Restored by Severin Films for Venezia Classici, The Ghost (1963) by Riccardo Freda belongs to the golden age of Italian Gothic. With Barbara Steele in the leading role, it blends horror and melodrama in a vision marked by guilt, ambiguity, and a Hitchcockian irony.
In 1962/63 maestro Riccardo Freda directed a famous diptych, The Horrible Secret of Dr. Hichcock and The Ghost: two works connected not on a narrative level but by name and atmosphere. What unites them is the figure of Dr. Hichcock and the presence of Barbara Steele (the most beautiful eyes in Italian cinema!) alongside Harriett Medin-White. They are Ann Radcliffe-style gothic horrors. As Freda remarked in an interview, it is not true that evil comes from the other world: the wicked are us, we are the ones who generate evil. Dr. Hichcock is dead, yet his ghost haunts the two murderous lovers: his widow Margaret and Charles, a weak man dominated by her (again underlining the centrality of the woman – whether victim or witch-vampire – in Italian horror).
Riccardo Freda delivers one of the high points of Italian Gothic cinema, continuing in spirit the line started with L’orribile segreto del dr. Hichcock. At the center are the widow Margaret (Barbara Steele) and her lover Charles, accomplices in the doctor’s murder...
Nerves collapse; the film plays as much on apparitions as on hallucination. Barbara Steele delivers a nuanced performance as both a murderous wife and betrayed lover, her torment pointing back to the close connection between Italian horror and melodrama. Meanwhile, Raffaele Masciocchi’s beautiful cinematography paints overloaded interiors steeped in shadow and, in rare exterior shots, opens into frames of painterly enchantment. Freda – also co-screenwriter – infuses the work with a moral pessimism in which no one is saved, and consequently, despair reigns. Yet within the story’s dark tone lies an objective, Hitchcockian irony (thus Hichcock meets Hitchcock!): if you think about it, the characters – just like in Sir Alfred’s films – always tell the truth without realizing
