Il castello dalle porte di fuoco

This is the second José Luis Merino film I've seen this week and comparing the two, SCREAM OF THE DEMON LOVER is much more sexual in nature than TERROR OF THE LIVING DEAD due, no doubt, to the Italians being involved. DEMON LOVER is also set in the nineteenth century and stars Erna Schürer as a kittenish chemist who's come to Baron Dalmar's medieval estate to assist him in trying to bring his dead brother back to life. The villagers warn her that the Baron is killing women and ripping them to shreds after consensual sex but she stays on anyway, even after being drugged nightly and put on a rack in the dungeon (?!).

Although it's nowhere near as atmospheric or entertaining, the movie owes something of a debt to Mario Bava's THE WHIP AND THE BODY and it's fascination with sadomasochistic mise-en-scène. The Baron and his hounds cut a dashing figure atop the grand staircase and sexy Schürer shows her globes a lot but she's outshone by the exquisite Agostina Belli, who also bares her boobs in the secondary role of a castle servant.

Erna Schürer was born Emma Costantino in Naples, Italy and modeled for "Vogue" and "Harper's Bazaar"before appearing in the popular "fumetti" foto-comic "Satanik" in the mid-60s. Placed under contract by movie producer Alberto Grimaldi, Erna spent most of the '70s cranking out "classics" like EROTIC CONFESSIONS FROM A WOMEN'S PRISON, YOUR HANDS ON MY BODY, STRIP NUDE FOR YOUR KILLER, MY PLEASURE IS YOUR PLEASURE, and DEPORTED WOMEN OF THE SS SPECIAL SECTION before more-or-less disappearing from the cinema scene. There's no birth or death dates given for Erna on IMDb and there's precious little about her on the worldwide web, either, for that matter. Today, Schürer's sure as sh!t a GILF somewhere (unless she's split the scene, if you know what I mean).