NEVER OPEN THAT DOOR (1952)

This Argentinian film noir from director Carlos Hugo Christensen adapts two stories by American mystery writer Cornell Woolrich ("Rear Window"). They are unrelated but tied together by a quote from an opening title card: "Good is your enlightened home, evil is your dark jungle; the door between them should never be opened." Though the noir label fits, both stories are reminiscent of episodes of the Alfred Hitchcock anthology series of the 1960s. In the first story, "Somebody On the Phone," Luisa, who shares a fancy penthouse apartment with her rich brother Raul, is up to her ears in gambling debts. At a nightclub, Raul, seated with friends, sees Luisa across the club sitting with a thuggish fellow named Prestamista. It looks like he is demanding money from her. Late that night at the apartment, he confronts her but, despite being obviously upset, she declines to share any information with him. The next day, Raul discovers that his bank account of some 70,000 pesos has been drained dry by Luisa. He also discovers that someone (we assume Prestamista) has beeen calling her using a ring code—he lets the phone ring five times and if she doesn’t pick up, he hangs up and calls right back, assuming that she is alone. Though Raul tries to help, Luisa ends up jumping to her death from the apartment. In Raul's mind, she was as good as murdered and he vows to get justice for her, leading to one of the most ambiguous (yet still satisfying) endings in all of noir.

The second story, "The Hummingbird Comes Home," begins with a note about how important touch and sound are to this story, and indeed, the central character, Rosa, is an older blind woman who lives a quiet life in relative rural isolation with her adult niece Maria. Rosa lives in hope of seeing her son Daniel again after an eight-year absence. The women hear a report on the radio of a jewel robbery we have just witnessed in which the thieves killed someone and are now on the run. The report notes that the killer is being dubbed the Hummingbird because of his propensity to whistle a current pop tune called "Uno." Shortly, Daniel shows up at his mother's house and, of course, he's the Hummingbird killer. He and an accomplice drag in a third thief who was badly wounded in the robbery. The women remain in the dark about Daniel's activities; Daniel is fairly cold towards his mother but she is so happy he has returned that she doesn't really notice anything is wrong until later in the evening after he has insisted that Rosa and Maria go to bed (while he and his associate drag the now-dead third man outside). In the quiet night, Rosa hears Daniel whistling "Uno" and then we have a Hitchcockian set-up, a bit like the last part of Wait Until Dark, with blind Rosa deciding what to do and how to do it. As good as the first story is, this is the real nail-biter, beautifully shot in the dark and well acted by all involved. Both stories use stark noir nighttime lighting very well. Though all the acting is solid, the best performances come from Angel Magana as Raul and Ilde Pirovano as Rosa. You don’t have to be a noir fan to enjoy this film and I would recommend it highly. Pictured are Angel Magana as Raul and Renee Dumas as Luisa. [TCM]

CIPHER BUREAU (1938)

Three menacing looking men riding in a car one night arrive at a suburban home. They look like bad guys, but when they enter the house looking for a man named Wormer, a German-accented man claims he's not there, and by Hollywood rules, we know they're good guys looking for a Nazi spy (though neither Germans nor Nazis are actually mentioned at any point). The three men, led by Philip Waring (Leon Ames), find code books, but another man in the house manages to set off some tear gas, and the two spies escape. They contact Grood, their boss, and get the codes changed for messages that are about to be sent. Philip, head of the government's Cipher Bureau, sends his younger brother Paul, a naval officer, on a mission to take readings on the code transmissions to find out where they're coming from. On a train back to Washington, Paul flirts with Therese; he is first given the brush-off but later she goes with him to the train's observation platform where they get better acquainted. We soon see Therese report to Grood and we discover she is setting what they call a "honey trap" in which to ensnare Paul. Paul begins dating Therese and one night, his cocktail is drugged and Grood's spies take his government papers. Paul is dishonorably discharged, but what he and the judge don't know is that the papers were plants containing unimportant information in order to draw out the spies. Meanwhile, Therese seems to have developed real feelings for Paul; can Philip enlist her to help track down the spies for good?

