jadavix "Il castello dalle porte di fuoco", also known as "Scream of the Demon Lover", is a tedious horror flick with a plot that would have better suited a half-hour length blown up to an endless hour-and-a-half.The story is about an allegedly young and beautiful woman who goes to stay with a mad scientist in Victorian times. While there she is repeatedly menaced by a flaky hand while trying to sleep and apparently dreams or hallucinates herself stretched out topless on a rack.We end up getting the idea that this is a Jekyll-and-Hyde type story. Or is it? Who cares? I didn't. You probably won't either.For fans of sleazy Euro-horror, the nudity in the film is fairly negligible, either glimpsed from a distance or shot with something in the way so you don't get a good look. There is also really no violence.

melvelvit-1 This is the second José Luis Merino film I've seen this week and comparing the two, SCREAM OF THE DEMON LOVER is much more sexual in nature than TERROR OF THE LIVING DEAD due, no doubt, to the Italians being involved. DEMON LOVER is also set in the nineteenth century and stars Erna Schürer as a kittenish chemist who's come to Baron Dalmar's medieval estate to assist him in trying to bring his dead brother back to life. The villagers warn her that the Baron is killing women and ripping them to shreds after consensual sex but she stays on anyway, even after being drugged nightly and put on a rack in the dungeon (?!).Although it's nowhere near as atmospheric or entertaining, the movie owes something of a debt to Mario Bava's THE WHIP AND THE BODY and it's fascination with sadomasochistic mise-en-scène. The Baron and his hounds cut a dashing figure atop the grand staircase and sexy Schürer shows her globes a lot but she's outshone by the exquisite Agostina Belli, who also bares her boobs in the secondary role of a castle servant.Erna Schürer was born Emma Costantino in Naples, Italy and modeled for "Vogue" and "Harper's Bazaar"before appearing in the popular "fumetti" foto-comic "Satanik" in the mid-60s. Placed under contract by movie producer Alberto Grimaldi, Erna spent most of the '70s cranking out "classics" like EROTIC CONFESSIONS FROM A WOMEN'S PRISON, YOUR HANDS ON MY BODY, STRIP NUDE FOR YOUR KILLER, MY PLEASURE IS YOUR PLEASURE, and DEPORTED WOMEN OF THE SS SPECIAL SECTION before more-or-less disappearing from the cinema scene. There's no birth or death dates given for Erna on IMDb and there's precious little about her on the worldwide web, either, for that matter. Today, Schürer's sure as sh!t a GILF somewhere (unless she's split the scene, if you know what I mean).

macabro357 (aka: BLOOD CASTLE or SCREAM OF THE DEMON)*spoiler*This was a drive-in feature, co-billed with THE VELVET VAMPIRE. A Spanish-Italian co-production where a series of women in a village are being murdered around the same time a local count named Yanos Dalmar is seen on horseback, riding off with his 'man-eating' dog behind him.The townsfolk already suspect he is the one behind it all and want his castle burned down. The murders first began around the time Count Yanos' older brother, Count Igor Dalmar was horribly burned and killed in a lab accident.Then a woman Ivanna (Erna Schuer) that Igor hired before his death to assist him in his experiments shows up. Yanos agrees to hire her in place of his brother and together they seek the formulae for the regeneration of dead cells. Yanos wants to bring Igor's charred corpse back to life.But of course Igor is still alive (although horribly burned) and stalking and killing the women in the village. We see his char-broiled face appear at various points in the film, so we know he's still alive, making the whole thing seem a little bit too obvious.Igor meets another fiery end when he gets into a fight with Yanos over Ivanna, with the burning candles falling on to the same bed that Igor stumbles on to, meeting yet another, final char-broiled end.The Retromedia DVD is taken from a VHS source and looks quite grainy and bad. Other than an even scratchier trailer, no other extras are included. Although it has a nice, creepy Spanish castle and good atmospherics, I found it to be fairly boring and predictable, with no excitement or mystery, whatsoever. 3 out of 10.

fetmenful Ivana, a chemist, is hired by Baron Janos Dolmer to work in his secret laboratory in his big castle. The castle is located outside a small village, in which a series of brutal murders of young women has been committed. The townspeople all suspect Janos and his big doberman dogs (or is it rotweilers?). Ivana moves into the castle and pretty soon strange things starts to happen. Nobody of Janos' staff seems to want her around, her drink gets spiked and she has nightmares of a torture chamber in the cellar. Or is it really a dream? Janos himself is a bit suspicious, and the experiment he wants Ivana to participate in is far from normal. It's quiet a good plot, and the characters are interesting. There are some logical gaps and the `scientific' discussions held between Ivana and Janos are laughable. The castle is beautiful and the atmosphere in the movie is very gothic. The flick features some nudity and sex.I'd give this one a 6 out of 10. I'd recommend `La plus longue nuit du diable' by Jean Brismée instead if you're looking for an excellent 70's gothic horror movie.