Watch Crypt of Dark Secrets For Free

People are voting emotionally.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Vietnam vet Ted Watkins (Ronald Tanet) lives deep in the swamp on a place called "Haunted Island." Local legend has the spirit of shape shifting Damballa (Maureen Ridley) living there. After three crooks hear of Watkins' small cash fortune (he is overheard telling the town banker "I keep all my money in my bread box"), they sneak onto his land and kill him. But Damballa (which everyone pronounces as Damn-bella) does a naked dance and brings him back to life, setting out a plan for revenge. Should I be angry this has no crypt and no dark secrets? This regionally-produced snoozer from writer-director Jack Weis doesn't really offer much unless you are looking for some swamp photography. Well, Ridley, who has a British accent for some reason, does get naked a few times. Weis handles everything with a dull "point and shoot" style and the make up consists of some blood dripping on money. He went on to do MARDI GRAS MASSACRE (1978). I looked up Damballa on Wikipedia and it is indeed a voodoo God that can transform into a snake. But it is a male, so you have to give Weis points for at least recognizing some exploitation value.

The first thing to be said is that this silly but offbeat supernatural meller is unusually well shot for a genre cheapie of the era, and that SW's DVD print transfer is a knockout--the colors just pop, and some of the photography of the swamp is very beautiful. (The interior shots have an ordinary low-budget cheesiness. The film set in swamp country near New Orleans, and an on-screen credit says it was shot there too.) The next is that this is a rare sympathetic genre portrait of a Vietnam vet at a point when they were often portrayed as violent psychos in drive-in flicks. Another is that this movie has a lot of "exotic" interpretive dancing, always a good thing-- better still when it's naked. (And admittedly the woman who plays the snake-changeling sorceress i"Dambella" is gorgeous, with or without clothes--though her speaking voice is some weird mid-Atlantic affectation, like certain second-rung actresses of the 1930s who wanted to sound "sophisticated" aka quasi-British.) I like how once our hero has "passed over," afterlife is no different from the "before;" the old voodoo priestess' purple-grey hair; Dambella's costumes straight out of Victoria's Secret; the villain-team wife who looks like she'd have recorded for Olivia Records in 1976; and the incongruity of some home decor much more tastefully fussed-over than these deep- backwoods characters would ever have in their homes. That said, the movie is more an enjoyable regional oddity than something that actually sustains suspense or atmosphere. Unless you consider scary so much photography of slithering water snakes--kudos to the (admittedly pretty amateurish) actors for swimming in various scenes, when there were presumably snakes (and maybe alligators) about. Ick!Ultimately the plot doesn't make much sense--I have no idea what the final sacrifice/ritual/apparent resurrection means--but this is still enjoyable vintage nonsense. By the way, there's no "crypt" anywhere in sight.

This rural low-budgeter was pretty shocking for something coming from the Something Weird DVD line, in the fact that it doesn't look or feel like some softcore porn, like probably 90% of their output. Of course, Damballa is pretty hot without her clothes (which you get to see in ample amount)! The film is fairly well-made under the conditions, with some rich color photography and it moves along at a good gallop, being only 71 minutes, and could have probably gotten away with some editing out of the overly-long ritual and dancing sequences. Granted, the acting is pretty poor, but that's to be expected in something like this. All in all, worth a look if you buy a copy.

"Crypt of Dark Secrets" is a '70's horror flick, set in the bayous, concerning a legendary witch woman named Damballa, who has existed in the bayou since pre- Columbian times. Now, I would presume that this witch would be a native American, even though the actress who portrays her is white, but that's just one of the ridiculous inconsistencies that makes movies of this type so much fun. The story begins when three crooks discover that a Vietnam vet living on an island in the bayou has a little stash of money and decide to kill him. While the crooks are planning their crime they utter such words of sheer brilliance as " we have to make sure we don't leave any evidence." Duh, lady. Anyway, they commit the dirty deed and leave the poor guy dead, but guess what, Damballa comes to the rescue to revive him. The witch woman, played by the stunning Maureen Ridley, is a quite shapely young woman who strips down and does a sensuous dance completely in the bare before bringing him back to life. The two take revenge on the murderers before falling madly in love and living forever as lovers. This movie is so awful it's an absolute gas! You'll burst out laughing at the abominable acting and you'll ogle at the nudity and you will love this film!