Director: Peter Sykes
Writers: Christopher Wicking
Stars: Robert Hardy, Shane Briant, Gillian Hills
Run Time: 1 Hour, 29 Minutes
Link:
Synopsis
The coachman drives down the misty forest lane. Inside, the governess makes the young girl drink something from a cup which zonks her right out and makes her hallucinate. She dreams of Karl, a boy wearing glasses and in the dream, she has a locket with another boy’s picture in it. She has sex with Karl and is then kidnapped by the coachman and the woman in the coach. It seems that this dream was a flashback to the very recent past.
The coach finally arrives at a big house, where we see the boy from the locket, Emil, on the second floor. The governess says to Elizabeth, the girl, “You’re not going back to that sanatorium; you’re home!” Emil and Elizabeth are brother and sister, and possibly a couple. Their father Zorn, wants the two of them to get well again; they do both look quite sickly.
Magda, one of the local women goes for a walk in the woods and sees someone following her. Whoever it is kills her and then covers her body with red rose petals.
A priest comes to the area, talking to himself and babbling about having work to do. Zorn spots him in a spyglass and thinks he recognizes him from somewhere. The governess does a strange procedure to make Elizabeth bleed and then pulls blood from her into a glass. We can see the scars and know that this isn’t the first time.
Dr. Falkenberg is coming by carriage, and he brings young Karl along with him. Falkenberg has been let go from his teaching job in Vienna. They go too fast, and the wagon rolls over. The young assistant goes for help, but Falkenburg continues on to Zorn’s house.
Zorn yells at Falkenberg for not getting there sooner. We see Zorn dumping Magda’s body in the lake to cover up the killing. Falkenberg has developed some kind of mystical machine that Zorn thinks will kill the evil in his blood. Insanity and incest are part of Zorn’s family history. Falkenberg hypnotizes Zorn. Zorn says he sees himself as an evil demon of the forest and that he would die a ritual death as his ancestors did. He fears his children have inherited his evil blood.
The next morning, there’s a ritual in the town. “All is well. All is well. We can’t get through the fires of Hell!” They chant over and over. The priest comes to town and screams that “The demon walks again!” Back at the house, Emil and Elizabeth share a warm embrace. Karl finally gets to the house to see Elizabeth. Zorn warns Karl to stay away from Elizabeth. Karl knows that Zorn is bleeding her.
Falkenberg still insists that he can cure Elizabeth’s sickness. Karl knows that Falkenberg is a fraud and tells Zorn. Zorn doesn’t care about any of it if Falkenberg can cure his children.
The priest runs out of the woods and into Karl. He needs help battling demons. Everyone just wanders about the castle babbling about nonsense for nearly an hour. Somehow or another, it is revealed that Zorn is subconsciously causing all the drama between Emil and Elizabeth.
Emil chases Elizabeth out into the woods. She screams that she’s not Elizabeth, but Emil then kills her in the woods and scatters roses over her body. The real Elizabeth is asleep at home; he’s just killed another random villager. He returns home and kills his aunt, the maid.
Falkenberg says Zorn’s dreams are causing this reality. His guilt over his wife’s suicide led to all this. The villagers watch Zorn disposing of this body as well. Emil wakes up out in the forest and runs off looking for Elizabeth.
Karl comes in and finds Aunt Hilda’s body. Emil attacks him, but Elizabeth intervenes. Zorn shoots Falkenberg and then chases after the children through the woods. Karl also goes out looking to stop the impending murder. The villagers have found the bodies in the lake, and they know it was Zorn. The priest lights a big burning cross and yells that they should kill Zorn; finally, the villagers decide to listen to him.
Zorn shoots Emil n the back, killing him. He’s about to shoot Elizabeth when Karl jumps him from behind, but Karl can’t stop him. The vilagers finally catch up and impale him with a flaming cross.
Commentary
There’s a lot going on here, almost too much happening to follow without a little more explanation. A bunch of random-seeming disjointed “stuff happens” for the first hour with little tying it together. There’s about an hour-long section about halfway though in which literally nothing interesting takes place.
Patrick Magee is Falkenberg, who really comes off as a Karloff-wannabe here. He talks similarly, looks similar, and plays the same kind of role. Karloff had died two years prior to this, and it’s as if Hammer was trying to have their own version.
All I can say is this boring abomination should be avoided. There’s really nothing going on here to merit wasting the 89 minute investment. If for some reason, you want to drag out 90 minutes to make it feel like double that, then by all means search out this boring-ass travesty.