#the virgin of nuremberg

[weirdlookindog]

Mirko Valentin and Rossana Podestà in La vergine di Norimberga (1963)

[scary-movies-on-netflix]

THE VIRGIN OF NUREMBERG (1963)

This is an Italian gothic horror movie.  It was released in America as “Horror Castle.”  Max and Mary are a married couple.  They travel to Max’s ancestral castle in Germany.  The castle has its own museum, which includes one of those “iron maiden” contraptions.  (These were never actually a thing!) This iron maiden has its own name: the titular “Virgin of Nuremberg.”  It was used by one of Max’s ancestors, called the “Punisher.”  There’s a statue of him, a dude in a black mask and red robes.  Erich runs the museum for Max, and he is Christopher Lee!

Anywho, this film takes place over three nights.  On the first night, Mary is awakened by distant screams and painful groans.  She wanders down to the museum and opens up the iron maiden.  Inside is a woman with her eyes poked out!  Mary faints.  She is gathered up and sent to bed like a child.  Max tells her that it was all a dream and leaves her alone in the castle with the servants whilst he takes care of business elsewhere.

The second night, a bunch of things happen.  One of the maids tells Mary to lock herself in her room, but the Punisher tries to break in!  She stabs him in the hand.  She leaves the room and runs about a bit, sees Max and Erich with the body of a woman, and comes across the Punisher torturing a woman!  He attaches a cage to her face in which is a hungry rat, and it chews on her nose.  Mary frees the woman, but then she sees an unconscious Max, and then Erich (Christopher Lee) appears, and she faints again. 

Mary wakes up the next day and demands that Max tell her everything, but he puts her off and says that he just needs a few more hours for whatever he’s doing.  He tells her to head to the airport and go back to America, and then he leaves.  Mary changes out of the nightgown she’s been wearing the entire time and packs up to depart, but she and her servants discover that they’ve been locked in the castle!  Evening falls, the third night, and the servants are killed.  Mary is captured by the Punisher!  She yanks off his black hood and reveals a badly disfigured dude!  Meanwhile, Max has been trapped outside in a cave that is slowly filling with water.  Also, Erich has tried to enter the castle and fell down, knocking himself out, but he is roused by another man, who we learned previously is an FBI agent from America!  They drive to collect the police, and Erich explains that Max’s dad was a soldier fighting for Nazi Germany.  He tried to blow up Hitler, but the plot failed, as seen in "Valkyrie" (2008).  As punishment, Max’s dad was subjected to medical procedures where the skin of his face was removed and he became a “living skull.”  (Much like the “Red Skeleton” of Marvel Comics fame.) 

The Punisher, Max’s dad, puts Mary in the Virgin of Nuremberg.  Max escapes from the water cave, breaks into the house, and confronts his father.  The iron maiden is closing in on Mary’s face.  Then the police arrive with Erich and the FBI agent, and they shoot Max’s dad in the stomach.  He runs off.  The castle catches fire.  Erich rushes inside and comforts Max’s dad before the castle falls on top of them.  We close in on the Virgin of Nuremberg standing in the fiery museum. The end.

This was meh, borderline bad.  It’s dull and boring.  The protagonist does everything she’s told to not do.  Yes, this movie has Christopher Lee, but all the audio was redubbed so we lack his voice.  (Italian movies were basically recorded without audio, and all dialogue was dubbed in during post-production.)  Speaking of the audio, the musical score is ridiculous.  The opening is…jazz?  Whenever something scary is about to occur, perhaps about four times for the movie entire, the music tells us, because it’s loud and ridiculous.  Example: Max moves toward Mary as she lies in bed, and the music starts up, because maybe he is going to kill her, but then he just kisses her on the forehead. This happened a lot, to the point of annoyance. The final reveal, that the killer was Max’s dad with no skin on his face was interesting, but that occurred with only thirteen minutes left in the movie.  This film has some camp value, and maybe a cooler name than it deserves, but little else.

[vulturesouls]

The Virgin and Child

Sandstone sculpture made in Nuremberg, Germany ca. 1425

This sculpture was mounted under a canopy on the exterior of a house in Nuremberg until World War II.

Met Museum

Bonus: here's the back

[ronmerchant]

the VIRGIN OF NUREMBERG (1963) aka HORROR CASTLE

'Hitler'?

[ronnymerchant]

HORROR CASTLE aka the VIRGIN OF NUREMBERG (1964)

[mamotretos]

weirdlookindog   The Virgin of Nuremberg aka La vergine di Norimberga (1963) Swedish Poster

[themuseumwithoutwalls]

MWW Artwork of the Day (5/19/24) Albrecht Dürer (German, 1471-1528) Nuremberg Woman Dressed for Church (1500) Pen & ink & watercolor on paper, 32.5 x 21.8 cm. The Albertina Museum, Vienna

Dürer, who seems to have dressed well himself, was always interested in depicting clothing and he produced some of the earliest known costume studies in European art. Dressed in her best clothes for church, the demure young woman wears a red cloak with a green lining and beneath this is a blue-green dress fringed with white fur. She has a starched linen headdress. Her eyes look down at the ground, in a contemplative pose. Four years later Dürer used this study in his woodcut of the "Marriage of the Virgin." The Nuremberg woman appears at the right of the print, in reverse, as one of the seven virgins who were Mary's companions.

[thegothicera]

Virgin and Child on a Crescent Moon, German (Nuremberg), ca. 1480

[weirdlookindog]

Rossana Podestà in La vergine di Norimberga (1963)

[schlock-luster-video]

On January 10, 1965, The Virgin of Nuremberg debuted in Charleston, West Virginia.

