EDITOR’S NOTE: The Horrible Dr. Hichcock was first on Chiller Theater on Saturday, March 17, 1973 at 1 a.m. It also aired on October 19, 1974; June 5, 1976 and April 8, 1978.

Producer Luigi Carpentieri wanted writer Ernesto Gastaldi to write a movie based on a giallo novel Spectral, which Gastaldi did and wrote his own treatment called Raptus. That script wasn’t filled with necrophilia — my Italian people go hard even back in 1962 — but Gastaldi told Robert Curdi that maybe someone had asked for something more macabre and he went for the throat.

When producer Ermanno Donati gave Ricardo Freda the script, he said, “Let’s see if you have the balls to shoot this stuff, it’s about corpses!” Freda didn’t even look at it and said, “As long as I get paid, I’m shooting even the phone book.”

Actor Robert Flemyng tried to get out of his contract when he learned about the corpse romance and even tried to get actress Harriet Medin to conspire with him to act so badly that the movie wouldn’t be released.

Three crews were shooting all at the same time with Freda shooting most of the more suggestive Italian cut and Marcello Avallone (Spettri, Maya) directing the more sexualized foreign scenes. Those rougher scenes are lost, as far as I’ve been able to research.

Raptus: The Secret of Dr. Hichcock was shown to American-International Pictures but was too rough for general audiences. It was released as The Horrible Dr. Hitchcock by Sigma III Corporation as a double feature with The Awful Dr. Orloff.

Dr. Bernard Hichcock (Robert Flemyng) likes to drug his wife Margaretha (Maria Teresa Vianello) so that she is near death and then makes love to her. When she overdoses, he thinks he’s killed her. He buries her and flies to London where he eventually marries Cynthia (Barbara Steele).

Thirteen years later, they come back to the ancient and decaying mansion where Margaretha begins to haunt Cynthia. She soon learns that her husband is down with some pretty wild sexual games and when she wakes up feeling dead with him romancing her, well, she realizes that she’s not living a dream life. It also is revealed that Hichcock wants to kill her and use her blood to give his wife back her past glamour.

Barbara Steele is perfect in this, a woman trapped in a horrific life that she struggles to escape. She’s my favorite horror queen, her huge eyes staring out into howling rains and endless darkness. Ah, my heart.