The 1963 Italian film The Ghost takes place in 1910 at an isolated Scottish estate.  It’s the type of estate where the mornings are always foggy, the nights are always full of lightning, and shadows always seem to be creeping around every corner.  The film opens with a darkened seance, one in which the estate’s housekeeper, Catherine (Harriet Medin), serves as a medium.  It’s an appropriate opening because, as we soon discover, everyone at this estate is obsessed with death.

The estate’s owner, the appropriately-named Dr. Hichcock (Elio Jotta), is sickly and obviously doesn’t have much time left.  He speaks constantly of the end while his wife, Margaret (Barbara Steele) and his doctor, Charles Livingstone (Peter Baldwin), continually try to keep him for committing suicide.

Of course, just because Margaret and Charles seem to be committed to keeping Dr. Hichcock from killing himself that doesn’t mean that they aren’t willing to do the job themselves.  Margaret and Charles are lovers and are eagerly looking forward to getting their hands on Hichock’s fortune once he actually does die.  When Margaret suggests that maybe Charles could help the process out while still making Hichcock’s death look natural, Charles is, at first, a bit hesitant.  But, he finally goes through with it.

So, now, Dr. Hichcock’s dead!  They have a moodily-photographed funeral and everything!  However, Margaret and Charles are shocked when the doctor’s assets are revealed to amount to very little money.  Figuring out that he must have hidden his fortune somewhere in the estate, Margaret and Charles start to search but find themselves wondering how much they can trust each other.

Making things even more complicated is that it appears that Dr. Hichcock might not be done with either one of them.  Soon, both Margaret and Charles are hearing the dead doctor’s voice echoing throughout the house and other strange things start to happen.  Even the housekeeper gets possessed and starts telling Margaret not to trust Charles.  Is Dr. Hichcock haunting them from the grave or is Margaret being driven mad by her own greed and guilt?  Or is there another solution?

The Ghost is a moody and enjoyable gothic mystery story, one that is dripping with atmosphere and which features a typically fierce and compelling performance from the greatest femme fatale of Euroshock cinema, Barbara Steele.  Take the murder at the center of the plot and then add in the creepy housekeeper and you have a film that feels almost like a cross between Rebecca and Double Indemnity.  It’s not a perfect film, of course.  Especially when compared to other Italian horror-thrillers of the era, the pace is a bit slow and you’ll probably figure out the story’s big twist before anyone in the film does.  But no matter.  Once you get used to it, the slow pace actually adds to the film’s creepy atmosphere and, if the plot is familiar, it’s familiar in the way that the best fairy tales and other cautionary legends are familiar.  It’s an enjoyably creepy film and a perfect example of why Barbara Steele remains one of the most revered icons of Italian horror.