[moviesandmania]

CASTLE OF BLOOD (1964) Reviews and now free to watch on YouTube

‘They love only for blood!’  Castle of Blood is a 1964 Italian horror film directed by Antonio Margheriti (The Virgin of Nuremberg; Killer Fish; Cannibal Apocalypse), using the pseudonym Anthony Dawson. In the US, the film was distributed by the Woolner Brothers, who also imported Hercules in the Haunted World; Blood and Black Lace; Castle of the Living Dead and produced Hillbillies in a Haunted…

[valkyries-things]

MARIA RESTITUTA KAFKA // NURSE

“She was an Austrian nurse of Czech descent and religious sister of the Franciscan Sisters of Christian Charity (Sorores Franciscanae a Caritate Christiana). Executed by the government in Nazi-run Austria, she is honoured as a virgin and martyr in the Catholic Church. Pope John Paul II beatified her in 1998. Kafka was very vocal in her opposition to the new regime, which had immediately begun to implement the Nuremberg Laws established by the Nazi Party in Germany upon its acquisition of power. She called Hitler a "madman" and said of herself that "a Viennese cannot keep her mouth shut". When a new hospital wing was constructed, Kafka kept to traditional Catholic practice and hung a crucifix in every room. The Nazi authorities demanded that the crosses be taken down, threatening her dismissal, but she refused.”

[rasmasandra]

Traveling in Europe Germany

Erfurt on the Erfurt River A city in Germany The capital of the state of Thuringia is Erfurt. It is the main city that is nearest to the geographical center of modern Germany. It’s located 100 kilometers southwest of Leipzig, 150 kilometers north of Nuremberg, and 180 kilometers southeast of Hanover. Mariendom or the Cathedral of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Severikirche or St. Severus…

[ronmerchant]

HORROR CASTLE (1963) aka the VIRGIN OF NUREMBERG

[brookstonalmanac]

Events 12.9 (before 1950)

536 – Gothic War: The Byzantine general Belisarius enters Rome unopposed; the Gothic garrison flees the capital. 730 – Battle of Marj Ardabil: The Khazars annihilate an Umayyad army and kill its commander, al-Jarrah ibn Abdallah al-Hakami. 1432 – The first battle between the forces of Švitrigaila and Sigismund Kęstutaitis is fought near the town of Oszmiana (Ashmyany), launching the most active phase of the Lithuanian Civil War. 1531 – The Virgin of Guadalupe first appears to Juan Diego at Tepeyac, Mexico City. 1636 – The Qing dynasty of China, led by Emperor Hong Taiji, invades Joseon. 1688 – Glorious Revolution: Williamite forces defeat Jacobites at Battle of Reading, forcing James II to flee England. (Date is Old Style; the date in the New Style modern calendar is 19 December.) 1775 – American Revolutionary War: British troops and Loyalists, misinformed about Patriot militia strength, lose the Battle of Great Bridge, ending British rule in Virginia. 1822 – French physicist Augustin-Jean Fresnel, in a memoir read to the Academy of Sciences, coins the terms linear polarization, circular polarization, and elliptical polarization, and reports a direct refraction experiment verifying his theory that optical rotation is a form of birefringence. 1824 – Patriot forces led by General Antonio José de Sucre defeat a Royalist army in the Battle of Ayacucho, putting an end to the Peruvian War of Independence. 1835 – Texas Revolution: The Texian Army captures San Antonio following the Siege of Béxar. 1851 – The first YMCA in North America is established in Montreal. 1856 – The Iranian city of Bushehr surrenders to occupying British forces. 1861 – American Civil War: The Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War is established by Congress. 1868 – The first traffic lights are installed, outside the Palace of Westminster in London. Resembling railway signals, they use semaphore arms and are illuminated at night by red and green gas lamps. 1872 – In Louisiana, P. B. S. Pinchback becomes the first African American governor of a U.S. state following the impeachment of Henry C. Warmoth. 1905 – In France, a law separating church and state is passed. 1911 – A mine explosion near Briceville, Tennessee, kills 84 miners despite rescue efforts led by the United States Bureau of Mines. 1917 – World War I: Field Marshal Allenby captures Jerusalem from the Ottoman Empire. 1922 – Gabriel Narutowicz is elected the first president of Poland. 1931 – The Constituent Cortes approves a constitution which establishes the Second Spanish Republic. 1935 – Student protests occur in Beijing's Tiananmen Square, and are subsequently dispersed by government authorities. 1935 – Walter Liggett, an American newspaper editor and muckraker, is killed in a gangland murder. 1937 – Second Sino-Japanese War: Battle of Nanking: Japanese troops under the command of Lt. Gen. Yasuhiko Asaka launch an assault on the Chinese city of Nanking. 1940 – World War II: Operation Compass: British and Indian troops under the command of Major-General Richard O'Connor attack Italian forces near Sidi Barrani in Egypt. 1941 – World War II: China, Cuba, Guatemala, and the Philippine Commonwealth declare war on Germany and Japan. 1941 – World War II: The American 19th Bombardment Group attacks Japanese ships off the coast of Vigan, Luzon. 1946 – The subsequent Nuremberg trials begin with the Doctors' Trial, prosecuting physicians and officers alleged to be involved in Nazi human experimentation and mass murder under the guise of euthanasia. 1946 – The Constituent Assembly of India meets for the first time to write the Constitution of India. 1948 – The Genocide Convention is adopted.