Anna is a young woman who is being driven insane by her horrible recurring dreams. They all take place in a remote castle - it is never very clear where it is located. Anna also happens to be a doppelganger for Countess Irene, who was murdered, in real life, in the very same castle that haunts her dreams! It's obvious Anna has some sort of supernatural connection to this place. Her father (also a respected psychiatrist) figures that the only way to rid her of this problem is to take her to the castle and face who-or what-ever is that is driving her mad. It is never made very clear when this all takes place - I would guess the early 1900's? That's enough for a movie, right?
What I liked
The music was pretty cool - there was kind of a space age bachelor pad thing going on. Lots of heavy reverb, crazy keyboards, weird woodwinds, etc. Not necessarily what you would expect from a gothic-style horror pic, but it was entertaining in a kind of goofy way.
There are some interesting directorial flourishes too. The opening credits are pretty stylish - all black background and various items floating and spinning in and out of view. There is a solid dream sequence that seems to draw from all horror's past - there is a spooky knight, a skeleton, a beast man, a zombie/wolf-thing - all in the span of a couple of minutes. Definitely the highlight of the movie. Also, within the first six minutes of the film we get a cat, a bat, and a rat. I don't know if that was on purpose or not, but I like it when things rhyme. (Actually, they use guinea pigs instead of rats - but I think we were supposed to think they were rats? Did guinea pigs ever run around in haunted castles?)
And our first glimpse into the torture chamber is actually pretty scary. During the extended prologue we have two women who break into the castle (just to check it out) and end up getting taken into into the torture chamber by our main baddie. He's a disheveled, deformed Igor type that loves limping around the castle, torturing women, and laughing maniacally to himself. Once we join him and his captives in the chamber, we can see one of our ladies is already dead (and unceremoniously tossed on the ground) and the other is chained up and screaming. The screaming just goes on forever, and our baddie is just laughing to himself (although there's what sounds like groans of pleasure in there too, to make it a little more disturbing). Seeing her get chained to the table, screaming and screaming and awaiting her doom is quite unpleasant. With my 2014 sensibilities, I always assume that any mid-60's horror would roll off me like water off a ducks back. But this prologue was genuinely unsettling.
What I didn't like
Mostly, things were just kind of boring. The central mystery isn't all that riveting - there isn't really a lot of potential suspects in the Countess's demise. Plus, since you (the viewer) don't know the specific circumstances of her life or death, there isn't really a lot to get wrapped up in. (I mean, the zombie/skeleton/beast-man dream implies she got an arrow to the gut, but should we also believe there are all of those creatures running around?) Also, there is some allusion to jewels hidden someplace in the castle, which usually means someone is up to no good... but that thread is more or less dropped after one scene. There just wasn't a lot to be entertained by.
And what *was* entertaining was clearly not meant to be. Some of the music that is overdubbed is terribly inappropriate - when our deformed monster is given orders to "kill them all," we get wacky comedy music. And the main bad guy's death in the end is a real knee-slapper. Basically, he accidentally wraps a chain around his neck, trips over a ledge, and hangs himself. Our heroes have no active role in any of it.
Plus, the romantic angle between Anna and a reporter, who is sent to cover the murder of the two girls from the prologue, is just stunningly bad. The reporter (George) is introduced in a "comedy" scene where he comes across Anna skinny-dipping in a lake near the castle (later she claims to be skinny-dipping takes her mind off of her nightmares). It's supposed to be played for laughs, but it is really just groan-worthy. Even better, the next time we see them (which clearly can't be more than a day or two) - they are in love and going to be married! It makes no sense at all - I actually had to stop and rewind to make sure I didn't miss a new character. Their romance just grinds whatever liitle forward momentum the film had to a halt.
And, this is not the movie's fault, but the Amazon feed I was watching was no good. It looked less black and white and more sepia-toned, and the dark scenes were pretty hard to make out. I figured it was a transfer issue, and about half-way through the movie, I got some good old video tape distortion for my viewing pleasure. So you have a movie, shot on film, transferred to VHS, (probably) transferred to DVD, then digitized for Amazon. So yeah, it didn't look great. Amazon Prime Instant is a double edged sword - they clearly don't have the same (dubious) standards as Netflix Instant, so you see a lot of poor quality (picture) stuff on there. But sometimes poorly transferred is better than nothing at all. Well, in this case, nothing may have been better, but I digress.
Incidentally, the movie that got me into Amazon Prime in the first place was a poor, poor, transfer of Night of the Demon (the bigfoot one). I wasn't having any luck finding it. I had ordered the DVD, only to have it cancelled with no explanation. Then, one day, it showed up on Amazon Prime; and it was worth it. Someone release a BluRay of that, stat! Two years later I'm still a member...
Ultimately
I would not recommend this film.
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