THE BLOODY PIT OF HORROR (1965)
The opening credits read, “Based on the writings of the Marquis de Sade.” Well yes, in that they both come from Europe. But I'm guessing de Sade never created a character known as the Crimson Executioner. (Haven't read the man, so I can't say for sure.)
The plot: in rural Italy, a publisher, his photographer and models come to a centuries-old castle to take pictures for the book jackets of a horror series. The castle's owner, Travis Anderson [Mickey Hargitay], believes that he is descended from the Crimson Executioner, a 17th-century madman whose torture and killing of young women earned him death by the Iron Maiden. The clearly insane Anderson takes it upon himself to pick up where the CE left off. He spends the night torturing his houseguests in the castle's well-equipped dungeon until he is killed in “the poison embrace of the Lover of Death,” one of his numerous torture devices.
Once Anderson “becomes” the CE, he stops referring to himself in the first person. Now it's, “The Crimson Executioner will torture you,” or, “No one escapes the wrath of the Crimson Executioner!” Makes me wonder if Bob Dole ever saw this film.
The dialogue is dreadful, and not just due to the execrable dubbing job; I suspect it was written that way in the original Italian. Example: “I had to abandon the world. Mankind is made up of inferior creatures, spiritually and physically deformed, who would have corrupted the harmony of my perfect body!”
The castle provides a suitable backdrop for what is supposed to be a Gothic horror story but is nowhere near horrifying. The suspense scenes offer no suspense while the torture scenes are surprisingly mild--even when the torture devices themselves are diabolically clever. One scene offers the most hilariously inept fake spider ever to grace the big screen.
This movie is so awful, I wouldn't like it even if it were good.
