Barbara Steele's final and hardest-to-see Italian gothic horror film AN ANGEL FOR SATAN comes to Blu-ray courtesy of Severin Films.

Sculptor Roberto Merigi (Anthony Steffen, THE NIGHT EVELYN CAME OUT OF THE GRAVE) arrives in a lakeside Italian village at the invitation of the Count of Montrebruno (Claudio Gora, DANGER: DIABOLIK) to restore a seventeenth century statue recently recovered from the lake at the request of his niece Harriet (Steele) who is due to arrive and take charge of her inheritance after her education abroad. Roberto learns that the locals believe the statue is cursed and are not happy about its restoration, particularly when the boatmen who recovered the statue mysterious drown.

As he begins work on the restoration, he discovers the striking resemblance between the statue and Harriet, whose ancestress Madalena was the model. Although he is unable to get the details of the curse from the Count or the servants, Roberto falls ill and in his delirium the spirit of Madelena's plain cousin Belinda reveals that Madelena was a witch who seduced the statue's sculptor and that Belinda drowned when she tried to destroy the statue by pushing it into the lake. Recovering for his fever, Roberto cannot help but fall in love with Harriet, and she returns his love; that is, until she starts calling herself Belinda and starts seducing the village men only to destroy them by pitting them against each other or against their own families. The locals come to believe that Harriet is a witch, while Roberto tries to determine whether Harriet is mad or possessed.

Less formulaic in its deployment of Gothic horror tropes than director Camilo Mastrocinque's previous horror film TERROR IN THE CRYPT – an adaptation of "Carmilla" taken over for the better from Antonio Margheriti (CASTLE OF BLOOD) – AN ANGEL FOR SATAN puts different spins on the various Italian horror tropes. Steele once again embodies the duality of good and evil, but the possession is far more ambiguous and her seduction and manipulation of her male victims has a sadomasochist charge – witness her topless whipping of idiot gardener Vittorio (Aldo Berti, A STRANGER IN TOWN) – that may have one wondering if she is possessed at all (the film's rural setting and monochrome imagery also call to mind Tony Richardson's MADEMOISELLE from the same year and Jeanne Moreau's malevolent schoolteacher). The film's central setting is not a moldering castello but a rather beautiful villa, and in place of Harriet White's old crone housekeeper we get Harriet's middle-aged governess Illda (Marina Berti, QUO VADIS) who is having an affair with the Count that is kept secret only out of fear of gossip rather than any real impropriety. Rather than the heroine, it is Steffen's hero who is beckoned down the villa corridors by a ghostly voice, and it share in common with TERROR IN THE CRYPT a secret associated with a work of art while recasting that film's Ursula Davis from vampire to innocent housemaid seduced into abandoning her schoolteacher lover (Vassili Karis, THE BEAST IN SPACE) while Steele's LONG HAIR OF DEATH co-star Halina Zalewska has a small role as one of the village girls menaced by a sex killer. While the resolution is a bit of a letdown compared to some of Steele's other works, AN ANGEL FOR SATAN is a worthy addition to Steele's horror filmography with some attractive monochrome photography by Giuseppe Aquari (THE KILLER RESERVED NINE SEATS) and a romantic original score by Francesco De Masi (whose score for the Steele vehicle THE GHOST was augmented by tracks from his earlier film THE MURDER CLINIC).

Unreleased in the United States and impossible to see in English after its 1968 British theatrical release, AN ANGEL FOR SATAN first turned up watchable form a letterboxed newsstand VHS from Italian horror magazine Nocturno, the source of Video Search of Miami's subtitled cassette and Sinister Cinema's unsubtitled edition. The film first turned up on DVD in France from Seven7 in an anamorphic transfer with only French and Italian audio options – it also unfortunately used the French title sequence which ran the same length as the Italian one but featured considerably fewer credits – which was also used for the Italian DVD from Sinister Film and on a bonus DVD from Germany's Koch Media in their Mario Bava Blu-ray boxed set. None of these editions were English-friendly, and the subtitled DVD double feature with THE LONG HAIR OF DEATH from Johnny Legend's Midnight Choir label was an obvious bootleg.

Mastered from a new 2K scan of the original camera negative, Severin Films' 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.85:1 widescreen Blu-ray features the rare English-language credits sequence and understandably looks a bit softer and coarser during the title opticals, cleaning up and sharpening as the film proper starts and looking quite glossy at its best while also revealing the heavy make-up job on Gora that suggests both the former matinee idol's and the aging character's vanity. Blacks are deep, whites are free of distortion, and the new transfer better conveys the contrast of rustic exteriors and village interiors with those of the luxurious villa's clean plaster and burnished wood. The Italian track is present in DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono as well as, finally, the English dub which features the voice of Carolyn de Fonseca (THE SHELTERING SKY) – Olga in SUSPIRIA, Daniella Giordano in SHADOW OF ILLUSION, Mariangela Giordano in BURIAL GROUND – for Barbara Steele, as well as English subtitles for the Italian track and SDH ones for the English track. The English dub is fine, but the English subtitles reveal differences on the Italian track that make Steele's seductions of the men (and a woman) seem more "adult" without being crude.

The film is accompanied by two new audio commentary tracks. On the first, Steele is interviewed by horror film historian David Del Valle and Severin Films' David Gregory about her years in Italy, her relationship with Fellini and her role in 8 1/2, socializing in Italy – including throwing a party with twenty beautiful young men when Noel Coward came to Italy looking for a handsome supporting performer for one of his plays – feeling limited by her horror stardom, but nevertheless regretting leaving Italy when she married screenwriter James Poe, and her subsequent producing career with Dan Curtis and other works. The second track features Kat Ellinger, author of recent book on Harry Kumel's DAUGHTERS OF DARKNESS. She distinguishes the film as a Gothic romance rather than a Gothic horror, drawing parallels not only with Prosper Merimee's "Venus d'Ille" about a statue of Venus that comes to life and crushes its suitor (a young man who put his wedding ring on the statue's hand as a joke – adapted later by Mario Bava and his son Lamberto – but also the lesser-known outside of Italy Gothic novel "Malombra" by Antonio Fogazzaro adapted in 1942 and more recently in 1984 as a more overtly erotic film starring Paola Senatore (EMANUELLE IN AMERICA).

Ported over from the German DVD is "The Devil Statue" (18:25), an interview with actor Karis who recalls immigrating to Italy from Greece and becoming involved in acting when he was cast in a small role because a production company wanted to use his Fiat in a film. He found an agent in Liliana Biancini who also produced AN ANGEL FOR SATAN which provided his first meaty role. He has few memories about Steele and more about his fight scene with Mario Brega (A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS), and goes on to discuss his dislike of horror films and his experiences in the Philippines working with Bruno Mattei in the eighties. Fabio Melelli appears throughout discussing Mastrocinque's career as a comedy director and his potential to have been a genre stylist with his two horror films.