A young chemist, Ivanna Rakowski (Erna Schurer), travels to the castle of Baron Djalmar (Charles Quinney) to help him with a research project. Once there, she hears strange stories about her handsome employer and has nightmares in which she is stretched out naked on a torture rack. To make matters worse, a vicious killer is mutilating young village girls...
The film featured on this DVD is NOT Jorge Grau's "The Legend of Blood Castle" (1972), but José Luis Merino's "Ivanna" (a.k.a. "The Scream of the Demon Lover", 1971). Apparently, the version released in the States was trimmed by Roger Corman's New World when they distributed it on a double bill with "The Velvet Vampire", but this disc contains the full export print, complete with some nudity missing from the original Spanish/Italian language versions. Sadly, this is not the type of release this atmospheric example of early 70s Gothic deserves. The poor quality of the print, plus the fact that the original export (and UK theatrical) title, "The Killers of the Castle of Blood", has been changed, makes it clear that the disc has been sourced from some shoddy public domain copy. The rich colours of the beautifully photographed castle interiors can still be appreciated, but the image looks soft and there is lots of speckling. Apart from the letterboxed presentation, the disc does not improve on previous VHS incarnations of this movie. It's a real shame, because despite the plethora of loose ends and under-developed subplots that litter the story, "Ivanna" contains some genuinely creepy moments and warrants more attention than it has previously received. Hopefully, some quality conscious individuals will one day go back to the original vault materials and let the movie's full Gothic splendour shine through. If the distributers had done a proper job instead of releasing this murky botch-up, I would have given this product a much higher rating.
