User reviews

Hammer films had by 1972 clearly some problems coming up with new and fresh ideas. Their old style monster movies were beginning to show their age and the formula had been remade too many times (ie. Dracula AD 1972). So some experiments were made. "Captain Kronos" is one and this one another. The story moves very slowly in the beginning and what is happening is never really quite clear. The story about one family's inherited madness is intriguing but never fully developed. And those expecting some gory horror movie will be very disappointed, because for the most part, this is a rather slowmoving psychological study with added chilling elements. The biggest drawback here is the pace, which is non-existent for three-thirds of the movie. The final twenty minutes or so are more satisfying in that sense. Robert Hardy is also not a bonus, overacting like mad. But there are compensations. Other performances are very good, like Patrick Magee as the mock-psychiastrist and Gillian Hills as the young and maybe mad daughter of the family. And the basic plot IS interesting! A remake with a revision of the script might do wonders. Arthur Grant behind the camera does a great job too, contributing his usual skill and thereby making everything look more expensive than it really is. The art-director knows what he is doing too and the score by Harry Robinson is excellent (he really was an underrated filmcomposer).

The widower Baron Zord (Robert Hardy) keeps his teenage children Elizabeth (Gillian Hills) and Emil (Shane Briant) drugged and locked in separate rooms in his manor. Zord believes that they have inherited the insanity of his wife, who committed suicide, and uses his servants Hilda (Yvonne Mitchell) and Klaus (Kenneth J. Warren) to help him to keep the siblings under control and to bleed their "evil blood". Zord invites the infamous Dr. Falkenberg (Patrick Magee) to heal Elizabeth and Emil. Meanwhile there is a rapist serial-killer murdering young women and the young man Carl Richter (Paul Jones) is in love with Elizabeth and is trying to rescue her from her insane father.

"Demons of the Mind" is a movie by Hammer with a messy screenplay and ham performances. Despite the good production, the story is confused and hard to understand the subplots of the serial-killer and who is Carl. My vote is four.

Title (Brazil): Not available on DVD or Blu-Ray

In the 19th Century, a depraved Baron Zorn keeps his two adult children locked up and drugged in his castle, as he fears that they have inherited the curse of his wife's unstable mental illness. His daughter Elizabeth manages to escape, and encounters a young man Carl and spends a short time before she's recaptured. Heading to the castle is doctor Falkenberg to hopefully cure the kids, but Carl who tags along wants to free Elizabeth. Meanwhile hysteria is slowly building in the local village, as there's a sexual predator killing their young woman. They think its demons, but a drifter Priest sees it as his job to rid the area of evil and he points them to Zorn.

Eccentrically ham-fisted and downbeat, but lush looking and skilfully illustrated Hammer Gothic horror period piece that might not have the class of some other Hammer entries, but it sure was entertaining. The negative press might have its reasons, but I didn't find it a complete waste. The psychological story is absurd, glassy and lurid in every aspect, with gratuitous blood letting and excessively pointless nudity equalling extreme blood-lust. However a solid, well-serving cast (featuring Patrick Magee, Paul Jones, Yvonne Mitchell, Gillian Hills and a perfectly impulsive Robert Hardy) and Peter Sykes' pastel, well-etched direction (with inspired strokes and suspenseful fits) counter-pouches its weak, plodding and downright exploitative script of stock arrangement. Striking a big tick to their names were Harry Robinson's sweeping music score of harrowing scope, and Arthur Grant's fluid cinematography of scenic panache. On paper this one got better treatment, than what it really deserved. Fun and trashy Hammer mayhem.

There are many films like this - brilliant, thoughtful, stylish, inventive, provocative - that are largely forgotten because they were made by Hammer. Scan through the recent list of the BFI's 100 best British films, and there are very few gems like this. Apparently, its alright to reappraise Ulmer, Lewis, Fuller et al, but we British are above that kind of thing. If you ever see DEMONS, or something like THE PLAGUE OF THE ZOMBIES, on your TV listings, don't overlook it. It's always the snobs who lose out.

This is an astonishing film, a success in every way, a truly thoughtful horror film. The story concerns an aristocrat who believes his family line is infested with bad blood. He had married a peasant woman to offset this, but has instead infected the peasantry as well. He has locked up his son and daughter, and is bleeding them, to stop the rot. Meanwhile, peasant women are being raped and murdered throughout his estate.

