Watch Crucible of Horror For Free

Plot so thin, it passes unnoticed.

Dreadfully Boring

n my opinion it was a great movie with some interesting elements, even though having some plot holes and the ending probably was just too messy and crammed together, but still fun to watch and not your casual movie that is similar to all other ones.

I gave this film a 9 out of 10, because it was exactly what I expected it to be.

"Crucible of Horror" a.k.a. "The Corpse" is a moderately enjoyable, little-seen psychological thriller from Britain. Michael Gough stars as Walter Eastwood, domineering patriarch of a repressed family, and a case study in misogyny. He has little time for his wife (Yvonne Mitchell) and teen aged daughter (Sharon Gurney), and his son (played by Goughs' real-life son Simon) shamelessly sucks up to him. The two females eventually decide that they've lived with his various forms of abuse for far too long, and plot to do him in. They poison him, and make it look like a suicide. Then...when they get back to the family cottage, they find that the corpse has disappeared.Overall, the film is fairly well made by director Viktors Ritelis, who often favours surrealism, close-ups of eyes, and quick cutting. Still, it pales when compared to its obvious inspiration, "Les Diaboliques". It just doesn't have the same amount of style, imagination, or tension. The plodding tale was scripted by actor Olaf Pooley (who also plays the role of the architect Reid), and it's not completely without interest as a look at a dysfunctional upper crust family. It does have an eerie, haunting music score by John Hotchkis going for it, as well as decent use of locations.The acting helps to keep it watchable. Your heart does go out to the sad-eyed Mitchell. Gough Sr. plays this a lot more straight than you would expect him to, in a genre role, and he's excellent. Gough Jr. is okay, but then he doesn't have all that much to work with; his sexy co-star Gurney (soon to be seen in the fantastic Brit horror classic "Deathline") has been his wife in real-life to this day.The ending can be interpreted in more than one way, and it's not going to satisfy all viewers; this viewer has to admit to being somewhat disappointed.Certainly this obscurity is worth a look for the curious; mild doses of nudity and violence add some spice to what is basically a dreary tale.Six out of 10.

The sadistic and domineering Walter Eastwood (splendidly played to the nasty and menacing hilt by Michael Gough) rules over his household with the proverbial iron fist; his browbeaten painter wife Edith (a fine performance by Yvonne Mitchell) and rebellious teenage daughter Jane (an excellent portrayal by Sharon Mitchell of "Raw Meat" fame) join forces to kill him. However, disposing of Walter's body proves to be easier said than done. Director Viktors Ritelis, working from an intriguing script by Olaf Pooley, does an expert job of creating and maintaining a profoundly grim, depressing, and claustrophobic atmosphere and firmly grounds the downbeat premise in a thoroughly plausible drab workaday reality. Moreover, Pooley's screenplay offers a compelling and provocative feminist subtext on how men do their best to control women through both physical and psychological torture and the impossibility of abused women to successfully overthrow the cruel male hierarchy. The startling moments of sudden brutal violent and underlying themes of incest and spousal abuse give this picture an extra potent emotional sting. The sturdy acting from the able cast rates as a real substantial plus: Gough excels in a tailer-made hateful bastard role, Mitchell and Gurney are both deeply sympathetic, and Simon Gough impresses as Walter's smarmy suck-up son Rupert who's completely indifferent to the women's pain and suffering. The cinematography by John Hotchkis boasts several neat stylistic flourishes. While this movie does suffer a bit from slow pacing, an overdone score, and a rather frustrating ambiguous ending, it nonetheless manages to be genuinely chilling and hence is worth a watch for fans of out of the ordinary fright fare.

Just as "Psycho" would inspire any number of American movies, the contemporary French thriller "Diabolique" would influence any number of European movies. This movie is a decidedly British and more familial version of that film. In "Diabolique" a brutal and abusive man's wife and mistress decide to bump him off. In this one it is a mother and daughter trying to do in their cruel husband/father (the relationship between the father and daughter is especially twisted--he seems to enjoy whipping her, he slaps her around after he catches her swimming nude, and he likes to feel her bicycle seat after she's just been riding it). The pair surprise him out at the cabin where he's doing some hunting and force him to drink poison, hoping that his friends will find him and think he died of natural causes. Their plans go awry though for various reasons, not the least of which is that the "body" keeps disappearing and appearing.If you've seen "Diabolique" you know that there's a good chance that the father isn't really dead, and there's also a good chance he has at least one co-conspirator. Fortunately, this movie doesn't follow the plot of "Diabolique" too slavishly, and it has quite a few surprises up its sleeve. The end is very memorable. Michael Gough, who plays the abusive father, really makes the movie. He is very creepy both alive and "dead" projecting a subtle but powerful air of menace. (Unfortunately, most people today remember him as the butler in "Batman", not as the cruel villain he played in movies like this or "Horror of the Black Museum"). Sharon Gurney, who plays the daughter, is also good, but she had the misfortune of appearing two critically regarded but commercially unsuccessful horror flicks (this one and "Raw Meat") and her career went nowhere.Unfortunately, the available prints of this movie look awful. The video is a mess and the DVD looks like a DVD-R recorded from the video by someone who doesn't know how to use a DVD recorder. It's also advertised on the front cover like its another version of "The Stepfather" (also a good movie, but a very different one)which is bound to attract the wrong audience. It's worth seeing though if you get a chance and you know what to expect.

This is kind of a remake of Diaboliques. It involves a strict, and in some respects monstrous, man terrorizing two of the women in his life. They resolve to kill him and do, but his body disappears, and then they start getting some clues suggesting he is still alive.Even some details from Diabolique are repeated here. For example, the man (Gough) makes a fuss about his wife having to eat all her dinner, and the women drive home at one point with his body in a large container.Unlike Diaboliques, this is not set at a boarding school, but in a family's home. The home is largely that of a wealthy family, though there are a few odd rooms where the walls are covered with soot, and the things kept in the room are in a jumble. The two women are not the man's wife and mistress, but rather his wife and daughter. Apart from a scene where he squeezes a bicycle seat his daughter had been riding, there's not much of a suggestion of incest.The man is strict, and seems to possibly be obsessive compulsive (there are a number of scenes of vigorous hand-washing). However, he beats his daughter with what looks like a cane or a very stiff riding crop after she is caught having stolen fifty Pounds (this is a British film).There are a number of fairly odd camera angles, though nothing particularly inventive. There is some peculiar editing, some shots that last only a few frames, or some such shots repeating things we've seen already. There are some scenes where there are superimpositions, and also some negative or solarization effects. They are all applied in ways that to my mind were simply awkward and not artistic.The ending differs from Diaboliques and the other remakes of that film. It is not particularly satisfying.