Spoiler Alert! This is another one of those movie postings where I’m pretty much going to tell you the whole plot. Well, I might leave a few things out. We’ll see.
I’m hoping my readers can bear another horror movie review. When I checked my TV Journal yesterday for the title of the shrew movie, I was reminded that I had also watched Nightmare Castle.
I thought I had seen Nightmare Castle before, but I did not remember much about it. The box said something about a guy killing his wife and her coming back to haunt him. Sounded like a good premise to me.
It seems the guy is something of a mad scientist (better and better!), although the nature of his experiments is not immediately clear. His wife, a voluptuous brunette with a taste for brandy, is taunting him (big mistake!).
After she has laughed at him in a cruel fashion, she tells him she’s only jealous because she wants to spend more time with him. Then she accuses his assistant, an older, not very attractive woman, of watching them make out. Assistant denies this, but she obviously hates the wife and is probably in love with the husband. These assistants usually are. I’m sure that’s one way for a mad scientist to get cheap help.
Off husband goes to whatever conference his wife was scorning/being jealous of, and Wife gets on with her clandestine affair with the gardener. At least, I don’t know if he’s the gardener, but he’s young and muscular and they make love in the greenhouse.
Guess who comes home and catches them? I’m not sure how he overpowers them when it’s two against one and the lover is obviously in pretty good shape. Just another “Waaait a minute” situation. Or maybe they explained it and I was changing yarn colors on my crochet (it’s a green and red afghan I may donate to Ilion Little Theatre to raffle during their Christmas musical).
At any rate, Husband has them chained to the wall in his laboratory (pronounced lah-BOR-a-tory) when he finds out Wife is going to have the last laugh. She has made out a new will leaving all to her crazy little sister. Bwah-ha-ha-ha-ha!
So he tortures and kills them. I must say, I hope they don’t do a remake of this. I am made queasy by trailers for the so-called torture porn movies being made these days. I greatly prefer the older, more circumspect movies. It’s still a pretty creepy scene.
What’s an evil husband to do? He married the lady for the castle, so he’d have a place for his evil experiments. Now she’s left it all to her kid sister in the loony bin. I don’t know why he doesn’t just pretend she’s still alive, especially since, as we later learn, her crypt is empty. Maybe they didn’t have joint checking.
It should come as no surprise to anyone who has ever seen one of these movies that he marries the sister, an innocent blonde who looks remarkably like the dead woman (yes, it’s the same actress in a blonde wig). Soon the Gaslight stuff starts, only this guy is by no means a Charles Boyer (if you don’t get the reference, stop reading now and go see Gaslight, unless you only like bad movies).
Still with me? It’s about this point where the movie gets a little more convoluted and a lot more interesting. Not Very Attractive Assistant has miraculously turned young and beautiful, but, alas, not as young and beautiful as Kid Sister. Ah, but maybe it’s not so miraculous. Perhaps it is the result of Evil Husband’s experiments (yuh think?).
I could not blame Assistant for being ticked off at this point. I’m sure she thought the plan was to off Evil Wife, get the castle, and make Assistant beautiful so she could be the Evil Husband’s new girlfriend. Then he comes home with this blonde chippy!
Now that I’ve gotten to the interesting part, I think I’ll stop, because you might actually want to see this movie. It gets suspenseful and a little scary at the end. I enjoyed it. And if Steven ever starts doing mysterious experiments in the basement with a not very attractive older assistant, I will not laugh at him. I may have an affair with the gardener, though, because that would be Steven. He’s a busy guy.
Mohawk Valley Girl 