The copy i had was mostly in english (i assume the actors are speaking italian), but then there is a couple of spots where the actors are speaking french and there are english subtitles. Namely, the beginning scene in the pub. Explanation?
"The Blood of these whores is KILLING ME!"
The movie was originally all in French. The release shown in the United States had several scenes removed from the original French version. Some of these, such as some scenes in the pub, were done primarily to speed up the story and to make the movie a certain total length in minutes. Others, such as some details of the bedroom murder scene and the lesbian scene between Julia and Elizabeth were removed by the American distributor because it was felt that they were too risque for American audiences of the time--especially TV showings.
Consequently, no English dubbing was done for these deleted scenes. When Synapse restored the film, they wanted it to be as complete as the original. Hence they reinserted the scenes and added English subtitles.
More or less correct, though actually what they did was to find a complete French language widescreen print and composite in the English language audio except for those patches which were not translated to English to try and speed up the pacing for American markets in 1964. The film was actually shot without sound and everything you hear in the movie is the result of post production sound editing. Language versions were created for Italian, French, English and probably German & Spanish audiences -- some of which had more material than others, the English version (originally titled CASTLE OF TERROR) being the most obviously condensed down.
But what they are showing on the DVD is a complete French version which contained all of the original footage. The English version was shortened so they subtitled that which hadn't been translated.
Being produced and directed by Italians (Giovanni Addessi and Antonio Margheriti), the first "original" version was for the Italian market and accordingly dubbed in Italian; then being a coproduction with France, the next "original" version must have been dubbed in French... and so on English, German, Spanish... What they say above is correct, it must have been reconstructed with several copies with different dubbings. The original version is available. I saw it completely in Italian (with Spanish subtitles) in a pristine copy issued in 2011 in Spain.
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