Crypt of Horror (1964)

 "In some houses death is a tenant."

This is, so to speak, a spaghetti horror, with Christopher Lee being a kind of Clint Eastwood here (not a phrase I ever thought I'd write) as the star and only native English speaker amongst a largely Italian cast in L'Aquila. It's reasonably straightforward sdaptation of Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla with a few names changed but the plot largely left intact, and will be interesting to compare with Hammer's The Vampire Lovers when I inevitably get there.

And it's the plot that makes this film surpisingly good. Lee is, as ever, superb, and well-cast as a Count Karstein who worries that his ill daughter may have been possessd by the spirit of a powerful witch of an ancestor- a true gothic situation with an evil from the distant past threatening a castle and deserted village. The historical Italian setting really emphasises this sense of an ever-present past threatening the present.

This film is, perhaps, a collection of all the usual '60s horror film tropes with all the above plus more. But what makes it special is the unusally intricate plot, with twist and turns throughout and a rather effective whodunit element towards the end. It's weird that all the dialogue except Lee's is dubbed, but the script is surprisingly strong and the film well-directed, and done as straight horror with no ttempt at high camp whatsoever- a dangerous thing to mattempt with this sort of film but just about pulled off successfully.

Overall, this is surprisingly good, and deserves an audience beyond the usual Christopher Lee completists.