Camillo Mastrocinque's equally gothic follow-up to his criminally-underrated CRYPT OF HORROR (1963) stars Anthony Steffen as a Roberto, a sculptor called to the Montebruno estate to restore a statue pulled out of the lake. This coincides with the arrival of the patriarch's daughter Harriet (Barbara Steele) who, of course, bears a striking resemblance to the statue. In a vision, Roberto discovers that the statue is cursed and must be destroyed. When he wakes, he thinks nothing of it and begins a romance with Harriet who is starting to fall under the influence of the statue. She seduces a moronic manservant, the local schoolteacher who she accuses of rape (who is having an affair with Harriet's maid played by the gorgeous Ursula Davis who had a larger role in CRYPT OF HORROR), and a man whom she says she can never be with as long as his family is around. As mysterious deaths follow and Harriet’s behavior becomes more erratic, Roberto realizes that Harriet is indeed possessed by the statue which housed the ghost of an ancestor Madelena. Can he get to her before the requisite torch-wielding mob?

Although AN ANGEL FOR SATAN was dubbed into English, like Antonio Margheriti’s THE UNNATURALS and Luigi Bazzoni’s little-known LA DONNA DEL LAGO, it has not surfaced in an English-dubbed version which may be why it is little-discussed as a high-point in Italian gothic horror (the same can be said for CRYPT). The storyline is easy to follow even though the film is in Italian, especially if one is familiar with the uncredited source story “Venus d’Ille” by Prosper Merimee (Italian prints credit a novel by Luigi Emanuelle which may or may not be true; after all Henry James did his own loose reworking of the story as “The Last of the Valerii”) which Mario and Lamberto Bava adapted into an elegant hour-long TV movie in the early eighties. The Merimee story itself apparently has more classical antecedents which may also have inspired the opening of Leopoldo Sacher-Masoch’s “Venus in Furs” in which the hero dreams of entertaining the goddess as a marble statue wrapped in furs. Unlike Merimee’s tale, the statue houses the spirit of an ancestor rather than possibly the goddess Venus herself. The film is certainly more eventful than the original story with Harriet wandering the town, tempting men and even finding enough time to flirt with her maid. As in CRYPT, Mastrocinque creates some genuinely unnerving supernatural scenes. The previous film had a sequence where the maid used a severed hand to lead her to the killer and another where during flashes of lightning her corpse sits up in its coffin to point at her murderer. Here, in Roberto’s vision, a wrapped up canvas unfurls to reveal the face of a woman who tells him about the curse. The face on the canvas seems to move, bulging out of the canvas. This at first seems like an optical effect but it appears that the face on the canvas was made of rubber (the effect recalls both the breathing door of Robert Wise’s THE HAUNTING and the hands reaching through the plaster in Polanski’s REPULSION).

Mastrocinque was definitely influenced by Bava (see the Italian DVD of Bava’s BLACK SUNDAY for a short homage to Bava by Mastrocinque). While Margheriti’s black and white horrors CASTLE OF BLOOD and LONG HAIR OF DEATH were chilling but somewhat clunky (the latter more so than the former), both of Mastrocinque’s films are slick and right up their with Bava’s BLACK SUNDAY, BLACK SABBATH, and KILL BABY KILL. Steele is at her best as usual, appearing simultaneously young and mature, both innocent and sensual with those skeletal cheekbones and large, dark eyes. Steffen also acquits himself well, although he has always looked more like a Spaghetti Western actor than a gothic horror hero. Halina Zalewska (the heroine of Margheriti’s LONG HAIR OF DEATH) has a supporting role. Giuseppe Aquari’s black and white photography is gorgeous and Francesco De Masi’s score has the same brooding spirit of his work on Freda’s LO SPETTRO but is far superior here (this would be a nice score to have).

My source for review is a cropped, Italian-language print. The image is nice but obviously should be framed at about 1.75 or 1.85 for the characters to fit comfortably on either side of the frame. An anamorphic widescreen DVD of this would be a welcome event. English subtitles would probably help communicate some of more intricate details of the plot. I wonder if the English dub track is simply lost or if it is still in the vaults somewhere but has not turned up because no companies have shown interest in the film. It seems like an ideal release for a company like Mondo Macabro or Synapse as a follow-up to CASTLE OF BLOOD (though I hear that title didn’t sell all that well). A film in definite need to rediscovery and restoration.

Nice review, Eric. I agree it's odd how an english print of this hasn't surfaced, even in the grey market. It did play on TV in english ages ago, so there must be a 16mm print somewhere.

As long as you brought up Mastrocinque's CRYPT OF HORROR (which I haven't seen), this might be a splendid time to mention that it's getting a DVD release from Image on Tuesday under the title Crypt of the Vampire.