This B-spy film was made before WWII broke out which is why the nationality of the spies is never made clear—though with the heavily accented actor Gustav von Seyffertitz playing Grood, the spymaster, there is little doubt that we're dealing with Nazis. The unique aspect of this movie is the focus on code breaking. There is a lengthy (and, unfortunately, not very compelling) scene showing Ames and his co-workers breaking a code, and a more interesting scene later showing a message being coded into music to be performed over the radio. Otherwise, it's par for the course for a second-feature spy thriller, which means it's watchable if it doesn't stand out from the crowd. Ames made his name playing nice-guy fathers so it's always fun to see him in one of his earlier films going against type. Here, he's only slightly against type; he's a good guy but a heroic brother instead of a beleaguered father. There’s a barely developed romantic connection between Philip and his secretary Helen (Charlotte Wynters) that gets a small pay-off at the end, and there was also a follow-up film with Ames and Wynters playing the same characters. Joan Woodbury, who had a long career as a B-character actor, is fine as Therese, and I always enjoy seeing Seyffertitz as a Germanic villain. Don Dillaway, in his mid-30s at the time, still looks young enough to be playing the semi-juvenile role of the younger brother. There is a MacGuffin here, the plans for a new long-range gun, but it's forgotten almost as soon as it's mentioned. Made by Grand National, a short lived indie company, it is a bit slow, but at only an hour, it serves as a fine distraction for a Saturday afternoon. Pictured are Ames and George Lynn, a fellow spy. [YouTube]

VIY (1967)

In 19th-century Russia, a group of seminarians are released for what seems to be the equivalent of spring break. Though the rector tries to preach placid behavior, they are clearly full of piss and vinegar. As they travel that night through rural fields, three of them get lost. They come upon a farmhouse where a very old woman they refer to as Granny reluctantly lets them stay. Two of them sleep inside but one, the attractive but frat-boyish Khoma, has to sleep in the barn. In the night, Granny comes to Khoma and starts groping him, but when he resists, she jumps on his back, riding him like a horse until they levitate and start flying through the air. When they land, he pushes her to the ground and beats her violently, assuming she's a witch, and afterwards her unconscious body transforms into that of a voluptuous young woman. Khoma races back to the seminary where he is told the next day that he has been requested to conduct ritual prayers for the healing of a rich merchant's dying daughter. Sure enough, the young woman (referred to only as a "pannochka," or young unmarried woman) is the one Khoma has beaten, and she dies just before he arrives. The merchant asks him to stay and sit vigil alone for three nights of ritual prayers by her body in a barn-like chapel on the merchant's property. He tries to get out of the obligation but because the woman asked for him by name, the merchant insists. The first night, he stands nervously at a small pulpit and prays, getting more frantic when he sees a tear of blood on the corpse's cheek. Then the candles blow out and the witch rises out of her coffin. Khoma draws a holy chalk circle around him into which she cannot enter. The second night, the coffin itself flies up in the air and the witch curses Khoma by turning his hair white. The next morning, Khoma begs to be relieved of his job, but the merchant, now convinced by Khoma's stories that his daughter did indeed befriend Satan in her witchcraft ways, insists that Khoma stay for the third night so she might find redemption. But the third night winds up being the worst for Khoma as a parade of creatures and demons infests the chapel. Will he be able to hold to his sanity, or his life, to face another dawn?

This is a wild little gem, in Russian and only 75 minutes long. It doesn't look or feel like a movie from more than fifty years ago; indeed, except for the fact that the special effects are not CGI, it could pass for a fairly recent production. The colorful sets and effects are occasionally a bit artificial looking, but for me, that just added to the unique atmosphere of folk horror and fantasy. The Nikolai Gogol story this is based on was pawned off as folklore, but it appears to have been completely the work of Gogol's imagination. Still, it very much feels like an authentic folk story, though if there is a lesson or moral to the story, it's ambiguous at best (be nice to old ladies?). Though there are several actors and roles, this feels like a one-man show, carried very well by Leonid Kuravlyov as Khoma (pictured). If I'm not mistaken, he is in virtually every scene of the movie and his doofish befuddlement which turns to fear is conveyed well throughout. Near the end, he tries to escape the merchant's land but, as in The Blair Witch Project and episodes of The Prisoner, he winds up right back where he started from. It is said that the original story inspired Mario Bava's classic film BLACK SABBATH. The YouTube print is of the Blu-Ray restoration and it looks great. A little gem for Halloween night. [YouTube]

