Castle of the Creeping Flesh [Blu-ray]

This plodding German horror production (aka Im Schloss der Bluten Begierde or In the Castle of Bloody Lust) stars Howard Vernon -- a familiar face in countless Euro-horror films such as Awful Dr. Orloff and A Virgin Among the Living Dead -- as the evil Dr. Saxon, who is compelled by a family curse to commit grisly murders in his quest for a suitable heart transplant to reanimate his dead daughter. In an appropriately tasteless twist (reminiscent of the later films of Jess Franco or Mexi-horror auteur Rene Cardona, Jr.), the mad medic's chest-cutting craft is "enhanced" by actual heart-surgery footage -- probably more as a cost-cutting venture than an effort to gross out the audience.