Severin Films, with sales and distribution support provided by MVD Entertainment Group, has something special lined up for the Halloween promotional season … the Blu-ray debut of Barbara Steele’s 1966 horror entry, An Angel for Satan. The street date will be Oct. 26.
For reasons that are not entirely clear, director Camillo Mastrocinque’s film did not find a domestic theatrical distributor. Mario Bava’s 1960 film release of Black Sunday, which introduced Steele to American audiences, was acquired by American International and dubbed into English for a 1961 theatrical release. And, she co-starred the same year, 1961, in director Roger Corman’s Pit and the Pendulum opposite Vincent Price, which was also an American International release.
Further, Italian filmmaker Antonio Margheriti’s 1964 film production of Castle of Blood found an English-dubbed theatrical rollout in the United States right after its Italian debut. Ditto for Nightmare Castle (Allied Artists, dubbed) in 1966. At this point Barbara Steele is bankable and a genre-fan favorite, but An Angel for Satan missed out on the cycle.
As any genre fan worth their salt can tell you, this Barbara Steele entry has been around as VHS and DVD (both legit and bootlegged) for years, but it has taken the efforts of Severin Films to deliver it to the Blu-ray marketplace.
This is a new 2K film restoration from the original camera negative that has recently been unearthed in a Rome film storage facility. The restoration includes the original Italian-language track, plus a thought-to-be-lost English-dubbed track (which makes it all the more mysterious that it didn’t find a U.S. distributor).
Bonus features include commentary with Barbara Steele, who is joined by film historian David Del Valle, plus there is a second commentary option featuring Kat Ellinger. Additionally, there is the 1967 short film titled Barbara and Her Furs, plus the featurette, “The Devil Statue.”
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