The candle of his lust burnt brightest in the shadow of the grave!
1962-08-01
N/A
88 min
The year is 1885, and necrophiliac Dr. Hitchcock likes to drug his wife for sexual funeral games. One day he accidentally administers an overdose and kills her. Several years later he remarries, with the intention of using the blood of his new bride to bring his first wife's rotting corpse back to life.
There are definitely shades of Daphne du Maurier in this slightly hysterical telling of a supernatural tale. Robert Flemyng is an eminent surgeon who has a penchant for necrophilia - he drugs them first then has his fun; they awaken none the wiser some hours later. However, when he overdoses his first wife and she dies he is bereft and departs for twelve years. When he returns to his home with a new wife (not entirely dissimilar to her predecessor) he picks up where he left off - not just with his wife, but with the cadavers in his hospital mortuary too. When wife No. 2 (Barbara Steele) starts hallucinating and gets suspicious, she confides in her husband's colleague (Silvano Tranquilli) and instead of finding a ghost, they find something altogether more sinister. It's certainly formulaic, but the film has a good look about it and the two stars keep it eerie and suspenseful for most of it.
