Amicus were supposed imitators of Hammer horror but only rarely made the full length period pieces that were similar to those turned out by their more famous rival; this was one of them and it's not very good, despite a strong cast. Stephanie Beacham marries rich Ian Ogilvy and moves to his large estate, only to discover Ogilvy's family are subject to a curse.
The curse turns out to have its origin in an old Hound of the Baskervilles-style scandal involving an evil ancestor who raped a woman, causing the woman's fiancee to curse the family. There is a lot of rape here... Beachman thinks she's been raped by a ghost, or a groundskeeper, she becomes pregnant.
Ogilvy and Beacham were born to appear in period costume, as was Peter Cushing, who plays a doctor trying to figure out if Beacham is insane or not; Patrick Magee and Herbert Lom (raping ancestor) have lively cameos.
But it's not much of a story and Roy Ward Baker's direction, as usual, doesn't bring much to the proceedings; this cries out for atmosphere, creeps and intensity and doesn't get any of it. The last third makes a great mistake in turning Beacham's character passive; the climax in particular is dull with Ogilvy running around emoting in a grave while Cushing watches on, bored.
Beacham is very beautiful at least - she shows some cleavage, can act, and does a hilarious scream. She was an effective horror queen and it's a shame she didn't make more in this genre than she did. Ogilvy really doesn't have much of a character to play.
Maybe this would have worked better condensed down to be a segment of one of their anthology movies.
No comments:
Post a Comment