London journalist Alain Foster goes to a club to interview terror writer Edgar Allan Poe. Along with them is Lord Thomas Blackwood, who in the course of the discussion urges the journalist to spend the night of November 2 in his castle in exchange for one hundred pounds.
Young Foster accepts the bet and once he arrives at the gloomy building he will make the acquaintance of the strange Elizabeth (Barbara Steele) and Julia, the former's morbid cohabitant. At first enamored by Elizabeth's beauty, Foster will find that not all is what it seems and that the castle is haunted by bloodthirsty ghosts.
Dance Macabre certainly represents the complete work of Antonio Margheriti (here signed Anthony Dawson) but above all the highlight of Italian Gothic horror.
A film initially commissioned from Sergio Corbucci by the screenwriters (including his brother Bruno), Danza Macabra found its expressive power only thanks to a Margheriti novice in the Gothic genre. The director himself, aware of the difficulties he would have in attempting such a feat again, always recognized this film as his great masterpiece.
The cast includes the name of a great Barbara Steele, fossilized in the genre thanks to great directors such as Mario Bava and Roger Corman (and again with Margheriti in "The Long Hair of Death") and always embedded in her roles.
Among the insiders, on the other hand, Riz Ortolani, a musician at the beginning of a promising career, and the young assistant director Ruggero Deodato (both would rock the world in 1979 for the unprecedented violence of the explicit "Cannibal Holocaust").
Danza Macabra is a stylistically perfect film, impeccable from both a narrative and a purely horror perspective. Wraiths, vampires, mummies and zombies intertwine in a crescendo of Gothic emotions with delicate lesbian overtones (quite explicit kisses and glances between the two cohabitants).
A single film capable of fusing the masterpieces of Freda, Bava and Caiano but above all anticipating and conditioning genre cinema.
Review of Cerberus
