Malcolm Terris stars as Paul, who alongside his girlfriend Olivia (Lisbet Lundquist) are involved in a night-time car crash. For all Terris' many fine performances over the years he is perhaps best known, in some quarters at least, as 'Co Pilot' in the 1979 Doctor Who story 'The Horns of Nimon', whose death scene inadvertently lead to the involuntary tearing of the backside of his trousers! No such indignities here, but a whole host more creepy goings-on in Jose Larraz's effective but confounding British (ish) horror yarn.
Olivia is dissatisfied with her lot, being Paul's 'other woman', so when the two of them take refuge in a dank old mansion after the crash, rather than run away screaming from the place, she becomes strangely taken with it. Julian (Karl Lanchbury) and sister Rebecca (Sybila Grey) appear to run the house, and are also at the head of many grubby gatherings involving those shabby old bed-fellows, sex and drugs - in fact, it is the heavily administered narcotics that are responsible for Olivia's reluctance to leave. Lanchbury is a dead ringer for rising Hammer star at the time, Shane Bryant.
Amongst the suggestions of cult, debauchery and murder along the way, little is specified, and events become rather murky, both in comprehensibility and realisation. And yet, this isn't unusual for Director Larraz, who was also responsible for cult horrors 'Vampyres' and 'Symptoms (1974)', both of which had a similar style.
There are also some very unusual side-steps in this already curious production. Both Paul and Olivia take a backseat from the narrative (for various reasons), and we spend time with the perverse siblings and their orgies. And a mad, terrifying Auntie chained to a bed. When Olivia returns to the main storyline, it is to help bring the confusing proceedings to a very final end. Lying in a hospital bed, her doctor and nurse morph into very familiar figures.
Foggy and bizarre but definitely worth seeing.
Olivia is dissatisfied with her lot, being Paul's 'other woman', so when the two of them take refuge in a dank old mansion after the crash, rather than run away screaming from the place, she becomes strangely taken with it. Julian (Karl Lanchbury) and sister Rebecca (Sybila Grey) appear to run the house, and are also at the head of many grubby gatherings involving those shabby old bed-fellows, sex and drugs - in fact, it is the heavily administered narcotics that are responsible for Olivia's reluctance to leave. Lanchbury is a dead ringer for rising Hammer star at the time, Shane Bryant.
Amongst the suggestions of cult, debauchery and murder along the way, little is specified, and events become rather murky, both in comprehensibility and realisation. And yet, this isn't unusual for Director Larraz, who was also responsible for cult horrors 'Vampyres' and 'Symptoms (1974)', both of which had a similar style.
There are also some very unusual side-steps in this already curious production. Both Paul and Olivia take a backseat from the narrative (for various reasons), and we spend time with the perverse siblings and their orgies. And a mad, terrifying Auntie chained to a bed. When Olivia returns to the main storyline, it is to help bring the confusing proceedings to a very final end. Lying in a hospital bed, her doctor and nurse morph into very familiar figures.
Foggy and bizarre but definitely worth seeing.