26. ANY WITCH WAY YOU CAN: Cast your eyes upon a spellbinder.

Adele Karnstein (Halina Zalewska, An Angel for Satan) is accused of witchcraft and burned, but really it’s because she wouldn’t sleep with Count Humboldt (Giuliano Raffaelli). When her daughter Helen (Barbara Steele) confronts him, she even offers her body to him to save her mother. The Count still watches as her mother is burned alive and tosses Helen off a cliff. To add even more pain to the Karnestein family, her sister Lisabeth (also Halina Zalewska) is taken in by Humboldt and eventually married to his nephew Kurt (George Ardisson).

As a plague destroys the country, a storm blows in on the night of the Count’s death, bringing Mary (also Barbara Steele) who inspires Kurt to kill his wife and be with her. Bad idea Kurt. This is an Italian Gothic and all men are morons who must be destroyed by the female ghosts of past tragedy and the curses of mothers whose daughters could not save them.

I mean, Barbara Steele is a ghost whose skeleton is reanimated by lightning. Can movies get any more magical? Do you know how much it makes me fall into a dream of movie drugs to have Steele walking through a cobwebbed castle in a white nightgown holding blazing candles?

While written by Ernesto Gastaldi and Tonino Valerii, neither had enough experience to direct — or so said producer Felice Testa Gay — which brought in Antonio Margheriti to make the film. For as much as Margheriti is known for his miniature-rich war movies, he had a talent for making movies like this. Just check out Castle of Blood, The Virgin of Nuremberg, The Unnaturals and Web of the Spider (which is the first film on this list but in color and without Steele).

You can watch this on YouTube.