The opening credits read, "Based on the writings of the Marquis de Sade." Well yes, in that they both come from Europe. But I'm guessing de Sade never created a character known as the Crimson Executioner. (Haven't read the man, so I can't say for sure.)The plot: in rural Italy, a publisher, his photographer and models come to a centuries-old castle to take pictures for the book jackets of a horror series. The castle's owner, Travis Anderson (Mickey Hargitay), believes that he is descended from the Crimson Executioner, a 17th-century madman whose torture and killing of young women earned him death by the Iron Maiden. The clearly insane Anderson takes it upon himself to pick up where the CE left off. He spends the night torturing his houseguests in the castle's well-equipped dungeon until he is killed in "the poison embrace of the Lover of Death," one of his numerous torture devices.Once Anderson "becomes" the CE, he stops referring to himself in the first person. Now it's, "The Crimson Executioner will torture you," or, "No one escapes the wrath of the Crimson Executioner!" Makes me wonder if Bob Dole ever saw this film.The dialogue is dreadful, and not just due to the execrable dubbing job; I suspect it was written that way in the original Italian. Example: "I had to abandon the world. Mankind is made up of inferior creatures, spiritually and physically deformed, who would have corrupted the harmony of my perfect body!"The castle provides a suitable backdrop for what is supposed to be a Gothic horror story but is nowhere near horrifying. The suspense scenes offer no suspense while the torture scenes are surprisingly mild-- even when the torture devices themselves are diabolically clever. One scene offers the most hilariously inept fake spider ever to grace the big screen.This movie is so awful, I wouldn't like it even if it were good.

The Crimson Executioner is back to seek revenge in the guise of a shirtless, tight pants wearing Mickey Hargitay in a horror cult classic both bloody and truly frightening. Murder came easy for his predecessor who combined it with a ton of torture. "His noble crusade against sin lives again-Through me!", Hargitay bellows, and while the bad dubbing is truly laughable, the scares are frequent. Much of the plot is straight out of Edgar Allan Poe, more from the cult horror classic "Black Sunday", and a bit of a T&A exploitation. Chlostrophobic sufferers are better to avoid this, as are arachnaphobes and those afraid of sharp objects, fire and extremely cold eater. The torture devises are clever and macabre, with one rotating devise slowly slicing up the breasts of two young women and a descending canopy bed lowering over the hero with sharp objects protruding towards him. The acting is certainly horrid, but this is so difficult to turn your head away if you can stand it. Hargitay's gift here is obvious, but it isn't his thespian talents. Some audience members may find their faces turning as red as his painted on pants. Any similarly between this and the real Marquis De Sade is as close to reality as Bugs Bunny is. I give this a higher rating simply because of the pure gall and nothing more.

Yup. This is early 1960's Italian Torture Porn. Without much torture or porn.A team of models stops by an ancient castle that owned by a crazy actor lives. Somehow, he flips and starts using torture devices to pick off and kill the characters, who express their amazement in awful, dubbed voices, a lot of which sound the same because back in those days, that's what they did with imports from Italy. They got one or two actors with no vocal range to do all the voices.Mickey Hagritay gets to show off his muscles, and that's something, I guess. There's a lot of scenes where they almost build up to showing us female nudity.But really, there's just a lot of silliness here for no reason.

I must begin this review with a disclaimer. Since this movie is based on my own life story, I cannot comment on it with complete objectivity. Nonetheless, I believe I can offer a unique perspective that some readers may find interesting. Let me begin by pointing out that the title role of Travis Anderson -- aka The Crimson Executioner -- is played by former bodybuilder Mickey Hargitay, who is sometimes dismissively referred to as Mr. Jayne Mansfield. Mickey was not the greatest actor in the world, but his portrayal of The Crimson Executioner is truly inspired. The best scenes in the movie come after the Executioner dons his red costume and proceeds to subject the hapless visitors to his castle to a variety of ingenious tortures, acting the whole time like the kid in the proverbial candy shop. There is nothing particularly scary or gory about this. Some might even call it "camp." Whatever you want to call it, it's immensely entertaining.Mickey Hargitay is the reason why BLOODY PIT OF HORROR has become a cult classic. The Crimson Executioner was the role of his career, and Mickey definitely made the most of it. Indeed, I cannot imagine anyone except Mickey in the title role, which is why this movie will never be remade. Unfortunately, the first half of the movie is not quite as entertaining as its conclusion, since the focus is on the antics of the various visitors to the castle rather than on me, the Crimson Executioner. Again, however, I will admit to a certain lack of objectivity in this matter.My one quibble is with the title used for the American release. I much prefer the Italian title, IL BOIA SCARLATTO, which roughly translates as THE CRIMSON EXECUTIONER.