The Count of Montebruno (Claudio Gora) was just trying to clean up his gigantic mansion in time for his niece Harriet (Barbara Steele) to visit.  As part of this, a statue is found at the bottom of the lake and brought back to its original splendor by artist Roberto Morigi (Anthony Steffen). Of course, it turns out that the status looks exactly like Harriet but is truly one of Belinda, an ancestor who was a witch who held the entire village in her grip.

Now, Harriet has become Belinda and uses her beauty to destroy men — and a woman — in scene after scene of twisted sexual frisson. In one, she makes the gardener enflamed with desire by alternately asking him to watch her disrobe and attacking him with a riding crop. There’s no nudity, but somehow by being not in your face explicit it all seems somehow more perverted. The man becomes so overwhelmed that he attacks every woman in the village and he’s not the last man to feel her ways, as a teacher hangs himself, a woodsman kills his entire family and even the maid is forced into evil because of the womanly power that is Belinda.

Camillo Mastrocinque also made another Italian gothic, Terror In the Crypt.

I can’t even put into words — I’ve tried, you just read it all — how much I love this movie.

You can watch this on Tubi.