From such a scenario, ripe for exploitation, is weaved a remarkable series of themes and variations. The film's first image is of a horse and carriage rushing through a forest, a white hand groping outside, only to be pulled back. Like THE AVENGERS, the best Hammer films revealed the horrors and insanities lurking behind placid, heritage, British rural life. On the surface is a gorgeous idyll - a beautiful Big House, a forest, grassy rivers. Beneath is incest, madness, hysteria, paganism, murder.

The house, like most horror films, is a metaphor for the mind. It is literally a prison, but also a labyrinth, mirroring the maze created by the disjointed gazes of the occupants. There are some amazing long shots of the house's inside, haunting, vastly empty, tilted - a mind off balance. The family is no longer a site of continuity and order, but discontinuity, inbreeding, misery and chaos.

But the house also shares the literary association as a figure for the state, and the poisonous madness within affects the peasantry too. They partake in pagan rituals, follow mad, gibbering priests, who offer destruction, not redemption, and become a terrifying, cross-burning lynch mob, roaming the country.

Ironically, the film is set at the beginning of the century, and Freud's contemporary attempts to throw light on the darkness of the mind is alluded to, and compared to the descent into medieval dank of the film's characters. BARRY LYNDON shares many of this film's themes, and it's hard to believe Kubrick never saw it - both feature Michael Hordern and Patrick Magee.

The creation of an actual world mirroring a psychological world is superbly realised. The two levels co-exist, intertwine, and some of the film's most extraordinary and beautiful images are visualisations of Freudian symbals and ideas. Like many great horror films, this is a family saga, but a very mature one. Its refusal to demonise adds greatly to the helplessness of the terrors. Its 'closure' is as bleak as ever Hammer dared. A masterpiece.

Whenever Hammer offered 'different' - 'Never Take Sweets From A Stranger', 'These Are The Damned', this one . . the response was mostly muted. 'Stay in your lane!' cried critics and public. 'Stay in your foggy Edwardian cemeteries, your dank asylums, your Home Counties-locked pirate ships . .'

'Demons . .' fits this line. Category is: 'slightly arty psychological melodrama' with all-in scene-chewing and shouting.

It is the morbid tale of . . Oh, whatever. It'd take all morning . .

Let's review the cast instead. The weird, bemused cast: My old mate, Michael Hordern, is most fun. A mad clergyman wandering the woods rambling and tut-tutting to himself as he goes.

Robert Hardy, overboard - to say the least - is in the lead as batty and torn Baron Zorn.

Yvonne Mitchell - a fine, unnerving actress; the relentless 'Yield To The Night' etc - is 'Aunt Hilda'(!), a kind of psycho-nanny to Zorn's insane/possessed/neither children.

Patrick Magee, a discredited quack, brought in to . . well . . make everything worse !

Paul Jones - yes, him - a Lennonesque hero who hasn't a scooby what the lines he's delivering mean or where he is.

Kenneth J Warren, a skinhead Aussie with a glut of ranting loon roles behind him, is almost subdued amongst this lot as the brutal butler. Almost . .

This hardcore ensemble is chiefly why 'Demons..' doesn't get a kicking. Add realistic gore; typically fine Harry Robinson music; the great Arthur Grant's last Hammer camerawork . . you've a sympathetic pot.

Despite it's pretensions, don't expect to take anything from - or make anything of - it, either. It's entirely designed to be senses-bustingly fevered. I accuse the miasmic coiling of the previous years' 'The Devils' as guilty - but then, blame 'The Devils' for everything from 'Flavia The Heretic' to 'Caligula'.

A mad baron (Robert Hardy), haunted by memories of driving his wife insane, is obsessed with the "heritage of disorder" that he thinks might afflict his two grown children (Gillian Hills and Shane Briant), whom he keeps locked up in his beautiful castle home, searching for a "cure." With the help of bald manservant Klaas (Kenneth J. Warren) and stern aunt Hilda (Yvonne Mitchell), he drains their blood to keep them weak, forbids them to see each other (there's incest involved) and ignores the expert opinions of a doctor (Patrick Magee). Meanwhile, there's a rapist/murderer on the loose terrorizing a quaint neighboring village.

This psychological horror story is a fine deviation from Hammer's cycle of monster movies, highlighted by excellent period costumes and sets (especially the castle) and Christopher Wicking's provocative, complex screenplay (which resembles V.C. Andrews' FLOWERS IN THE ATTIC, written later). Only the finale, with a mob of torch-carrying villagers hunting Hardy down a la FRANKENSTEIN, really detracts from this well above par Hammer production.

