Barbara Steele

Barbara Steele is a British actress and one of the more popularly known "scream queens" of the 1960s. Steel was born on December 29th, 1937 in Birkenhead, Cheshire, England. Her first major role in a genre film was the 1960 Italian giallo film La maschera del demonio (known in the US market as Black Sunday). Steele played Asa Vadja, a witch sentenced to die by her royal sibling, and subsequently curses her brother's family bloodline. Following that, she appeared in Roger Corman's version of Pit and the Pendulum, the second adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe's 1842 short story. In 1962 she appeared in Riccardo Freda's The Horrible Dr. Hichcock playing the role of Cynthia Hichcock, the second wife and would-be victim of the necrophiliac Professor Bernard Hichcock. She later plays another character by the name of Hichcock in another Riccardo Freda film, 1963's The Ghost.

Notes & Trivia

 * Also appeared in the 1964 sex comedy I maniaci directed by Italian horror luminary Lucio Fulci.