Barbara Steele is 88 years old today. She was born on 29 December 1937.

Steele was a contract player in the early 1950s. She first worked for Rank Organisation and then 20th Century Fox. She was cast largely as an extra. But she also performed in minor roles. Most likely, she would have gone into British TV. But she did the unexpected. And that’s why we know her today.

She moved to Italy and immediately struck gold. Mario Bava cast her in Black Sunday. That did it. She was a star. It led to many other roles. Soon after, she was cast as the duplicitous Elizabeth in Roger Corman’s The Pit and the Pendulum.

Steele continued to work primarily in Italy. She starred in the horror films The Horrible Dr Hichcock, The Ghost, Castle of Blood, The Long Hair of Death, Terror-Creatures from the Grave, and Nightmare Castle. She got top billing in all of the Italian horror films. But she also starred in a number of other films where she never got top billing. Of these, most were comedies, including the Lucio Fulci sketch comedy film, I Maniaci. Finally, she even had a notable supporting role in Federico Fellini’s 8½.

By the 1970s, she had moved away from Italy. But she still starred in a lot of horror. This included a small role in the Night Gallery episode “The Sins of the Fathers.” That’s the one where Richard Thomas plays a sin-eater. That episode freaked me out as a child. During this period, she starred in Shivers, Piranha, and The Silent Scream. She was also in the 1991 reboot of Dark Shadows and was a producer on the Dark Shadows 30th Anniversary Tribute.

These days, Barbara Steele doesn’t seem to be working outside of voice roles. But we still have all her old work. Let’s watch The Horrible Dr Hichcock. According to Michael Weldon, “The American version is missing 12 minutes of sexual deviation.” I found a print that includes it!

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Barbara Steel via Wikimedia. It is in the public domain.