Camillo Mastrocinque isn’t perhaps the first name that springs to mind when talk turns to 60s Italian Gothic cinema. He was more likely to be found signing comedy films starring the popular comedian Totò and his frequent partner Peppino De Filippo. His introduction to the genre came very late in his career (he was 63 when he started work on Crypt of Horror, also released as Terror in the Crypt) and he got the gig only after original director Antonio Margheriti dropped out and his name was put forward by his agent. He displays a surprising and unexpected knack for creating a spooky atmosphere but is sabotaged by a hastily written and dull script.
Laura von Karnstein (Adriana Ambesi) is suffering from vivid nightmares about the deaths of her relatives who then turn up dead in real life, their bodies drained of blood. Her father, Count Ludwig von Karnstein (Christopher Lee) is becoming increasingly convinced that Laura is the victim of a curse placed upon the family by their ancestor Sira von Karnstein who was executed for witchcraft. Karnstein has been unable to find an image of Sira and hires genealogist/art restorer Friedrich Klauss (José Campos) to find some record of her. Housekeeper Rowena (Nela Conjiu) tries to help Laura by using black magic but only the arrival of another young woman, Lyuba (Ursula Davis), stranded when her carriage crashes, can lift her spirits. As Laura becomes increasingly attracted to Lyuba, more bodies are discovered and Laura becomes the prime suspect.
Crypt of Horror certainly has atmosphere to spare – it has rather less story to go around but what little there is is moodily shot by Julio Ortas and an uncredited Giuseppe Aquari. The screenwriters Tonino Valerii and Ernesto Gastaldi were contradictory about how long the script took to write (Tonino Valerii claimed it only took three days, Gastaldi said it was done and dusted in 24 hours after they lied to producer Marco Mariani about having a finished script ready for him) but either way, the haste in which it was written is all too evident. It sometimes feels unfinished, with plot strands that don’t really go anywhere (there’s some odd business involving parlour maid Annette (Vera Valmont) and her unrequited lust for Karnstein that seems to be being played for laughs though it’s not always clear),
Inevitably there are echoes of Mario Bava’s La maschera del demonio/Black Sunday (1960), particularly in the flashback to the killing of the witch and while Mastrocinque does a creditable enough job the film is just crying out for the more sympathetic hand of a Bava, Riccardo Freda or even a Margheriti to give it the pep it’s lacking though even they might have been defeated by the lifeless script. It’s loosely based on J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla (which had already been adapted after a fashion in both Carl Theodor Dreyer’s Vampyr (1932) and Roger Vadim’s Et mourir de plaisir/Blood and Roses (1960)) but Valerii and Gastaldi take characters, situations and the sapphic subtext from the original though largely abandon the vampirism. There are a few victims with bite marks and Ljuba is seen off with the traditional stake but the script mostly concerns itself with a witch’s curse than with the undead.
It’s all beautifully done and if Mastrocinque struggles to keep the plot engaging, from time to time he pulls off some memorable flourishes. Laura’s nightmares are particularly well staged (a shot of Ljuba seeming to glide into her bedroom at night is very creepy) and the discovery of the beggar (Angel Midlin, who has a faintly Marty Feldman-like appearance) hanging in the bell tower, his hand severed and used by Rowena as a macabre candelabra (a “hand of glory”) to light the way during one of her strange little rituals are both standouts. But the whole film looks stunning thanks to Ortas and Aquari, art director Demofilo Fidani and costume designer Mila Vitelli Valenza (credited as Milose).
The all make expert use of the film’s primary location, the then recently restored Castello Piccolomini in Balsorano, but it’s just so dull. You’ll get by on the atmosphere and the impressive cast (Lee doesn’t get a lot to do but as ever, he’s a commanding presence even with a set of impressive but perhaps anachronistic sideburns) but by the end you’ll be longing for something a bit snappier and with more substance. There’s a neat reversal of expectations wherein the audience is deliberately misled over who the vampire actually is which briefly piques the interest but despite ticking all the Italian Gothic boxes (storms rage with deafening intensity, the dresses are cut as low as contemporary mores would allow, the castle is full of secrets both physical and familial) it never quite comes together as a fully satisfying whole.
Mastrocinque only made one other Gothic horror film, Un angelo per Satana/An Angel for Satan (1966) starring Barbara Steele in her final Italian Gothic. In his final years, Mastrocinque retreated to the more familiar territory of comedies, including the rock and roll musical La più bella coppia del mondo (1968) and a cobbled together tribute to the recently deceased Totò in Totò Story the same year before moving into television for his last few gigs.
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