By Richard Winters
My Rating: 4 out of 10
4-Word Review: Elderly sisters harbor prisoner.
Soldiers throughout the English countryside are being gruesomely murdered by what seems to be some wild beast, but the authorities have no idea what type of creature it is, or where it came from. Ellie (Beryl Reid) and Joyce (Flora Robson) are two elderly sisters living together in an isolated rural home, who fear they may know the answer and it has something to do with a dark family secret that lies imprisoned in their basement.
The film’s perceived charm revolves around the casting of two legendary actresses in offbeat roles where they at times come-off both as antagonists and the anti-heroes. Reid is especially interesting because here she’s a child-like individual while just a few years earlier she was a controlling, domineering woman to Susannah York’s child-like one in The Killing of Sister George, so seeing her able to play both parts effectively is fun and impressive.
The banter between the two though needed to be played-up more and I was expecting, given the storyline, more of a campy, dark humored tone, which really never manifests. The dialogue gets too extended, as the women do nothing, but pretty much talk, talk, talk until it seemed to be almost a filmed stageplay with the camera locked in the house and nothing visually stimulating to captivate the viewer.
The scares consist mainly of a handheld camera swinging back and forth in an apparent attempt to replicate the beast attacking the victim, which ends up being more dizzying and amateurish looking than frightening and the fact that this technique gets done with each attack makes it quite derivative. It would’ve been better had the attacks not been played-out at all, but instead simply revealed the mangled. bloody body afterwards. The film also makes the tacky error of portraying the eyeball, which gets gouged out on one victim, as being shaped like a ping pong ball, which is probably what was used, when in reality it is more oval shaped.
A good horror film should have a frightening image to latch onto, but here that’s lacking despite a few prime opportunities where one could’ve been implemented. Reid’s retelling to the police inspector about the backstory dealing with their basement prisoner has some interesting cutaways making it the best part of the movie, but no shot of the shell-shocked, war weary father even though he’s an integral component to the plot. The ultimate reveal of the beast is highly disappointing in a climactic finish that completely fizzles, which makes sitting through this not worth your time.
My Rating: 4 out of 10
Released: April 14, 1971
Runtime: 1 Hour 28 Minutes
Rated R
Director: James Kelly
Studio: Tigon Film Distributors
Available: DVD, Amazon Video
Scopophilia 