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Nightmare Castle

Nightmare Castle is a 1965 film from Italy, directed by Mario Caiano, running 105 minutes. reelscum files it under euro-gothic.

Poster for Nightmare Castle
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Year
1965 · 1960s films
Country
Italy
Runtime
105 min
Director
Mario Caiano
Updated
10 Aug 2026
Obscurity
cult (44/100)
Also known as
Les amants d'outre-tombe · The Night of the Doomed · The Faceless Monster · Nightmare Castle

Defined in the glossary: Euro-gothic

Barbara Steele twice over, one of them back from the grave, scored by a young Morricone.

A jealous scientist catches his wife with the gardener, tortures the pair to death, and drains their blood to keep his ageing mistress young, and that is all in the first reel. Then the dead wife's nervous half-sister arrives to inherit the estate, and Barbara Steele plays both women, victim and revenant, in the sort of dual role that sealed her as the face of Italian gothic. Mario Caiano shoots it cheap and cruel, all cobwebs and candlelight, and a young Ennio Morricone supplies one of his first horror scores.

Cheap, mean and dripping, with Steele doing the work of two.

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