I may or may not have an unhealthy obsession with Peter Cushing. It started when I was a kid, and my mom would only let me watch her horror movies like from the 60s or earlier. Nothing newer (and especially not anything like The Exorcist or The Shining, which messed with her head). So I guess she wouldn't have let me watch this movie, since it came out in 1975, but I watched plenty of older horror classics , and Peter Cushing is all over those. So is Christopher Lee, who I also love. They have plenty of stories of dasing gentlemen and classy ladies and creatures lurking in dark corners. It wasn't until I started the horror Challenge that I discovered some of his later movies and how fucked up they are (The Creeping Flesh is a favorite). Given all that, I was stoked to watch this movie and see Peter Cushing and maybe experience a major mind fuck of a movie.
The movie starts out with a party of rich college kids who like to take turns one-upping each other. They decide to go drag racing in the creepy, foggy countryside, run out of gas, and get separated. One of the young women winds up in a spooky old mansion with a weird caretaker who knocks her out with a rock. She meets the man who lives in the mansion, played by Peter Cushing. He's a strange, sad man, and she definitely takes way too long to realize that something odd is going on. She seems to forget about her friend after the master of the house makes vague promises to find him and bring him to safety. Plus the housekeeper yells at her and snaps that she doesn't belong in the house (which I think I would have realized after the caretaker hit me with a rock).
I like the foggy atmosphere, and the mansion is beautiful, even if it is kind of terrifying. I kind of want to smack the young lady for not trying to get the hell out of dodge, but characters in horror movies have to be idiots or the movies would be five minutes long. Once things get moving the movie is full of nightmare-like imagery which is kind of disorienting since the main character is messed up in the head at this point.
It's kind of unbelievable how little seems to be done to find her once she vanishes. You'd think a rich's kid would have parents with more resources, but I get that the movie needs to further the plot somehow. Once we finally get the big reveal and learn what's lurking in the big mansion it fell kind of flat for me, because there are already enough reasons to be creeped out with the freaky caretaker and the angry housekeeper and the owner of the mansion who is clearly not right in the head. Overall I did enjoy this movie, I just found the lack of action in the plot a bit tedious.
No comments:
Post a Comment