Castle of the Living Dead
| Castle of the Living Dead | |
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Italian film poster for Castle of the Living Dead
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| Directed by | Warren Kiefer |
| Produced by | Paul Maslansky |
| Written by | Warren Kiefer |
| Story by | Warren Kiefer |
| Starring | |
| Music by | Angelo Francesco Lavagnino |
| Cinematography | Aldo Tonti |
| Edited by | Mario Serandrei |
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Production
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| Distributed by | Cineriz (Italy) |
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Release date
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Running time
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90 minutes |
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| Box office | ₤103.5 million |
Castle of the Living Dead (Italian: Il castello dei morti vivi) is a 1964 Italian-French horror film directed by Warren Kiefer. The film is set in France in the late 19th century where a traveling circus visits the castle of the Count Drago (Christopher Lee). Drago's habit of experimenting on animals is revealed and the visitors are about to become unwilling participants before they are rescued by a dwarf.
Castle of the Living Dead has gone through several inconsistencies with its production since its release involving who had directed the film ranging from Kiefer to Riccardo Freda to fictional people such as Herbert Wise and Lorenzo Sabatini. Other production mysteries include the crew where Michael Reeves had been stated as the directing either all or parts of the film and whether or not Mario Bava had created special effects work on the picture.
American Warren Kiefer moved to Italy to pursue a career in the film industry. There he met American-born producer Paul Maslansky at Cinecittà. The two got along and decided to make a film together. Kiefer provided the script for Castle of the Living Dead. The two put in $10,000 and contacted Christopher Lee for ten days of shooting.
Many sources cite Lorenzo Sabatini as the director of Castle of the Living Dead, but the name was created by Kiefer for tax reasons while creating the film. To complicate it further, the film was a French-Italian co-production, which meant that an Italian director was required to collect certain state subsidies. In the Italian version of the film, Kiefer is credited as only for the story and script while the name Herbert Wise was used as the director. Wise was a pseudonym for Luciano Ricci, Kiefer's assistant director. All other prints credit Kiefer as the sole director. Many promotional materials and reviews of the film since the release have credited various directors as the director including Ricci, the fictional Wise, and Riccardo Freda. Among the crew of Castle of the Living Dead was Michael Reeves. Paul Maslansky met Reeves previously on the set of The Long Ships (1964) and invited him to work on Castle of the Living Dead. Reeves is credited as an assistant director on the film, but rumours have spread since his premature death that he had done more on the film including that he had shot al the sequences at the Parco dei Mostri while others have said he took over the production nine days into shooting the film. Maslansky spoke in 1999 that the rumours of him directing the film were untrue and that he remained on second unit for the entire film. Kiefer's second unit director Frederick Muller that the film was entirely directed by Kiefer without Reeves presence. Kiefer also stated that Reeves had not had anything to do with the directing in the film.
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