The Castle of the Living Dead

By yoking together such disparate influences as Ligeia, Psycho, House of Wax, The Seventh Seal and The Most Dangerous Game, [Warren Kiefer] had created one of the most engaging and imaginative of all Italian horror pictures.

Despite being set in a typical Gothic mansion, Castle of the Living Dead is sunny and airy, unlike its contemporaries. The fact that the film’s unlikely savant is a dwarf gives it a fairylike quality that is especially evident in the scenes set in Bomarzo, easily the most memorable ones: the game of hide-and-seek between Pic and the gigantic Hans underlines [Warren] Kiefer’s taste for the grotesque and his playful approach to the genre.

Castle of the Living Dead could very well be called Castle of Wax, for it’s really a variation on the old House of Wax/Mystery of the Wax Museum story. But while its main theme may be the same, the movie’s sensibilities are something else entirely, given its European flavor and macabre humor. … Despite its recycled theme, this Castle stands as one of the better Continental horror films of the 1960s.