Barbara Steele Movies

During a drinking contest, college fraternity members Alan (Burt Brinckerhoff) and Mark (Duke Howard) pass out cold. The duo's frat brothers decide to play a cruel prank on the snoozing Alan, making it appear that Mark has died and that Alan has killed him. The joke backfires when the panicky Alan attempts to dispose of the "body." This episode features two former members of the fabled "Second City" comedy troupe, Severn Darden and Barbara Harris (Harris would ultimately star in Alfred Hitchcock's final theatrical feature, Family Plot). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Generally considered to be the foremost example of Italian Gothic horror, this darkly atmospheric black-and-white chiller put director Mario Bava on the international map and made the bewitching Barbara Steele a star. Steele plays Princess Asa, a high priestess of Satan who is gruesomely executed in 1600s Moldavia by having a spiked mask hammered into her face. Before she dies, Asa vows revenge on the family who killed her and returns from the grave two centuries later to keep her promise. In a striking resurrection scene replete with bats, scorpions and fog, Asa rises from the tomb to claim her bloody vengeance. With vampires, bubbling flesh, dank crypts, undead servants and torch-bearing mobs, the plot is a little ripe, but the visuals are Bava's primary consideration. The atmosphere is so heavy and the imagery so dense that the film becomes nearly too rich in texture, but the sheer, ghastly beauty of it all is entrancing. Although this was only the second of Bava's twenty-six films as director, it is undoubtedly his best and the one upon which most of his considerable reputation rests. ~ Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide

In this eerie and effective early horror film from prolific genre director Antonio Margheriti, Alan Foster (Georges Riviere), an American tourist visiting England, takes a bet from a Lord Blackwood and his guest, Edgar Allan Poe, to spend the night in a haunted mansion. The rationalist Foster, who does not believe in the supernatural, is soon drawn into a world of ghosts and phantoms, doomed to eternally replay the horrifying murders that climaxed a long-ago love triangle. Foster also finds himself in love with one of the protagonists, the beautiful Elizabeth (Barbara Steele), and it is a love which ensures that he never leaves the haunted castle alive. It's a marvelously atmospheric gothic thriller, one of the best Italian horror films of the decade, and quite properly made the enchantingly spooky Steele -- fresh from Mario Bava's La Maschera del Demonio -- even more of a horror icon. Riccardo Pallotini's evocative camerawork enhances the mood tremendously, and the shock scenes, though perhaps too tame for modern audiences, are nonetheless strikingly effective. Margheriti remade the film in widescreen color eight years later (as Nella Stretta Morsa del Ragno), but this version remains one of the handful of definitive Italian gothics. Silvano Tranquilli co-stars with Margaret Robsahm, Henry Kruger, and Umberto Raho. ~ Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide

Filmed in Spain, this TV movie stars Janet Leigh as an American woman honeymooning with her new husband. She awakens after the wedding night, only to be confronted with a stranger who insists that he's her husband. Leigh goes to the authorities, who unfortunately believe the ersatz husband's story. Or perhaps it's not as unfortunate as it seems...because Leigh herself is not all she seems. The central plot twist in Honeymoon With a Stranger was reworked into several subsequent TV-movies, until overuse robbed the twist of any surprise. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Brancaleone (Vittorio Gassman) leads an inept group of Crusaders to the sea in this offbeat war comedy. The Crusaders hope to find a ship that will take them to the Holy Land to reclaim the area for Christianity. The situation allows for plenty of sight gags and ribald humor. Catherine Spaak co-stars with Gassmann in this amusing effort from director Mario Monicelli. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

Marie (Annie Girardot) teaches high school and has a 16-year-old daughter in her class. Divorced some years previously, she has some vague egalitarian notions about friendship with her students and leaves her door open to them. One of her protégés is found beaten up just outside her door, and an emergency physician comes by to treat her. When her daughter starts seeing someone she doesn't much like, and she begins having a brief affair (her first since the divorce) with the ER doctor, she begins to reconsider her policy. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide