Another suggestion for Jess Franco Birthday viewing. This was released in a crudely dubbed, cut down edit on VHS, under the title CASTLE OF THE CREEPING FLESH, in the late 1980s. A more recent German language Blu-ray has surfaced on YouTube, It's the uncut version and in very good video quality. Watch it before it gets removed! Howard Vernon, Adrian Hoven, Michel Lemoine and his then wife Janine Reyaud are featured. They were all in the previous year's SUCCUBUS/NECROMOMICON (1967), directed by Jess Franco and co-produced by the same company, Adrian Hoven's Aquila Film.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0GDfHp0dQbohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0GDfHp0dQbo
Jess Franco reportedly (according to Howard Vernon) came up with the original treatment (written on a bar napkin?) for this exploitationer, directed by producer Hoven himself. One of those decadent surveys of decadence which were so popular, post LA DOLCE VITA, in the 1960s. The budget conscious Hoven recycled the cast of Franco's NECRONOMICON (SUCCUBUS, 1967), sans Jack Taylor. Michel Lemoine, was also in the trio of Aquila films (including KISS ME, MONSTER and SADISTEROTICA/TWO UNDERCOVER ANGELS) and here plays a wealthy rapist, Baron Brack, who gets very rough justice at the hands of the Earl of Saxon (Howard Vernon). I think Franco may have given the idea for this to Hoven as a thank you for bankrolling and letting him direct NECROMONICON just the way he wanted.
German actor-producer-singer Adrian Hoven, who directed this under the beard Percy Parker, would go on appear in several Rainer Werner Fassbinder films (WORLD ON A WIRE, FOX AND HIS FRIENDS) and become involved with the infamous MARK OF THE DEVIL film series, appearing in and directing the second installment, WITCHES (1972).
IM SCHLOSS DER BLUTIGEN BEGIERDE is fun, but nowhere near as layered or unique as a Jess Franco film. It's kind of a Gothic-Eurotrash fantasia which unfolds in the late 1960s and the 17th Century. Howard Vernon holds the show together, and it's always good to have Janine Reynaud on hand as a party girl. In any case, Happy Birthday to Jess Franco, gone 5 years ago. He is missed.
(C) Robert Monell, 2018
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