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When your film opens with Barbara Steele covered in glittery aquamarine paint and rocking a ridiculous gold and feathered headdress while speaking in an echo-voice and presiding over a busty chick whipping a blonde woman… well, me thinks you’ve perused my dream journal. Peter Manning watches this obviously insane scene play out and then her humble glorious speaks to him directly, introducing herself as Lavinia, mother of mysteries and keeper of the Black Secret. She gets him to sign a very suspicious tome and, in all fairness, I would have blindly followed her sinister lead as well. The whipped blonde chick is stabbed by Peter and he is branded as the busty torturer watches on, indifferent to the fact that Peter has made a pact with evil. Now, Peter is missing and his brother Robert (Bob to everyone) heads out to the remote country house where he was last seen. A place called Craxted Lodge. Before disappearing into thin air, he sent a crate with an antique candle stick and a false bodkin, used in with hunts, to the antique shop he and his brother run. Also inside is a note that claims he was feeling ill and was planning on coming home soon, cutting his trip short. That’s why Bob is now tracking down his brother’s whereabouts. It just so happened he slipped off the face of the earth in the ancestral town of their father. His arrival is greeted by a group of men in cars chasing down a blonde in a tight pink bodysuit. It seems to all be a game that the blonde chickadee is happy to play and they all laugh it off. The British countryside in the swinging sixties was a happening place. Finally arriving at the lovely country estate, it seems a freakadelic party is going down. Paint on boobs, champagne on boobs… ya know, the works. The world’s oldest young people seem to really be having a blast. The homeowner’s niece points Bob in the direction of her uncle and asks him to get back to the party immediately. Her uncle is a mustachioed Christopher Lee and as much as I dig sixties chicks and alcohol consumption, I’d rather spend my night by a fireplace speaking with Christopher Lee. He claims to not know Bob’s brother even though his brother sent the note on Mr. Morley’s stationary. He claims his niece has a wide net of friends and Bob decides to stay in town. Morley does him one better and invites him to stay at the expansive estate. The niece denies knowing Peter but a matching candlestick lets Bob know his hosts are lying. After dinner, Professor Marsh (Boris Karloff) arrives at the manor, an expert on the history of the strange place they are now all gathered in. He dives deep into the influence of Lavinia, her powers and her curse for being wrongfully burnt at the stake. Bob has arrived just in time for the anniversary festival centered on the burning. Michael Gough gets practice in for the Alfred role he’d land years later just a more sinister version of the loyal butler and far less loquacious. He’s also working for the long-dead Lavinia but tries to warn Bob to leave before it’s too late. Strange dreams involving a familiar torture chamber begin to plague Bob and Lavinia works her dark magic, attempting to get the other Manning bother to sign the book. Lee (who claimed this to be one of the worst films he had done) took the role to work with an ailing Karloff before that would become an impossibility and he and Boris give much more to the movie than deserved. Titled The Dreams in the Witch-House during pre-production but even for a Lovecraft adaptation it’s an incredibly tenuous connection. Boredom runs rampant as our uninteresting hero is drip-fed information and lacks much of the charm necessary to keep us invested in his investigation. The fact that Lee, Steele and Karloff did a movie together and I can barely remember anything outside of their scenes is just kind of depressing. Still, Satanic alters, sexy ladies, silly costumes and dank dungeons don’t make for a complete waste of time.
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