Castle of Blood

Castle of Blood (Danza Macabra) is a 1964 Italian-French gothic horror picture directed by Antonio Margheriti. Barbara Steele and Georges Rivière lead the cast, supported by Margarete Robsahm, Arturo Dominici, Silvano Tranquilli and Umberto Raho. The production had first been assigned to Sergio Corbucci, with Gianni Grimaldi and Bruno Corbucci intended as its writers, but a clash of schedules pushed the job to Margheriti, a close friend of Corbucci. To prevent delays, Corbucci was still called in to shoot one scene himself. When the film opened in Italy in 1964 it fared poorly at the box office, and that disappointment eventually drove Margheriti to redo the same story in colour as Web of the Spider (1971). Over time it has come to be regarded as a representative work of the Italian gothic horror wave of the 1960s.