Castle of the Living Dead (1964)

‘I was working in my laboratory and didn’t hear you arrive.’

In the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars, French army soldiers take up a new career as murderous highwaymen and a group of strolling players are invited to perform a special show at a Count’s mysterious castle.

Middling 1960s horror from continental Europe (a French-Italian co-production) almost inevitably starring the multi-lingual Christopher Lee in the lead as Count Drago. The Count is an expert in taxidermy (never a good sign!) and seems to have strange uses in mind for the wandering entertainers he invites to perform at his (inevitably) gloomy castle. This black and white mystery lurches into the Science Fiction ballpark via the Count’s shady experiments but the story doesn’t flow well or develop into anything particularly original or exciting. The climax doesn’t make much sense either, but it’s not a complete disaster.

Unfortunately, there’s some evidence of an editor’s blunt scissors, although the cross-cutting between a funeral and a murder is nicely done. In fact, the uneven quality of the finished product may have been down to a slightly troubled history which saw three directors work on it, including uncredited wonder kid Michael Reeves who was only 21 years old at the time! Sadly, he was dead at 25 but had time to direct the classic ‘Witchfinder General’ (1968) with Vincent Price. It’s tempting to credit the best aspects of this film to him, of course, but it’s really impossible to attribute credit with any certainty.

The audience was looking forward to a good time…

The film provided an early acting opportunity for Donald Sutherland, who plays 3 parts; a witch, a soldier, and an old man. There’s no real reason for him to do this in terms of the plot; but he pulls it off effortlessly, and it’s not detrimental to the final film. But a couple of the characters do seem a little pointless and you can’t help but wonder if some things were improvised during shooting because of an unfinished script, or perhaps other actors simply failed to turn up on the day!

The post~synched dialogue is also a bit hit and miss but, according to Lee, the script girl failed to keep a note of the actual dialogue spoken at the time of filming and he had to re-dub his lines later on from memory. But it is good to see the dwarf character presented in a heroic light, rather than as en evil henchman or as comedy relief.

A reasonable chiller, then; enlivened by some eerie atmosphere and a creepy location complete with broken, overgrown statues, which include an elephant!