Self-important, over-dramatic, uninspired.

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

Mostly, the movie is committed to the value of a good time.

A woman stays overnight at the Devil's caste and dreams of Helga and her lover. They are Germans who speak Italian and like garlic. There are witches and spell casters and a guy in a red hood as Magda wants Helga's boyfriend Hans.The restoration was bad in a number of spots and good in other. The erotica is the sell element of the film, and that aspect doesn't exist in the beginning and is heavy loaded into one scene of F/F lovers during some rite. Plot wise the story leaves much to be desired too. Over priced.Guide: Sex and nudity

Recommended to see this one after one has screened Rosalba Neri in Lady Frankenstein and Slaughter Hotel, so one gets a sense of what a standout she remains in such a paltry production. Italian horror seemed obsessed with jazzy mod bare-midriffed bellbottomed Italian gals peeking into musty old Gothic castles lorded over by dirty old men (The Devil's Wedding Night, The Playgirls and the Vampire, Tomb of Torture, The Bloody Pit of Horror), and as in so many of those movies Neri finds she looks exactly like a former countess in a Cormanesque style portrait. But then the movie flashes back and spends the whole movie in the flashback, making it almost a quaint historical drama. Much of the telling of the story is beyond tedious, all but unwatchable, Neri steals Hans from another local girl, but it gets interesting again when a demon gets a glimpse at Neri's wedding dress, violating a taboo that results in an evil spell being cast upon her. She has to go see a witch who tells her to go pray to the moon goddess Selene on hanged man hill in the company of two virgins for intercession, but before she can complete the lunar cleansing of her gown the virgins get scared and run off, only to be abducted by cavedwelling Neanderthal rapists who force them into a nude orgy. This leaves Neri catatonic throughout her wedding and reception dinner, and she even (as in Lady Frankenstein) commits another atrocity in bed, running off to be with Satan, rolling under an altar with him in the (pretty PG-rated) nude, mainly shot to show off her remarkable backside, shoulders on down. Satan attempts to be dashing, I know its an urban legend but it never works. If you can adjust your TV set to the idea that these low-budget Gothic tales were told in the stilted manner of dramatizations in documentaries like you would see on the History channel today, and not through real theatrical acting, then the fact that the movie appears to be based on authentic Euro folklore and is not just another teens getting slashed black box makes it an interesting document of the kind of haunted ideas Italian horror was toying with back then. If you're not interested in Neri or folklore, pass on by.

The heyday of the Italian Gothic Horror genre was the early-to-mid-1960s; even so, the style lingered on well into the next decade but the results were often far beneath what could be accomplished at its best. Naturally, this is one such example: actually, we start off here with a contemporary setting and the heroine ("Euro-Cult" favorite Rosalba Neri) dreams herself back at least two centuries – under the influence of an old mansion where, legend has it, the devil used to reside! An element these later efforts certainly took advantage of was the relaxation in censorship, except that then we tended to get copious nudity at the expense of plot (and even atmosphere): at one point, for instance, a couple of nubile girls are gang-raped and forced to copulate between themselves inside a cave, a sequence that has no bearing whatsoever on the central plot! For what it is worth, the narrative involves two girls (one is Neri and the other is played by a companion of hers in the modern 'bookends') who both love the same man; when he chooses Neri, the rival (herself pursued by another, played by Robert Woods) turns to a witch who puts a curse on the former. This results in Neri being seduced by a stranger (Edmund Purdom), losing her lover to him and getting burned at the stake for the latter's death…all on her wedding night and, surprise surprise, the interloper is eventually revealed to be Old Nick himself! While the lethargic pacing is decidedly characteristic of such fare, the inept handling is not and, in this case, makes the film a snooze-fest as opposed to the mood-piece its creators probably intended! When I first came across this one, I was intrigued by its description as "the greatest Rosalba Neri movie ever"; however, having checked it out for myself now, I regret to report that things could not be further removed from the truth!

You can't go totally wrong with a movie featuring the mouth-wateringly luscious and genuinely talented 70's Italian cult actress Rosalba Neri (aka Sarah Bay), but this is not one of her better films.It starts in modern times (as of 1972) with Neri's character "Helga" and two of her blonde, generously breasted, mini-skirt clad girlfriends coming to tour a castle that is supposedly owned by Satan himself. For reasons that eluded me, they all decide to spend the night there (apparently it doubles as a bed-and-breakfast?). That night "Helga" has a dream where she is transported back to the 16th century where she is a virginal bride about to be married. While she is trying on her wedding-night garments, she sees a man looking through her window. It is apparently an ill omen for another man to see these garments, so she tracks the man down--perhaps not a good idea since he is wearing a crimson robe and hood, and, of course, turns out to be the Devil. The Devil demands she kill her husband on their wedding night and then join him as his lover. Meanwhile a spurned female lover of her husband is plotting to kill her. There are several subplots involving other characters (I don't know about anyone else, but I'm usually in ALL the scenes in my dreams). Perhaps the best is where an old witch lures her big-breasted virginal friends (all the characters in the dream are the same characters as in the modern story a la "The Wizard of Oz")to a cave where they are assaulted by two randy highway-men in a kind of defloration/orgy.In a way this is the opposite of the standard Italian Gothic horror film. Where your typical Italian Gothic has a dumb or nonsensical plot, but an effective atmosphere and visual style, this has a fairly decent plot, but it's very hamhandedly executed style-wise. Some of it was no doubt the print I saw, which messed up the day-for-night shooting so that all the scenes seemed to take place in broad daylight (even while some on-screen characters remark on how dark it is!). A lot of it though is the fault of director Lombardo, who maintains a positively glacial pace and seems to cut away to a boring subplot every time the main plot threatens to gather any momentum. After a (very long) hour you do get to see Neri's incredible nude body, but it was used to better effect in at least a dozen other Italian horror movies and giallo thrillers. Neri herself isn't bad, but she's just a lot better playing a wicked villainess than an innocent virgin (and she was also about thirty-five at the time). This is not a bad movie if you like Italian Gothic horror, but it is kind of a disappointing one.