The Long Hair of Death (1964)

Last night I watched The Long Hair of Death starring Barbara Steele. I thoroughly entertained by all 94 minutes of it. When you combine Italian Gothic horror with the greatest actress in the history of horror films you get pure cinematic gold. The story involves a revenge from beyond the grave combined with Borgia-esque political intrigue. Steele is always in fine form here, and it was obviously an astute decision by the filmmakers to title this movie after the her trademark long and thick black hair.

The movie starts off with a witch burning of an innocent, Helen (played by Steele) who swears revenge in front of everyone who witnesses it. She had two daughters with the eldest, Mary (played by Steele in a dual role) who had evidence of her mother's innocence and is killed by Count Humboldt. The youngest daughter, Elizabeth, grows up and then is forced to marry the Count's son. Shortly thereafter, things get very interesting when Helen is seemingly resurrected. I won't spoil too much after this, but I will add that the payoff was very well done, though the middle act meanders just a little bit. That being said, I loved the Gothic atmosphere (dark hallways, secret passages, cobwebs, candlesticks, and the whole bit) in spite of the fact that the picture was rather poor--I suspect that this was a DVD copy of a VHS transfer.

My plan for this blog is to provide my own image captures of the movies that I watch. Unfortunately, the batteries in my digital camera had died before I could take pictures as I was watching the movie. I will probably just take screen captures on my computer at a later date and upload them here on this posting.

*EDIT: As promised, here are a couple of stills from "The Long Hair of Death".

This was the first movie that appears in the 50 movie mega pack, Tales of Terror. I have bought 5 mega packs so far: Horror Classics, Nightmare Worlds, Tales of Terror, Sci-Fi Classics and Chilling Classics. I have watched all of the movies in the Horror and Nightmare sets it took me almost two years to finish watching them (at a rate of 1 per week). These sets are comprised of mostly public domain movies and are put out by Mill Creek Entertainment.

Rating: 10/10 (using my B-movie scale)