I'm not sure why it hasn't surfaced on video in English in the UK but I'm sure it would have had more of a presence in English (at least on the grey market) if AIP had picked it up. Then at least we'd have some 16mm TV prints floating around as with CRYPT OF HORROR.

Image/Retromedia's CRYPT OF THE VAMPIRE is supposed to be anamorphic 1.85:1 and in English. If it were just Retromedia, I'd assume it was a US 16mm print (I don't think it played theatrically) but since Image is also involved it might be an Italian master of the English dub left over from their "Euroshock Collection" days. I've got in on pre-order and am hoping its a definitive presentation (at least of the English version, the Italian version ran with English subtitles on SBS years ago).

The English version of Crypt of Horror was released in the UK on VHS about 20 years ago. I own a copy - Chris Lee actually dubs his own voice in this one which he didn't do in most of the Italian chillers he was in during the 1960's. I thought it was OK but not as good as most of the other 1960's gothics I have seen and the direction was a lot less atmospheric than Bava's, Freda's or enev Marghereti's earlier work.

Thanks for writing this up Eric. I have never seen it in any form but it surely is a lost gem of Itailian gothic horror. Hopefully someone will track this down and put it out, I'd rather see it in Italian with English subs so perhaps the loss of the English dib is a blessing in disguise.
CRYPT OF HORROR is one of my favorite horror movies of all time. It's a terrific twist on the Carmilla story and has wonderful performances, incredible atmosphere and a few still potent shock moments. SBS in Australia ran the Italian print ( 1.66 and English subs ) 10 years ago and it was a thing of beauty to behold. Sadly, I don't hold out much hope for anything Image handles these days ( most recent casualty is BLACK MAGIC, they just don't have a lick of quality control over there ), but there is a review up at DVD Drive in and it seems they got the European print, and not the AIP TV version, so this is great news. The review states it was hard matted at 1.85 which I would say is incorrect based on the SBS presentation, but I can't wait to pick it up and see for myself!

Very cool review. I want to see this!

I also want to see Mastrocinque's much, much earlier (1942) psycho-gothic exercise LA STATUA VIVENTE/The Living Statue (released in the U.S. with the title SCORNED FLESH)

The title's suggestively related, no?

Actually, the movie's not about a literal statue. Rather, it features a female doppelganger/substitute for a dead woman. A sailor on leave goes cruising, falls deeply uncannily in love, loses his woman to a car accident on their wedding day, goes off the deep end into alcohol abuse, and in his still vulnerable and semi-disoriented state encounters another woman who is a dead ringer for his dead bride, a literal whore and hardly the sanctified Madonna of his obsessing persistent fantasy. Will she be willing to be made over into a living holy effigy of the woman she resembles?

What it really sounds like is Vertigo. Curious...

I have the UK Stablecane tape of CRYPT OF HORROR and it was a very nice transfer for the time. I have the CRYPT OF THE VAMPIRE DVD on order. I have a copy of the SBS broadcast so it will be interesting to compare the two.

According to the DVD Drive-in review:

Does this mean that the export version credits have the real names of the cast and crew? The Italian version is full of anglicized names such as Thomas Miller as director and William Mulligan as producer (the UK tape features abridged credits which only credit the main cast, the title, and Mastrocinque's director credit as Thomas Miller).

Did SBS ever subtitle AN ANGEL FOR SATAN? There has been an unsubtitled version floating around but I thought I heard about a subtitled version and wondered if it was culled from such a broadcast. Any weblinks with a complete list of Italian, French, or Spanish horror films that they broadcast subtitled?

BTW, here is a link to my CRYPT OF HORROR review from a while ago. It's at the Latarnia forums. I thought I posted the review here as well but I can never get the search function for this forum to work. Here is the link.

What's the documented history for the dubbed release? I'm not finding anything for it's ever having shown up in New York or in L.A. in theaters or on TV...using the admittedly limited sample of just two papers (Times of each city) in just two cities in just one country (Note: the scans I'm looking through have excellent character recognition and one can see all the other Anthony Steffen and Barbara Steele flicks that were in theaters and on television: Anthony was most often seen in NIGHT...EVELYN and in VENDETTA AT SORRENTO, and once in a Django film mistranscribed as FEW DOLLARS FOR GYPSY ! )

Does anyone actually recall seeing this in English? Are there ads? I know ANICA states a 1966 American release as ANGEL, but that's all I've found so far.

I believe it played theatrically in the UK in English but I don't think it was ever released in America. I've never seen an American ad for it (though I've never seen a British ad or poster for it either).

I've spoken to someone who swears he saw the dubbed version on TV years ago. Hardly conclusive proof, I realize, but it's someone whose memory I trust.

