Nightmare Castle (Italian: Amanti d’Oltretomba) is a 1965 Italian horror film directed by Mario Caiano. The film stars Paul Muller, Helga Liné and Barbara Steele in a dual role.

Mario Caiano shot the film in Rome and declared it his tribute to the Gothic genre and to actress Barbara Steele. Among reviews of the film, critics and historians note Steele’s dual performance.

Director Mario Caiano stated that Nightmare Castle was born out of his passion for actress Barbara Steele and the Gothic genre, a style which he began to love between 1943 and ’44 when he first read Edgar Allan Poe‘s work. Caiano said that he was not influenced by director Mario Bava, and did not remember seeing his films at the time with the possible exception of Black Sunday (1960). The initial script treatment for the film was titled Orgasmo and re-uses ideas from Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart“.

Caiano’s father Carlo was the producer of the film and was given a low budget to work with. With his friend art director Bruno Cesari, Caiano found a villa to use as a shooting location. The film was shot at Villa Parisi in Frascati and at Incir-De-Paolis Studios in Rome over 18 days. The film was released in black-and-white, shot by director of photography Enzo Barboni, but it was originally planned for some scenes to be given a red tint in post production

black & white, widescreen, mono, 97 minutes. DVD-R comes packaged as shown in color DVD case, wrapped in plastic!