The Sadistic Baron Klaus concerns a series of murders in the remote village of Holfen, a place that still may be haunted by a 17th-century baron who maintained an elaborate torture chamber that hints at the erotic nature of the horror that Franco would spend much of the rest of his career detailing.

Could it be one of the Baron’s ancestors, Max Von Klaus (Howard Vernon)? Or youngest male descendent, Ludwig (Hugo Blanco), who is warned by his grandmother on her deathbed that their family is cursed? Either way, Inspector Borowsky (Georges Rollin) and journalist Karl Steiner (Fernando Delgado) are trying to get the answers.

So yeah — it’s kinda, sorta a nascent giallo, but also a nascent Franco, because having a woman stripped topless, whipped and menaced by a hot poker had to be practically incendiary in 1962 and it presages the many outrageous things that the director would unleash over hundreds of his movies to come.

You can watch this on Kino Cult.

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