I first remember seeing this one back in the 70s when it was shown on late night television. Scared the hell out of me. But then, I was a teenager back in those days, not as jaded about films as I am now.
CASTLE OF BLOOD (aka: DANSE MACABRE) is a fine example of the 60s Italian horror genre, along with Mario Bava's BLACK SUNDAY(1960), CURSE OF THE LIVING DEAD (aka: KILL BABY KILL) (1966) and Mario Caiano's NIGHTMARE CASTLE (1965). If you want spooky atmosphere along with great writing, then check these out as well. I also rate these along with those early Poe films that Roger Corman was doing during the same period.
I saw the new Synapse DVD that was taken from a French print and it's a great improvement over that old pan-and-scan print that was making the rounds on television over the years. It adds a couple of minutes of dialog (in French) that don't really add much to the movie as whole, but it's nice to see it complete, without cuts. Unfortunately the DVD doesn't really offer any extras beyond stills from the film.
One flub I noticed was in the opening scene, seeing the smoke-effects man next to the camera being reflected on the glass of the inn's front door. I guess the editors didn't catch it at the time, or maybe they didn't care, but it is something I didn't notice the first time. That's the wonders of DVD. You get to see all the flubs, mistakes and details that weren't apparent the first time around. But no matter.
But no matter, it still gets a 7 on the imdb meter

Before this made for TV movie began, I had relatively low expectations. That's because it was made after the final episode of the series had aired and many of the series originals were gone. There is no President Sheridan, Delenn, Lennier, Londo, Vir, G'kar or Lyta. If you remember, on the second to last episode of the series, all the regulars except Zack, Vir and Captain Lockley left B-5 permanently. Now for this film they did bring back Garibaldi (who was not in the last B-5 movie) to join Zack and the Captain and the Doctor makes a brief and irrelevant appearance. But because so much is gone of the old chemistry, this film already is severely handicapped.
The movie is about a Soul Hunter (Martin Sheen) who is led to Babylon 5 in search of a globe filled with souls that had been stolen from a hidden repository by an archaeologist (Ian McShane). A lot of spooky mumbo-jumbo stuff occurs but frankly it was all pretty silly and pointless. Yeah, yeah, the station nearly blew up but was saved and all, but frankly I felt like it was a case of "been there done that--and done that a lot better in the past".
The secondary plot, provided more for comic relief, was much more interesting, as an entrepreneur installed a holo-brothel and those in command weren't sure what to do about it and when they tried to pressure them to close, they were slapped with a lawsuit. This was fluff, but it did provide a few laughs--something the other dreary plot was surely lacking.
By the way, Sheen at first did a good job playing the Should Hunter--with his wild eyes and bizarre delivery. However, repeatedly throughout the episode he fell out of character. This should have been spotted and corrected.
So the final verdict is this is only for total die-hard B-5 nuts (like myself). Others seeing it might assume the series sucked--which is a great injustice. This is a great example of a show not knowing when to quit.