Black Magic

“...It Will Hold You in its Spell!”

The source of Joseph Balsamo's power (Orson Welles) is never quite explained: a man who calls himself Count Cagliostro and can put a person under with a look. He turns that hold on the court of King Louis XV, and Gregory Ratoff, adapting Dumas' Joseph Balsamo, sets his revenge in the eighteenth century. Marie Antoinette and Lorenza (Nancy Guild) is the woman drawn into his power, and the bond between them is the film's center.