Opening Eastwood's Barbara Steele double feature DVD expecting to just find the 2 films on the cover,I was surprised to find a bonus disc with 2 more titles! Having already seen the excellent The Ghost,I got set to close the coffin on my run of Steele viewings. View on the film:Made as a love letter to Italian Gothic Horror and the lead actress, co-writer/(with Fabio De Agostini) director Mario Caiano goes round an odd way in expressing it,as Caiano & cinematographer Enzo Barboni dashes of surrealist nightmares, yelping deaths and lovingly-held close-ups are wiped clean by the majority of the run-time taken up by a costume drama romance,which holds little atmosphere of fear or urgency,with Ennio Morricone's classy score trying to bring shivers to the oddly calm and casual mood of the movie. Going blonde for her dual role, (perhaps an in-joke to her role in Elvis's Flaming City?)Barbara Steele grabs the film with an excellent sensuality as Jenny and Muriel Arrowsmith,with Steele lighting the flames of unease between her and Helga Liné's Solange,along with keeping Muriel in a nightmare state in the nightmare castle.

A crazy scientist catches his wife cheating and tortures both her and her lover to death, after he marries her sister because she inherits the castle and the ghosts come back for revenge.The movie is full of horror clichés. Crazy scientists, castles, ghosts, screaming, but in the atmosphere of a 60's Gothic horror movie those clichés seem to be kind of charming. If this movie was done in our time with the same story and dialogues that made me giggle, but using modern special effects I would not be as generous with my rating.The atmosphere of the movie is definitely its best part. It is very dark and beautiful. The castle and the fact that it is black/white make it look very chilling and one really feels the haunted atmosphere that is the positive part of this movie.Another great thing that saves this movie from a 2/10 rating is the fact that the "Queen of Scream" Barbara Steele is actually playing a dual role. And she is great at it. We can see the strong difference between Muriel and Jenny. The only problem is that the part of Muriel is much better than Jenny. Muriel is the goth beauty with a dark and sexy side while Jenny is sort of a wall flower, and yet we only see Muriel in a few scenes at the beginning and the end. Those scenes are actually very powerful. It is of course not very scary for our time, but seeing Muriel play the organ in the castle at the beginning of the movie made me think that I will love it. Unfortunately the middle of the movie are badly written dialogues that make the movie go very slow.The rest of the cast does a good job with this poor script as well. Paul Muller is great in the role of a crazy scientist and I was surprised to see that this is the only part Laurence Clift has played.This movie is not something that I would consider a classic, but it is beautiful and something one could enjoy on a thunder night in in a dark room while eating candy. For a good old horror movie there definitely are better choices.

Usually I like Barbara Steele's movies, but Mario Caiano's "Amanti d'oltretomba" ("Nightmare Castle" in English) is a little too slow-moving. Steele plays the wife of a scientist who looks like a cross between Christopher Plummer, Donald Sutherland and Benjamin Netanyahu. He kills her after discovering that she's having an affair, only to learn that she left her money to her sister. More shocks follow.The cinematography and setting create a very eerie feeling, and I can forgive the lousy dubbing, but the movie is just too slow-moving. This isn't a terrible movie, but I wish that it had gotten to the main story quicker than it did. Still, Barbara Steele looks great, as always.

*Spoiler/plot- 1965, The Faceless Monster, A mad scientist kills his wife and her lover, partly for revenge and partly for his experiments animating blood. A Gothic tale of murder and revenge from the grave.*Special Stars- Barbara Steel plays the wife.*Theme- Justice is for everyone.*Based on- 19th century ghost stories.*Trivia/location/goofs- Is online. Italian nobleman and his house.*Emotion- The horror aspects of this film are much better than the thin SF elements, with the haunting of the dead murdered lovers. This story 'feel' is very reminiscent of TV "Dark Shadows" or the E. A. Poe stories.