aka La Plus Longue Nuit du Diable, aka The Devil’s Nightmare, aka The Devil Walks at Midnight

• Directed by Jean Brismee
• Written by Jean Brismee and Charles Lecocq
• Starring
  • Erika Blanc
  • Jean Servais
  • Daniel Emilfork
• Produced by Charles Lecocq

Although this film is more readily available these days under the title The Devil’s Nightmare, as recently re-released by from Redemption, I watched it as Castle of Death, released as Volume 5 of “Facing All Death” in 1988 with a really amateurish cover.

And now, even having seen it, I’m not sure I can venture an opinion on the movie itself, because the print these Facing All Death clowns used was just awful. It looked like they projected their crummy print on the wall and videotaped from it; colors were washed out, lines and scratches abounded, sound faded in and out, and skips and jumpcuts obliterated whole lines of dialogue. Each length of footage has a different tint to the black: Green, red, blue, green, blue — twenty minutes in I was screaming for color correction.

And in the opening credits, there was an obvious freezeframe in which they superimposed their new title: Castle of Death. Piracy, anyone?

Nevertheless, I’ll try to see the movie beyond the print.

We open in Berlin 1945 with a bunch of stock footage of the bombing of Berlin. (Of course, in this movie, the stock footage mixed well with the quality of the rest of the film.) Baron Von Rhuenberg, in a bunker under the city, waits as his wife gives birth to their older child. It is a daughter. Sadly, he dismisses the nurse from the room and buries a dagger in the infant.

Fast-forward to 1971. (It was kind of odd to realize that the time between the war and the events of the story was less than the years between the events of the story and now.) A group of tourists, finding a road impassible, ask to stay the night at Von Rhuenberg’s castle. As the evening progresses, he tells them of the family curse: In the 12th century a Von Rhuenberg sold his soul to the devil, and the price of that pact is that the oldest daughter of each generation becomes a succubus, serving Satan to lead souls to hell.

Now, I had heard in advance that the tourists were each going to be victims of one of the seven deadly sins, so I started looking for them. Gluttony was easy to find; the first we see of the tour guide, he’s driving the van with one hand and chowing down on a chicken leg with the other. The others were a little harder (they never actually mentioned the seven deadly sins in the movie), but I think I’ve got it:

Tour guide = gluttony. Dies drinking poisoned wine at the end of a midnight meal served by the succubus.

Rich crabby lady = avarice. (This was a hard one, because she was initially accusing her husband of marrying her only for her money so I originally had him in this slot, but he gets a different comeuppance.) Buried alive in the gold dust accumulated by the Baron (who’s also an alchemist). Of course, she’s shown where it is by the succubus.

Blonde = sloth. Not really much of a character flaw — she has a lie-down when they get to the castle, and goes to bed early. This is a sin? Dies from a snake bite — she would have had plenty of time to get away from the slow-moving snake, see, but she was asleep.

Brunette & rich woman’s husband = lust. The brunette is shown as horny really early; as soon as she and the blonde get to their room, they strip to their undies and almost have a lesbian scene. (In the version from Redemption, reportedly, the do have a lesbian scene. I wuz robbed!) She and the husband then sneak out together; however, they have the bad judgment to stage their tryst in the torture room. He gets the guillotine, she gets the Iron Maiden. (Dude! Excellent!)

Old geezer = anger. That’s easy; he snaps and everyone and liberally dispenses insults. In the end, he gets angry at the sex sounds coming from the previous two, goes out to give them a piece of his mind, and is tricked by the succubus into walking out a tower window (in a hideously obvious day-for-night shot).

Pride = seminary student. He smugly beats the old geezer at chess three times in a row. Oddly enough, he survives — although it would be a complete spoiler to tell how.

You may have noticed that’s only six sins. The list I have gives “envy” as the one I’m missing, and I didn’t see anyone that fit the bill. (I suppose if we allowed “incontinence” to be the extra sin, then the adulterous husband would get that, but it seems like a stretch.)

It’s a nifty little idea, the pacing is languid but not dragging, and I’m sure it could be a good little minor classic if seen under the proper circumstances. I, alas, saw it, as it were, “through a glass darkly.”

Some Notable Totables:

• body count: 8
• breasts: 0 (your mileage may vary — see the note above)
• explosions: 1 (plus the stock footage of the bombing)
• dream sequences: 0 (although the priest isn’t sure)
• ominous thunderstorms: 1
• actors who’ve appeared on Star Trek: 0