OTTO VON KLEIST (Franco Tocci, wearing a mask by Carlo Rambaldi) rises from the grave outside Schloss des Teufels.
Uncle Karl cautions his nephew to be wary of the supernatural, but when he retires for the evening, Peter persuades Eva to return to the castle to have a go at the incantation. “Perhaps I can scare up a little family history,” he jokes. The parchment also contains a counter-incantation, capable of return- ing the Baron to his grave, so “If we don’t dig him, we’ll ditch him.”
a representative of the Commission for National Monuments, to ensure that the castle’s original integrity is preserved. That night at dinner, Karl’s young daughter Gretchen amuses Peter and Eva with her stories of having seen the Baron’s ghost at the windows of the castle. When Karl mentions Elizabeth Holle, Peter surprises him by produc- ing an ancient piece of parchment that he discovered as a child while visiting his grandfather; it contains the incan- tation which, according to legends of the witch, will bring the Baron back to life. 2
that she left behind an incantation that, when recited aloud inside the charred room at the stroke of midnight, would restore the disfigured Kleist to life, so that he might reexperience the agonies of death again and again. When Peter arrives in Austria, he is met at Flughafen Wien (the airport) by his uncle Karl Hummel, a professor of architecture at the University. Their conversation quickly comes round to the Baron, and Uncle Karl drives Peter to the Baron’s old castle, known as Schloss des Teufels (“Castle of the Dev- ils”), which is in the midst of renova- tion for its reopening as a hotel—“for foreigners, not
for the locals,” Karl
says, implying that Baron’s legend is more than a mere fable for the people of his town. They meet Eva Arnold, one of Karl’s graduate stu- dents, who is overseeing the work of Herr Dortmundt’s renovation team as
PETER KLEIST (Antonio Cantáfora) and Eva (Elke Sommer) read the incantation that brings the Baron back to life.
