June 27: Junesploitation’s topic of the day — as suggested by F This Movie— is Barbara Steele! We’re excited to tackle a different genre every day, so check back and see what’s next.

Michael Reeves only directed three movies: this film, The Sorcerers and Witchfinder General. He also had something to do with Castle of the Living Dead* and assisted Don Siegel, worked for Jack Cardiff on The Long Ships and for Henry Levin on his movie Genghis Khan.

Made in 21 days for hardly any money — even when Barbara Steele made $1,000 for one day of work, that day was 18 hours long — and most of the crew is in the movie. Reeves also wrote the script, along with F. Amos Powell and Mel Welles (the director of Lady Frankenstein), under the name Michael Byron.

Two hundred years ago in Transylvania, a witch named Vardella was burned at the stake, but not before threatening to come back for revenge. This would end up ruining the honeymoon of Philip (Ian Ogilvy) and Veronica (Barbara Steele) and that’s not even counting the squalid hotel owned by Ladislav Groper (Welles).

As they enjoy breakfast, Count Von Helsing (John Karlsen) delights in sharing the legend of Dracula and the story Vardella. Well, those foreigners have no interest in this weird old man and blow him off. That night, Phillip catches Groper peeping on his wife and beats him into oblivion. If that doesn’t make this a rough wedding getaway, he wrecks their car into a lake and when they pull out his new bride, it’s the dead body of the witch instead of the gorgeous Steele.

Now, Phillip has to make nice with Von Helsing and be part of his plan to take this dead body, drug it and perform an exorcism to get his wife back. It seems like a lot of work, but I’ve done so much more for women who couldn’t stand in the brightness of Steele’s flawless alabaster skin.

How do you kill a witch? You drown it. That’s also how you find out if someone is a witch.

This played double features in America — distributed by American-International Pictures — with The Embalmer. 

*Depending on who is asked, Reeves either did minor second unit work, a polish on the script’s dwarf character, a complete takeover of the movie or nothing at all.

You can watch this on YouTube.