Baron Zorn (Robert Hardy) is obsessed with the idea that his children may have inherited the family traits of madness and incest, and so locks his daughter (the rather lovely Gillian Hills) and son Emil (Shane Briant) away from the world, keeping them in a weakened state with regular bleeding. However, Zorn's extreme preventative measures against insanity and deviancy in his offspring do not seem to be working as well as he had planned...

I'm a huge fan of Hammer, but with Demons of the Mind, I was more horrified by the approach taken by director Peter Sykes than the actual content of the film. Displaying a hallucinogenic vibe more akin to continental movies of the period, the film regularly strays into iffy art-house territory, and the free-floating narrative, which is at first intriguing, soon becomes confusing, and ultimately irritating.

Sensing the director's willingness to dabble with the avant garde, some of the cast experiment in over-acting, with Hardy hamming it up at every opportunity and Michael Hordern showing zero restraint in his portrayal of a crazy priest. Meanwhile, Shane Briant, who was being groomed by Hammer to be their latest leading man, is content with giving an unenthusiastic performance which makes one wonder how the hell the studio ever thought he could compete with their other up-and-coming star, the marvellous Ralph Bates.

Those looking for the more sensational elements that one generally associates with later Hammer movies will be disappointed by the lack of gore—there is very little in the way of bloodletting (the most violent scenes being slightly obscured in a flashback)—but should be pleased with some full-frontal nudity from the gorgeous Virginia Wetherell (as a comely village maiden) and a brief flash of a bare breast from Hills.

As always, the production values are high, and the cinematography is great (with lovely use of colour during a couple of murders), but Demons of the Mind's plodding pace and irksome 'progressive' style make this a difficult film to watch, even for a total Hammer addict such as myself.

Deathly afraid that his daughter and son have gotten a touch of the crazy from their mother, a local Baron locks them up (seperatly of course, since they have a thing for each other, or more precisely the brother has a thing for the receptive sister *wink*) and keeps them drugged up. After the daughter escapes, she's subjected to having the 'bad' blood dispelled. Meanwhile, a string of murders of town women are occurring. Are these connected? You'll have to find that out for yourself. More anti-science then anti-religious. Snd while this isn't Hammer's finest hour, it's still engrossing (Over-acting and all) However, I thought that Shane Briant who plays Emil, the son was much better in the same year's "Straight on Till Morning"

DVD Extras: Commentary with Peter Sykes, Christopher Wicking, Virginia Wetherell and Journalist Jonathan Sothcott; Theatrical Trailer

Eye Candy: Fleeting glimpses of Gillian Hill's 'hills', and Virginia Wetherell full frontal.

My Grade: C+

The folks at Hammer Studios take one of their usual Gothic environments and use it for a more cerebral and subtle film than what their fans are used to. The title really does make it quite clear: the "demons" here are those that dwell in the human mind, affecting mental stability and having a profound effect on the next generation. It does take the time to include some more exploitable elements - namely, gore and nudity - but these moments feel gratuitous given the nature of the balance of the film.

It takes place in Bavaria where a Baron named Zorn (Robert Hardy) is afraid of his children, afraid that they have inherited the madness of their predecessors. They do seem to be showing the signs. More than anything, the Baron is convinced that they are possessed. A self styled psychiatrist named Falkenberg (Patrick Magee) and his young associate Carl (Paul Jones, formerly of the band Manfred Mann) arrive on the scene, using radical methods to probe the psyche of father and children (Gillian Hills, Shane Briant). Meanwhile, the local villagers are convinced of the existence of demons, and spurred on by a wandering priest (Michael Hordern), they determine to take care of the problem.

"Demons of the Mind" does appear to divide the audience, but this viewer would consider himself in the camp that considers this one of the more interesting and hence more effective of the latter day Hammer productions. Australian director Peter Sykes creates a suitably eerie atmosphere, which is enhanced by wonderfully spooky music composed by Harry Robertson. The script by Christopher Wicking is heavy on symbolism, and it offers meaty roles to a sterling bunch of actors, with the under-rated Hardy delivering the goods in a particularly great role. Magee is fun as always as the hard-driving psychiatrist, and good looking pair Hills and Briant are affecting as the troubled kids.

The film does end on a very Hammer-esque note with angry torch bearing villagers set for a final confrontation, but getting there is every bit as enjoyable. Those horror fans looking for different offerings from Hammer are advised to give this one a look.

Eight out of 10.

