Distorting, disturbing, strange, unusual, unnatural, weird. There are dozens of adjectives I could use to describe this film. The murders that take place aren't even that gruesome, just bloody, which makes them all the more disturbing through the power of suggestion. That's right, there are no rubbery limbs or bats in this film, instead all of the chills and spills are in the mind. Hammer's psychological horror opus bypasses the usual monster elements and instead gives us a horror film with purely human villains. Reviewed by Leofwine_draca 7 / 10 Unique, one-off psycho-horror from Hammer Arthur Grant's exquisitely lush'n'lovely pastoral cinematography, the brooding 19th century setting, Harry Robinson's eerie, elegant score, and a dark narrative which boldly explores such disturbing themes as incest, repression and the sins of the fathers further enhances the overall fine quality of this flavorsome Gothic horror outing. Popping up in enjoyably colorful supporting roles are Patrick Magee as a cynical, unhelpful charlatan psychiatrist, Yvonne Mitchell as a loyal housekeeper, Manfred Mann lead singer Paul Jones as Elisabeth's ardent suitor, and Michael Hordern as a deranged, doddery priest. Director Peter Sykes, working from a quirky, intricate, literate and compellingly subversive script by Christopher Wicking (who also wrote "The Oblong Box" and "Scream and Scream Again"), expertly crafts a spooky, artsy and intriguing psychological portrait of madness and despair, relating the story at a slow, stately rate and deftly creating a potently gloomy and melancholy atmosphere. Pretty soon the frightened townspeople succumb to mass hysteria. Meanwhile a bunch of gorgeous peasant girls in a nearby village are being brutally murdered by a mystery maniac. Wicked, decadent Baron Zorn (a robust, rip-snorting portrayal by Robert Hardy) keeps both his frail daughter Elisabeth (touchingly played by the delicately comely Gillian Hills) and tormented son Emil (Shane Briant in his excellent film debut) locked up inside his dismal castle because of a hereditary family curse of insanity. Reviewed by Woodyanders 8 / 10 An eerie, offbeat and interesting early 70's Hammer Gothic horror oddity
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