Although this rather lame crime story is labeled as a giallo in most books, it lacks almost everything that makes a giallo a great thriller. This film looks like a classic Agatha-Christie-like murder mystery that came about 12 years too late (would it have been made in the Mid-1960s, it would at least have gone through as a rip-off of the British Miss-Marple-mysteries starring ...
A renegade USAF general, Lawrence Dell, escapes from a military prison and takes over an ICBM silo near Montana and threatens to provoke World War 3 unless the President reveals details of a secret meeting held just after the start of the Vietnam War between Dell and the then President's most trusted advisors.
Whitney Cameronn (Cotten), a man with a strong affection for his sister-in-law (Peters). When one of her stepchildren dies, it's revealed that the child was poisoned to death. Whitney suspects his sister-in-law committed the murder and is afraid that her other son may be in danger. The film climaxes during an ocean voyage aboard a cruise ship.
A young man, Peter, returns to Austria in search of his heritage. There he visits the castle of an ancestor, a sadistic Baron who was cursed to a violent death by a witch whom the Baron had burned at the stake. Peter reads aloud the incantation that causes Baron Blood to return and continue his murderous tortures.