First, a bit of exploitation, then we’ll do a splashy sacrifice, eh, boys?
Pleasantly forgettable, The Crimson Cult (1968; this is cut version of Curse of the Crimson Altar) is one of those brittle UK examples of the period in which characterization is somewhat neglected, resulting in characters that come and go and flirt and die with perhaps less reasonableness and urgency than fulfills the modern sensibility. Add in segues between scenes of a staccato nature, and the movie shares that brittleness often seen in British films of this period.
Robert Manning and his brother, Peter, are antique dealers, and Peter has gone off into the countryside in search of merchandise. He sends some items to his brother and then fails to return home. Robert goes to the small village of his last known location, encountering a people celebrating the burning of a witch centuries ago, and a local mansion whose inhabitants either cannot speak or claim they’ve never heard of a Peter Manning.
He persists, romancing a lady of the mansion, Lavinia Morley, and finally recalls his brother often used a fake name. This elicits a response from the owner of the mansion, who, in fine upper-class British form proclaims he doesn’t where Peter went, but now Robert’s having nightmares in which a woman is on trial and he is under pressure to do – something.
Creeping over the edge of his subconscious into reality, his arm is bleeding when he finds himself staring into the lake. A cop has ambled by and gets him back into the house – but after a bit of opportunistic nookie, he finds his blood trail leads into a wall. Behind that is a hidden room, and with his love interest in tow he discovers a room of fake cobwebs and items that come from his nightmares.
Well, hopping over the usual mistakes and flourishes, it comes out that the master of the household has been searching for all the Mannings and other descendants of those villagers instrumental in the death of the witch Morley all those centuries ago, and then running them through this trial through hypnosis. As the lass Morley had the poor taste of sleeping with Robert, she gets to share in his misfortune. Fortunately for these two, a local professor rumbles up in his wheelchair, finds the hidden room, and shoot the master of the mansion in the hand. He, however, has the presence of mind to set the room afire and dies in the resulting conflagaration.
Oh, yeah, his name was also Morley.
There is a little tension, and it was nice to not have this take the easy route into the supernatural, but the lack of connection to the characters made it hard to really care, despite the efforts of Boris Karloff, who carried the part of the professor with great gravitas. Great acting can only compensate so much for inferior stories.
In the end, harmless and a trifle dull.
