Starring Peter Cushing, Herbert Lom, Patrick Magee, Stephanie Beacham, Ian Ogilvy
Directed by Roy Ward Baker
(actor & director credits courtesy IMDB.com)
A young bride marrying into a noble family is haunted by ghostly and violently disturbing visions she suffers in the ancestral manor house, but no one is willing to answer her questions about its history.
A rare period horror film from Amicus, the studio better known for its more contemporary anthologies, the film is blessed with a quality cast, and fine costuming and production design, which transports us back to the era of manors and servants bound to the land convincingly. There's potent shocks and disturbing imagery also along the way, a number of which I found unpalatable, but Beacham gives a solid performance as the terrorized bride who still has her wits about her and is determined to find answers to the traumas she's being put through. Author & friend Troy Howarth made the valid point that the picture is difficult to sit through, and I agree. Cushing is most welcome when he finally appears, as a sensitive doctor of the mind, but it's almost too long a wait, and the film itself feels like a story from an Amicus anthology expanded to feature length, which would have been better off condensed, as a number of sequences feel like Baker and his crew are hammering us over the head with messages we've already received. Nonetheless, it's a beautiful looking and at times gripping film.
No comments:
Post a Comment