Demons In The Mind is a left turn for Hammer, taking the Gothic horror into different territories. This has a very similar look and ambiance comparable to the other horror films made by the studio. However, this is a very psychological horror film that is devoid of monsters(unless you count human ones), but still very much feels like a Hammer movie. The movie is unpredictable and sometimes gets confusing, but overall I still enjoyed it quite a bit. Patrick Magee from A Clockwork Orange appears and delivers a sound performance to this unusual film. Demons In The Mind is a little off the wall, but somehow works. The sex and violence is at around the same level as other Hammer productions at the time. While this was not well received around the time of its release Demons In The Mind is a solid piece of work and a very interesting film.

Well I went into this with high expectations, but unfortunately Demons of the Mind failed to deliver. I'm a big fan of Hammer Horror, and since I've seen most of the big ones; this one has been at the top of my 'must see' for quite some time. It has to be said that Demons of the Mind represents one of Hammer's most ambitious projects, but that can't be seen as a compliment to the film as it just doesn't work. Demons of the mind does benefit from some good production values, and actually reminded me a lot of Ken Russell's The Devil's because of the way that it fuses good acting and cinematography with a purely B-movie plot. The plot is overly complicated, and focuses on a pair of children who are kept locked up by their father, a man who fears that the children may have been 'infected' by their insane mother. The boy keeps escaping, and coincidentally a lot of dead girls are turning up in the woods. The father keeps them separate as the boy is attracted to the girl, and the plot thickens when a doctor who stands to make a fortune if he can 'cure' the children turns up...

Demons of the Mind was directed by Peter Sykes, who also directed one of the studio's worst efforts in the form of To the Devil a Daughter two years later. Clearly, he is not Hammer's most adept director. The film features a handful of British horror stars - most notably Patrick Magee and Shane Briant, both for different reasons. Magee is one of the most underrated and unique British horror actors, and he always manages to increase the credibility of anything he stars in - even if it is something like this. Briant, on the other hand, starred in a handful of Hammer Horror flicks during the early seventies and failed to make much of an impression after the first one. Briant was noticeable in Straight on till Morning for his ridiculous haircut, but since then failed to make an impression. The film really lacks what Hammer's big guns bring to the table - Cushing and Lee are sorely missed. The plot mumbles along for most of the duration, and by the end I wasn't too bothered what happened. I can give this film plaudits for the production values and for some notable sequences - but overall, Demons of the Mind isn't one of Hammer's finest hours.

I watched "Demons of the Mind" after not having seen it since it originally appeared. My memory of the film was very positive, and there are some interesting ideas in the script. However, there are an overabundance of plot elements that are presented in a haphazard and overly hysterical form by director Peter Sykes. One other reviewer here calls this a free-form narrative, but for me it was a confused jumble.

Robert Hardy plays (or overplays, as others here have noted) Count Zorn who is convinced that there is madness and other evil in his family's bloodline.

His wife had committed suicide, so he decided that he needed to lock up his children in case they started manifesting any insanity. Years later he has a controversial doctor (played by Patrick Magee in his usual mannered way) treating both grown kids (Shane Briant, Gillian Hills).

At the same time there are young women being brutally murdered in the woods and local superstitions are being whipped up, while a wandering evangelical (Michael Hordern) mutters religious dogma and joins with the locals.

A good director could have woven all these piece together nicely and provided a solid, disturbing thriller. But Sykes is more interested in whipping up a lot of intensity in each scene, which is why there's more overacting than needed and why the film winds up becoming exhausting to watch after a while. Too bad. It had the makings of a fine film. Perhaps the usual rushed schedule that Hammer Films had didn't allow for sufficient care, though screenwriter Christopher Wicking had history of penning horror films that were more interesting in concept than in execution.

