This movie deserves to be restored and re-released. I unsuspectingly bought the DVD that I own for 50 cents at a flea market, a great bargain! Sadly the print used for this DVD release was very badly deteriorated. Even with that sad I still thought it was a beautiful looking film and I would love to see a version of higher quality.The story is not very original, the plot elements are very clearly borrowed from the stories by Edgar Allen Poe, but the story was still pretty entertaining and the cast does a pretty good job, especially Boris Karloff.The DVD that I own was released under the eXtreme label by Dutch FilmWorks and World Wide Cinema. Avoid this one, it is of a terrible quality.

Jack Nicholson plays a French soldier who becomes lost and meets a mysterious woman but she disappears into the ocean. Then there's some stuff with a bird and an old woman. Then Jack finds the castle of Boris Karloff where he sees the girl again. Boris and his servant act like they don't know what he's talking about but Jack is persistent. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense and the plot is a mess but it's still very interesting and hard to stop watching. This is a rather famous Roger Corman movie that has several different urban legends surrounding its production, most of which boil down to this: Corman was cheap so he used leftover sets and/or leftover budget from The Raven to film this one quickly. Whatever the truth is, it's a fascinating movie with many obvious flaws that it manages to overcome and still be an entertaining film. Great opening credits, too.

I voted 5 because I have no idea. Allow me to build some context:I was young and had just moved to Barcelona. I was sharing a flat with an old NY university roommate and friend in the rundown but exciting barrio Raval. We were both sick and sleeping on couches in the living room at random hours, be it day or night, with the television constantly burning.I awoke sometime around 3am and this movie was just beginning. And it wasn't dubbed into Spanish! I threw a boot at my friend and made him watch it with me. For an hour and a bit we were cackling like fevered demons. Watch this when sick, in a foreign land, in the middle of the night. You'll better appreciate the broody darkness of it then. Otherwise I strongly suspect it stinks.

Jack Nicholson stars as Lt. Andre Duvalier, a soldier in Napoleon's army in 18th century France who finds himself separated from his regiment, and asks a mysterious woman(Sandra Knight) directions, but she vanishes, and the Lt. meets up with an old witch(Dorothy Neumann) who insists that there was no such person. He doesn't believe her, and instead goes to the castle of Baron Victor Frederick Von Leppe(Boris Karloff) where he discovers that the woman was the spitting image of the Baron's late wife, and that supernatural occurrences are at the heart of this mystery...Though script is haphazardly written, film is surprisingly atmospheric and entertaining, with good performances by all, and is an improvement over Roger Corman's "The Raven", which this was filmed on the sets of.Final sequence is memorable but also too abrupt, though film is an effective Gothic horror tale, despite its obvious shortcomings.