The subtitled version is a grey market dupe done in-house by the grey-marketeer. The quality is substandard.

There was no US release, but there was a UK release -- I have some of the British stills.

Thanks for the answers!

Somewhat incidentally, playing around with old digitized newspapers today, made available through a proprietary database (JSTOR or something like it) available in finer libraries, and finding myself able to glide through decades and drop on my prey like a hawk in mere moments was an astounding experience. A friend explained that the best scans like what I was experiencing have a dual layer of information: a photocopy-like reproduction of the object itself via something like JPEG and a behind the scenes 'smarter' character recognition geared record of the same thing, enabling one to search movie posters, as well as conventional 'text' documents, for words.

Fantastically good as a research tool. I'm curious how many other papers that eurocult fans might be interested in as resources have undergone this kind of digitization. Does someone offer sample UK dailies, for instance, or German and Italian ones?

Not to forget what earlier microfilm and fiche have in repositories here and there, though they take much longer to work through. I used to be somewhere with decades worth of major Euro and generally International newspapers to spool through on reels or slot into viewers, lined up in drawers, and I gained an amazing amount of knowledge pretty fast tracking the movie sections cross the world 'day by day'.

I tracked a copy down and watched it ASAP, and I want a proper DVD right now!

Great, well made, very well performed light entertainment sixties film on so many levels and in so many ever shifting genres, mere millimetres away from being a decadent pop-trashy Spaghetti Western travesty of atmospheric horror, the pervasive 'tastefulness' really well gauged to keep it from collapsing into a totally incoherent and campy mash-up of disparate sex and violence exploitation and art film elements (plus every genre conceivable short of Jungle movie tossed in), while leaning lightly enough on the production to keep all that good stuff going, and never be boring. It's in Black and White, and it's still not boring in the least while being halfway intelligent and only occasionally ridiculous ("Oh, don't worry about that gibbering idiot running screaming through the streets. He's a woodcarver none too swift with the aim of his hatchet and he's always cutting himself up!"), and occasionally ridiculous is good in my opinion when the foolishness rises approximately to the level of Bunuel on an undemanding day, namely his SUSANNA, which this resembles a great deal: a witchy woman (Steele) dropped down into a sleepy town and seducing everybody.

Which is good fun in itself when everybody is a who's who of Italian Western guys (Mario Brega of the Leones in the best non-Leone role of his career chief among them apart from Steffen...who was never really a Western actor to begin with, most often originally cast in parts just like this one: a slightly neuresthenic, refined, Romantic Victorian hero) and the occasional female ("We women are much prettier than men, don't you think?" Steele ponders while removing her bodice and seducing poor maid Rita away from poor Spaghetti Westerner Aldo Berti)...

BUT this is also a Steele dual-role tour de force (good girl, meek snail, by day, burn, witch, burn!, by night) AND a Margheriti like haunted house movie, and a Giallo in disguise.

Further it's an actors' showcase. Everyone's fine here, but Claudio Gora as Barbara's uncle The Count should be singled out: he's my all time favorite Italian chameleon character actor, looking and acting differently every time one sees him, and yet with a specialty as to the kind of urbane character he plays better than anyone, and so nice to see him paired with his wife Marina Berti, another class act who automatically elevates any film she's in a couple notches thanks to her acting intelligence. These two really allow the movie to work at its best level, I'm positive.

Finally, more or less, this should be seen as a response not only to the then recent wave of terror surfed by Bava, but to an earlier one as well of the early forties. The beautiful opening scene with a boat oared ominously, melancholically across a lake to an island of the dead is an homage to films by past Italian Gothic masters (of Mastrocinque's generation) like Mario Soldati and his MALOMBRA, specifically. Composer Francesco De Masi rises to the occasion here, as if he's writing music to go with the kind of movies that initially inspired him, more like Georges Delrue than his usual Anthony Steffen Westerns...though I also loved how he adjusted his same-as-ever Spaghetti Western riding music to Steele's more ladylike gait as she trots along with whip in hand! This really is a best of all possible worlds combination of my favorite Italian movie things.

And then to NEW YORK RIPPER. What a contrast.

The CRYPT OF THE VAMPIRE looks good, although not as good as, say, Image's BLACK SUNDAY which should be the standard for Italian black and white horror transfers. The lack of a scene selection menu (or any other features besides a website link) is kind of disappointing. I wasn't expecting much in the way of supplements but the production of the disc itself feels like it was rushed. The cover design seems like is sort of bland compared to their SLAUGHTER OF THE VAMPIRES DVD. On the other hand, we have a good anamorphic release of the film which should be more than satisfying for a late night viewing.