1965, dir. Leopoldo Torre Nilsson)
Barbara Steele's next appearance was an extremely minor one in a fun time capsule: she plays a female clerk in this short propaganda film, which received its broadcast premiere in the USA on 9 September 1965. The director, the respected Argentinean Leopoldo Torre Nilsson (5 May 1924 – 8 Sept 1978), has the honor of having directed The Female: Seventy Times Seven (1962 / title sequence), possibly the first movie featuring Isabel Sarli (9 Jul 1929 – 25 Jun 2019, below, not from Once Upon a Tractor or The Female: Seventy Times Seven) in which she refused to appear nude.*
* When the movie finally reached the USA as The Female, directed by "Leo Towers", the distributors cut in a body double.
The Female: Seventy Times Seven (1962):
"Apparently, [Once Upon a Tractor] was actually an United Nations piece of propaganda aimed at the Soviet Union and its repression of farmers! [House of Fradkin-stein]" The short was considered lost, but according to Donald Spoto in Otherwise Engaged: The Life of Alan Bates it was rediscovered on a library shelf in the UN in 2002. Oddly enough, the short is a comedy — and features a truly diverse cast: aside from Ms. Steele, there is Alan Bates (of Dr M [1990]), Diane Cilento (of The Wicker Man [1973 / trailer]), Melvyn Douglas (of The Vampire Bat [1933]), Buddy Hackett, the accidental suicide Albert Dekker (of The Killers [1946]), Clive Revill (of The Headless Ghost [1959 / trailer]), and Frank Wolf (of The Great Silence [1968] and Radley Metzger's The Lickerish Quartet [1970 / trailer]).
"Leopoldo Torre Nilsson's only fully English-language film is a curious affair even on its own propagandistic terms: short, silly — not scripted by his wife [Beatriz Guido] — and stacked with people obviously seeking brownie points. Thus Alan Bates's questing farmer and Diane Cilento's fleeing whatever-she-is team-up to head towards the Emerald City that is East 45th St, NYC... [Richard Hill]"
I soldi
(1965, dir. Gianni Puccini & Giorgio Cavedon)
Oh, no: another unknown (and forgotten) anthology movie, which possibly got released in English-speaking lands as Money — a claim we were unable to substantiate. The previous year, 1964, Barbara Steele also appeared in another of Gianni Puccini's (numerous) poorly aged anthology comedies, Amore facile (1964, see Part IV).
Some Barbara Steele in
I soldi (in Italian):
According to the imdb and elsewhere, Gianni Puccini (9 Nov 1914 – 3 Dec 1968) co-directed I soldi with the Italian fumetti author Giorgio Cavedon (17 Dec 1930 – 14 Oct 2001), which one would think is reason enough for this movie to garner at least a little attention — but I soldi remains as unavailable as it is unknown and forgotten.
Not long after I soldi, Cavedon worked on Bruno Corbucci's feature-film version of Cavedon & Renzo Barbieri's fumetti Isabella, Duchess of the Devils a.k.a. Ms. Stilletto (1969 / full film), and some years later Cavedon directed his only solo feature film, a slow and pretentious movie that is more to a wasted life's tastes, Ombre (1980).*
* But the one reason we here at a wasted life truly appreciate Giorgio Cavedon (and, of course, Renzo Barbieri) is that they created the truly WTF "erotic" (as in: hardcore) fumetti horror characters Lucifera and, best of all, Jacula.
Ombre:
While we know not whether I soldi is a lost film, we do know that Barbara Steele is visible on every poster we could find, and that the movie does not seem to be in common circulation: we could locate nothing written about it online, other than that the movie's eleven vignettes are about money's influence on men and the stupid things it makes them do.
Barbara Steele appears to play a call girl in the movie; she is seen above with fellow cast member Tomas Milian (3 March 1933 – 22 March 2017).
More Barbara Steele in
I soldi:
Coming eventually:
Barbara Steele, Part VI: 1966
A public service announcement from a wasted life:
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