The Whip and the Body

Kurt Menliff returns to the family seaside castle after many years away, allegedly to congratulate his younger brother Christian on marrying Nevenka. The household already fears his sadistic nature, especially his father Count Menliff and housemaid Giorgia, but they decide to let him stay overnight.

The next day Kurt finds Nevenka sitting by herself on the beach, and he seduces her as they kiss. She initially panics and strikes him with a riding crop; Kurt takes the whip and lashes her back, provoking a reaction that she seems to feel sexually, and they end up making love.

In the evening Nevenka fails to return to the castle. Christian, joined by butler Losat and Kurt's cousin Katia who secretly loves Christian, sets out to find her. They search the castle grounds and nearby areas while mounting tensions simmer within the household.

An unseen figure stabs Kurt in the throat with the dagger that Tania used to kill herself. The attack remains mysterious as the participants scramble to understand who could have harmed him and why. The moment heightens the sense that dark forces are at work within the castle.

Losat finds Nevenka unconscious on the beach and they bring her back to the castle, where she is put to bed. Soon after, the household discovers Kurt's lifeless body, setting off grief, confusion, and suspicion about who killed him.

Following Kurt's funeral, relationships at the castle begin to crumble as suspicion and unease spread. Christian suspects his father of murder, while Nevenka starts seeing the dead man as a ghostly presence and hearing his voice.

Nevenka experiences visions of Kurt, including one where he appears to whip her in her bedroom, leaving welts on her body. These spectral episodes blur the line between memory, guilt, and supernatural manipulation.

Count Menliff is found dead in his bedroom, killed in the exact same way as Kurt had been stabbed earlier. The parallel deaths deepen the castle's sense of doom and fuel suspicions that the hauntings might be more human than supernatural.

Nevenka reappears only to vanish again, later being found in the family crypt in an apparent ecstasy, claiming that Kurt carried her to the crypt and whipped her. Her behavior worsens the rift among the castle's inhabitants.

Christian, Katia, and Losat begin to experience visions of Kurt and come to believe Nevenka's claim that Kurt's ghost is behind the Count's murder. They decide to unearth Kurt's body and cremate it in an effort to put an end to the hauntings.

While burning the body, Christian and Losat hear a sinister laugh and spot a cloaked figure spying on them. Christian chases the figure and discovers that it is a deranged Nevenka, feeding her madness with the illusion of supernatural influence.

In the crypt, Nevenka again confronts a vision of Kurt. She attempts to stab him but mortally wounds herself instead. Before dying, she tells Christian that she has 'killed Kurt again, this time for good.'

Losat and Christian conclude that Nevenka was driven insane or possibly possessed, explaining the supposed hauntings as a product of her state of mind rather than a true haunting by Kurt's ghost. The mystery narrows to psychological manipulation.

Even as Kurt's body burns, a riding crop left in his coffin appears to move by itself, a chilling final image that suggests the castle's dark workings persist beyond death.