The Virgin of Nuremberg (1963)

Thinking outside of the box can be a tricky task, but it is necessary if one hopes to come up with a story that hasn’t already been thought of or isn’t something that could just as easily be dreamt up by anybody. The natural habit of falling into a comfort zone can easily hamper one’s ability to innovate. In the context of genre film, it is easy to stay inside the comfort zone while exploring around a little outside of the box, not too far, though, to discover something pretty new and cool that keeps the genre alive for that much longer. With Antonio Margheriti’s THE VIRGIN OF NUREMBERG we have all of the ‘60s Gothic horror themes we know and love that keep us happy and comfortable but melds and fuses them with fascinating new approaches that keeps one from getting bored of the same ol’, same ol’. 

A young nobleman moves into his ancestral castle with his wife. After the wife notices her husband missing one night, she strolls out of bed and seemingly witnesses the aftermath of a servant being tortured and murdered in the castle’s museum of medieval torture devices. The person responsible is a ghostly killer whose identity is hinted at by a servant that refers to him as “The Punisher,” claiming that he’s come back “to plant the seed of terror in shameless women’s hearts.” Is the killer her husband, one of the strange servants, or something else that has culminated from past evils?

A cool little charm to Margheriti’s film is that despite a few reminders of the modern (1960s Germany) setting, the majority of time spent in and around an ancient castle frequently fooled me into thinking that this was an era piece. I liked that there were plenty of candles with antique holders on hand for when the mandatory thunderstorms would cause the power to go out, giving us a nice reason to view our gorgeous heroine, Mary (Rossana Podestà of SEVEN GOLDEN MEN), wander the dark castle halls with lit candles in hand.