Rent The Black Castle (1952)

Gothic Melodrama - The Black Castle review by Steve

This is regarded as the last in the long cycle of gothic horror from Universal studios, and has genre superstars Boris Karloff and Lon Chaney Jr. on board, though in support roles. It’s a period melodrama with sadistic undertones, grafted onto an adventure film.

Richard Greene plays a swordfighting avenger tracking two friends who vanished while visiting a malign German Count (Stephen McNally in an eyepatch). On entering his black castle, the hero gets snagged up in his host’s thrill seeking bloodsports while recklessly romancing the imperilled Countess (Paula Corday).

And so on. The production benefits from the gothic set decor borrowed from the superior The Strange Door, released the previous year. It is full of shadowy atmosphere, with the secret passages, the spooky old crypt and the fiendish alligator pit which guards the escape route from the dungeons.

Greene is a fair swashbuckler and McNally a persuasive aristocratic villain; a psychopath with unmoderated power. Though the hero is actually an ivory hunter! Nathan Juran’s debut job of direction sometimes plods, but it looks great and Karloff is wonderfully insidious. It’s a minor programmer but still viable entertainment.