In 1500s England, Lord Edward Whitman (Vincent Price, perfect as usual) is a cruel magistrate who gets his sick kicks torturing “witches” under the guise of doing the Lord’s work along with his group of loyal ass-hats. Upon gleefully massacring a coven, the coven’s leader Oona calls upon the titular supernatural horror to get some much-deserved revenge on the man and his clan of scumbags. The upper class gets what’s coming to them as a curse tears through the house of Whitman in the form of a very goofy creature (sadly kept off screen for far too much of the runtime). There’s a level of sleaze vibrating through the whole thing as sexual perversion and assault seems to be the focal point of the witch hunting and just the personal tastes of most of the Whitman clan. Which, yeah, most of the church-sanctioned atrocities definitely had their hands soaked in sexual deviancy. Harry Whitman returns home from college along with the new perish priest and both are expected to join the Lord in stamping out the imagined evil running rampant in the village up until an actual evil force arrives to take care of a much worse evil power. Sadly, supernatural revenge takes a bit of a backseat to family melodrama and the growing awfulness of the rapists who really need a good killin’. Like a period piece werewolf drama with a more spectral slant and Vincent Price. So, it’s impossible to dislike but admittedly a bit stuffy and overdramatic.
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