Rating: **
Alternate Title: Curse Of The Crimson Altar (US Title)
Review Date: 9/20/26
Cast: Mark Eden, Boris Karloff, Christoper Lee, Michael Gough,
Barbara Steele, Viginia Wetherell
Robert Manning (Mark Eden) is an antiques dealer who visits a creepy old mansion looking for his missing brother. A young woman named Eve (Virginia Wetherell) is throwing a decadent party full of sex, drugs, and violence, and informs Robert that her uncle, Mr. Morley (Christopher Lee), runs the house and might know something. But no one in town seems to know anything about the missing brother, and Robert starts experiencing strange nightmares involving witchcraft and blood sacrifices. It's only a matter of time before he succumbs to the same fate as his brother.
It's a marginally entertaining thriller, but instantly forgettable. The only things that leave an impression are Virginia Wetherell's super short mini-dresses, a green-skinned Barbara Steele as the witch Livinia, and Christopher Lee's laughably bad moustache. Lee considers it one of the worst films of his career, and Steele states that she only took the job to pay the rent. Mark Eden gives an adequate performance, but his character is an unlikable ass. Christopher Lee is both charming and sinister, while a wheelchair-bound Boris Karloff is just downright creepy. He was obviously very sick and frail at the time, and this was his final British film before passing away a year later. The standout performance is actually Virginia Wetherell, who comes across as much more intelligent and sophisticated than her beautiful exterior suggests. On that note, the whole bizarre party scene at the beginning of the movie makes absolutely no sense, has no bearing on the story, and looks like it was shot for a completely different film. Very confusing and off-putting. Apart from that, it's a competent production and features some genuinely creepy imagery, including a topless torturer and a jury of people wearing animal masks.