Was Hammer Studios ever capable of making anything else than traditional horror movies with monsters and madmen? The answer to that is clearly YES, and this "Demons of the Mind" is the irrefutable evidence to back up that statement. Were they any good at it? Well, that's a different question, of course. "Demons of the Mind" is a long way from Hammer's best accomplishment, but it surely is an ambitious, visually innovative and intriguing. What this movie lacks, unfortunately, is a minimum of respect towards the viewers. The script, co-written by Christopher Wicking of "The Oblong Box" and "To the Devil a Daughter", is unnecessary complex and even on the verge of pretentious. Director Peter Sykes is so busy with building up an atmosphere of mystery and pseudo- psychology that he completely forgets to properly introduce the main characters and their backgrounds. The plot introduces the highly unusual family situation of the Van Zorn's; a British noble family in the late 19th Century. The baron is somehow convinced that his children, a son and a daughter, will eventually fall victim to a hereditary illness and thus keeps them locked away in their rooms. Personally I would keep them apart because of their incestuous cravings, but still… Anyway, the baron seeks the help of a notorious psychologist who talks a whole of gibberish that I totally didn't understand. Meanwhile, the docile and superstitious villagers living nearby the castle are growing petrified as they discover the bodies of some brutally murdered local town girls. In spite of the numerous fascinating and controversial themes (incest, hereditary madness, unorthodox psychology methods…) and some beautifully artsy elements of symbolism (rose petals covering naked corpses, flowers through keyholes…), "Demons of the Mind" remains an overall nebulous film that could – and should – have been much better. The film eventually even reverts to old-fashioned and heavily clichéd solutions, like the angry mob with torches, for example. The most notable performance is delivered by Patrick Magee as the charlatan psychiatrist. Magee nearly always has this decadent and sinister aura surrounding him, but it really works well in this film. There's also gratuitous nudity and quite a bit of explicit bloodshed to find in "Demons of the Mind". The strangulation sequences are reasonably perverse and the suicide scene (featuring inside a flashback) even qualifies as nauseating considering the time of release. I prefer Hammer's entries in the Dracula and Frankenstein cycles at any time, but nonetheless this is an interesting film to watch and get confused over.

This was quite a surprise. It had a much stronger story line than I'd have expected from the producer, and the characters are intriguing. Before I knew it, this show had me hooked. Although I predicted the ending, it was still quite intense. Well worth the trip.

"Demons of the Mind" was made by Hammer Film Productions, the best-known makers of British horror films during the sixties and early seventies. (This was something of a golden age for British horror, largely because such material could be shown in the cinema at a time when it was still banned from British television). Unlike most of Hammer's productions, however, this one is what I would class as a "rationalist" horror movie. Most horror films ask us to accept that the supernatural is real; the rationalist variety generally take the line that the supernatural is an illusion and only real in the minds of those who believe in it. (The two best-known British rationalist horror films are probably "Witchfinder General" and "The Wicker Man", neither made by Hammer).

The story is set in 19th century Germany. The main character is Baron Zorn, an aristocratic widower. Zorn's wife, who suffered from mental illness, died by suicide, and he believes that his two adult children Elisabeth and Emil may have inherited their mother's condition. He is certainly right to be concerned about their mental state, because they have formed an incestuous attachment to one another, and he orders that they should be kept apart from one another. He hires Professor Falkenberg, a quack doctor of dubious reputation, to try and cure them. Another young doctor, Carl, falls in love with Elisabeth and wants to rescue her. In the meantime a series of murders of young women have taken place in the locality, and the superstitious peasantry, egged on by a fanatical wandering priest believe that demons are responsible.

Perhaps because the story is in some ways different from their normal fare, Hammer did not want either of their normal leading men, Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, to play Zorn. They had some difficulty in casting the role; Paul Scofield, James Mason and Dirk Bogarde all turned it down, something the producers attributed to snobbery about the horror genre. In the event the role went to Robert Hardy after Eric Porter withdrew to make "Hands of the Ripper". Hardy has been criticised, both on this board and elsewhere, for rampant overacting. There is some truth in this criticism, but then he was never the most subtle or understated of actors, and the film-makers must have known what they were getting. Moreover, the role of Zorn (which significantly means "rage" or "anger" in German) was not one that called for great subtlety, as the Baron is nearly as mad as anyone else in this story, so Hardy's acting style was perhaps not inappropriate. There are good contributions from Patrick Magee as the sinister Falkenberg and Gillian Hills as Elisabeth. (Hills was a last-minute replacement for Marianne Faithfull who had to drop out, apparently for insurance reasons). Michael Hordern, however, seems wasted as the mad priest.

The plot is, to be frank, something of a mess and difficult to follow. Seen as an exercise in storytelling, "Demons of the Mind", is not really a success. Yet it does have a certain crazed logic about it, a logic which is not that of the well-made piece of fiction but that of a weird, exotic nightmare which taps into our deepest fears about the hidden and the uncanny. Zorn's castle may seem like an elegant stately home, yet it conceals a world of monsters, monsters which may only exist in the mind and not in flesh and blood and which are none the less real. Hammer may have wanted to make a horror film; they ended up with a strange, hallucinatory art film. 6/10.

A Baron in 1835 (Robert Hardy) keeps his adult son & daughter locked-up and drugged because he thinks they're insane, like his dead wife. He hires a dubious doctor known for mesmerism (Patrick Magee) to assist him, along with his assistant (Kenneth J. Warren). Meanwhile there are murders in the local area and a priest meanders around babbling about the evils of the Baron and this or that, which incites the villagers.

