"Down -- steadily down it crept.
I took a frenzied pleasure in
contrasting its downward with its lateral velocity.
To the right -- to
the left -- far and wide -- with the shriek of a damned spirit;
to my
heart with the stealthy pace of the tiger!
I alternately laughed and
howled as the one or the other idea grew predominant."
Edgar Allan Poe - The Pit and the Pendulum
In
19th Century Germany, Count Frederic Regula (Christopher Lee) is
sentenced to death by quartering after being found guilty of the deaths
of twelve women. Three decades later, a strange man tracks
down Roger von Marienberg (Lex Barker), a nobleman who is trying
to track down his parents, and gives him a letter - it asks him to come
to Count Regula's castle. On the way he encounters the carriage
of Baroness Lilian von Brabant (Karin Dor) who has received a
similar note. Joined by a suspicious clergyman called Fabian, they
travel through the dark and mysterious landscape to Regula's castle
where they discover their connections to the Count, and a hideous
scheme to return him to life...
Gothic horror was big in the 1960s - kicked off by Hammer's globally sucessful Curse of Frankenstein
(1957), gothic horror films were soon being sucessfully shot in the USA by Roger
Corman and in Italy by Mario Bava and others, however the German film industry was
still undeveloped at the beginning of the decade - slowly recovering
from the effects of the war, the German film studios were gradually
clawing back audiences with the Heimatfilms
("homeland films", mostly romances and dramas) targeted at the domestic
market. At the beginning of the 1960s the studios had big sucesses with
the dark Dr. Mabuse and Edgar Wallace crime thrillers, and later with
the near-epic Karl May Westerns and adventure films - finally the
studios had the finaces, and export markets to allow them to follow the
popular international genres of the time.
Although nominally based on Poe, as
with many credited adaptations of the author's works, the film runs its
own plot around Poe's basic theme - in this case, the striking image of
a swinging sycthe on a pendulum and an impending pit of snakes. Castle of the Walking Dead's
script is decently written - when the doomed Count at the start
threatens revenge on those who kill him then the viewer might well
expect a cliché "monster rises from the dead to stalk the
living, killing lots of random peasants" storyline, fortunately instead
we get more of a traditional literary tone as the Count's two intented
victims are actually invited, cordially, to the castle. A scene in a
small town, with the local people denying the existance of the castle,
equally appears to be rather cliché,
although unlike many horror films of the genre, the castle is far
enough away from the town (a full day's ride) that the children in the
town could plausibly have never heard of it. On arrival at the castle
the story becomes rather confused at times. A lot of the effectively
eerie tension build up in the journey is lost when the "living dead"
Count seems to be bizarrely courteous, with some rather banal
and convenient dialogue. Despite the short run-time (just 80 minutes), the film's
pacing is quite slow, more so than most of the Hammer and AIP gothics -
the journey to the castle itself takes a good twenty minutes - although
the film never seems to drag and with
some effectively tense scenes it eventually builds up to a coherent, if
rather anti-climactic, even disappointing conclusion.
Director Harald Reinl, and his frequent collaborator Ernst W. Kalinke as cinematographer worked together over twenty times, starting with the
Heimatfilm,
Die Fischerin vom Bodensee (1956) and continuing through the dark Edgar Wallace/Dr. Mabuse productions and the epic Karl May Westerns. With
Castle of the Walking Dead their
effective team-work can be seen, combined with some truly stunning
production values that put the film at the top of the gothic horrors on
visual terms. The availability of real locations for the town scenes,
rather than the sets that Hammer were forced to use, give these scenes
a good sense of realism, while the eerie sequences in the haunted
forest are very effectively realised, as is the gothic horror splendor
of the castle itself - full of skull lined passages, secret traps and
hideously surreal paintings. It is clear that the film is trying to eschew
realism and go for all out nightmarish atmosphere, and it achieves this
perfectly. The music varies slightly between the English and German
soundtracks and is more effective in the German (the ending on the
English print is almost ruined by a horribly cheesy, upbeat score), but
through most of the film it is the same, and sucessful in building the
tension and atmosphere.
Lex
Barker was an unexpected star of German cinema in the 1960s, leaving
Hollywood after being typecast for his repeated roles as Tarzan, he
found work in Italian adventure films, and later in the iconic role of
Old Shatterhand in the German Karl May Westerns - the role which saw him take on near superstar status (in Germany at least) for several years. Castle of the Walking Dead is
one of the last films he made before his untimely death in 1973 and he
gives a quite typical performance - although unlikely to win any awards
for emoting, his presence is strong, and his physical size gives his
action scenes some real authenticity. Christopher Lee had built on
his popularity in the Hammer gothic horrors by appearing in
various European films including Mario Bava's gothic horror The Whip and the Body (1963) and Antonio Margheriti's
Virgin of Nuremberg
(1963) as well as playing the lead role in Harry Alan Tower's German
produced Fu Manchu series - his casting here was all but inevitable,
and he gives a typically strong performance, especially in the opening
scenes, although he doesn't elicit much fear after his rise from the
tomb thanks to the rather dull dialogue.
The very attractive
Karin Dor had risen through the German cinema genres, appearing in
several Edgar Wallace thrillers and several of the Karl May Westerns.
The largest role of her career had come early in 1967, playing the
unsucessful SPECTRE henchwoman Helga Brandt in Japanese set James Bond
adventure
You Only Live Twice
(1967). Here she gives a good performance as the victimised Baroness
and manages to make the role about more than just screaming. Some
rather unexpected casting comes in the form of Vladimir Medar as
"Father" Fabian - a Jugoslavian character actor, he was almost
unknown until he was cast in several minor roles in the early Karl May
Westerns and in a more important role in Sergio Corbucci's early
Spaghetti Western
Grand Canyon Massacre
(1965), also shot in Jugoslavia. His distinctive bearded appearance
made him a popular figure, and for a short lived period he become a
small star in Germany, he gives a strong performance here, very
remniscent of British actor Andrew Kier who would doubtless have played
the role if this film had been made by Hammer.