"Demons of the Mind" (1972) is an obscure Hammer film featuring many of the positives of Hammer horror, such as haunting Gothic atmosphere, serious characters/story, stunningly gorgeous women and a quality score. The character of Falkenberg (Magee) was patterned after Franz Mesmer, who theorized the existence of a natural energy transference that he called "animal magnetism," sometimes later referred to as mesmerism.

That's all good, but the story is told in a confusing way and there are no characters to sympathize with, except maybe the Baron's daughter (the beautiful Gillian Hills) and the guy who comes to the castle to aid her (Paul Jones). Unfortunately, Elizabeth is too zoned-out to care about and the hero is a secondary character.

As beautiful as Gillian Hills is (who's a little reminiscent of Emily Browning), Virginia Wetherell outshines her as Inge. You might remember Virginia from "The Crimson Cult" (1968). In any case, she has a tasteful nude sequence for those who care. Deirdre Costello is also on hand as Magda.

Another plus is the fanatical priest who rings true, but the character isn't given enough screen time or dimension.

Although "Demons of the Mind" is a decent Gothic horror flick from Hammer, it's pretty much a misfire despite the highlights. It's not as good as most of their vampire, Frankenstein or werewolf flicks. The problem isn't just the befuddled storytelling and lack of sympathetic characters; it's hard to relate to the topic of generational "insanity." I put that in quotes because I don't believe the son & daughter are truly insane, but rather that the father causes their condition through his misguided leadership and "treatments."

The film runs 1 hour, 25 minutes, and was shot in England as follows: Bolney, West Sussex (the Zorn manor), which is 20 miles due south of London; Black Park (the forest scenes), which is just west of London; and Elstree Studios, which is just northwest of London.

GRADE: C.

It was destined to become a disappointing spooky-titled horror flick since DEMONS OF THE MIND means that there are none...

No demons, and for one of Hammer's last psychological thrillers, no monsters at all...

Unless you count a young man slaying women along the countryside, not far from a Gothic castle where a manipulative father keeps his grown children locked inside, believing they're cursed...

Hammer wanted James Mason in this patriarchal role, and it would have made a big difference since otherwise talented Robert Hardy seems too young and lacks magnetism to mentally-control his bed-ridden daughter Gillian Hills and that beastly son, who shares an incestual lust (with sis) between killings...

The latter which there needed much more of to counter nowhere subplots and ultimately wasted side-characters (like good guy med student Paul Jones and his mad scientist mentor Patrick Magee), who take screen-time away from Hills' victimized ingenue, a Hammer scream queen with very little to scream about...

Darn shame since she alone, with such intense, bewildered beauty, had the most potential to really possess this thing!

Fabulous and thoughtful, near delirious madness and mayhem from Hammer. Not at all your typical Hammer movie, this has no respectful and predictable plot and instead a wild and roaring reality of its own. We struggle to keep pace with the craziness and the violence as this gradually reveals itself to be a most demonic monster. Helped enormously by near hysterical performance from Robert Hardy offset by Patrick Magee doing marvellously what he always does and out in the woods is Michael Hordern portraying a deranged priest to the hilt and beyond. Unlike some viewers I loved every second of this until the end when, for me, there was just too much time with everyone running around in the forest. But it least it gave time to get your breath back before the final outrage. Truly excellent stuff comparable with the very best giallo.

One wonders what the thinking behind this Hammer production was ? Something about dark family secrets involving insanity and incest and murder and the occasional religious maniac thrown in for bad measure . The narrative as it appears on screen is very confused and confusing and the production team don't seem to have put much thought in to developing things to any large degree . As it stands there seems to be a bizarre contest going on between Robert Hardy , Patrick Magee and Michael Hordern as to who can give most ludicrous and hammy performance in thespian history - all in one 90 minute film . It's kind of like one of those competitions you'd get between Hitler , Stalin and Mao as to who could kill as many people as possible in the shortest period of time . Make no mistake that Hardy , Magee and Hordern capture , mutilate and execute every single syllable in every single line to its fullest potential possible while pulling an emotive face . When you've got three well respected actors showing off in their distinctive velvety tones what hope for the rest of the performances ? Slim hope and no hope and slim died long before filming started . The rest of the cast are very wooden in comparison especially Gillian Hills as Elizabeth who looks as thought she's wandered on to set after smoking a spliff the size of a telegraph pole . This isn't a highly regarded Hammer Horror and it's not difficult to see why