HAND OF DEATH (1962)

Mike the mailman is driving down a rural route and passes a small house with several dead sheep lying on the ground. He stops to investigate and as soon as he enters the yard, he falls to the ground. Two men in hazmat suits come out of the house and take the mailman in and resuscitate him. Scientist Alex (John Agar) and his grad student assistant Carlos tell Mike that they are conducting military experiments with a knockout gas made from cactus derivatives. When they walk Mike back outside, the sheep are up and alive. Later, Alex goes to visit his mentor Dr. Ramsey to tell him about his success. The nerve gas will paralyze its victims, then hypnotize them to follow commands. Alex thinks this is a humane way to reduce wars; Ramsey is less enthusiastic but urges him to keep working. Meanwhile, Alex's girlfriend Carol is also not happy about the gas, but especially not happy about the slow speed at which their relationship is developing. Back at the rural house, Carlos worries that Alex is moving too quickly, getting in over his head, and sure enough, when Alex knocks over a beaker filled with the gas in liquid form, he gets some on his hands. He has a seizure and passes out, as visions of beakers and mice race through his head (pictured at right). The next morning, his arms are covered with what look like dark burn marks, and when Carlos touches him, he collapses and dies. Soon Alex's entire body is encrusted with dark scabs (he looks exactly like the Thing from the Fantastic Four) and he discovers his touch remains deadly. Ramsey and his assistant Tom work on an antidote, but once you've tampered in God's domain, it's difficult to patch things up.

This one-hour B-film was once thought lost, and honestly it's no neglected masterpiece, but it has an outsized impact on some of us baby boomer monster movie fans because an image of the Thing-ish monster was published in some of the monster movie magazines, wearing a hat and trenchcoat, and I've always remembered that picture. John Agar is known for being a bit wooden in his roles, and because of that, we don't work up much empathy for his character (also because we don't know anything much about him or his relationship with Carol). But really, that's OK here, because it's the monster we're waiting for. The opening scene is fairly effective, though a bit too short to really set up the creepy mood it should. The guy who plays Carlos, John Alonzo, went on to become a respected cinematographer on movies like Chinatown and Scarface. Stephen Dunne (Tom, Ramsey's assistant who plays a part in the finale) looks and acts a bit like Gene Nelson (Will Parker in Oklahoma!). Paula Raymond suffices as Carol but her character feels inserted because they figured they needed a damsel in distress. Butch Patrick, who went on to play Eddie Munster on TV, has a short scene as a menaced boy on the beach. There's an OK score with some theremin music here and there. Because it's fairly slow paced and predictable, it's hard to recommend this except to fans of early 60s monster movies. [YouTube]

THE SPACE CHILDREN (1958)

The government has set up a mobile home park on the California coast to house the families of workers who are engaged in a top secret mission: to build a new missile called the Thunderer that can send an atomic payload into space. Dave Brewster's kids, Bud and Ken, see a streak of light in the sky and later, while playing on the beach with some other kids, see a ray of light shoot down from the sky to a small cave where it seems to deposit something before it vanishes. The kids find a brain-like blob which glows and pulsates and communicates telepathically with Bud. The creature becomes something of a protector to the children. When Dave thinks Bud is lying about the blob and aggressively grabs his son's arm, Dave's arm goes numb. Tim, another kid, is attacked by his abusive drunken stepfather, who winds up dead in his trailer. It soon becomes clear that the alien wants to stop the Thunderer launch and is using the children (and, perhaps, Dave, the only adult who figures out what's going on) to achieve its goal. The film's director, Jack Arnold, made a number of classic 50s sci-fi films (TARANTULA, CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON, IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE). This doesn't quite have the impact of his other films, partly because of what must have been a very low budget—mostly filmed on a beach and in trailers, and skimpy on special effects. Still, its unusual focus makes it interesting: children are the main characters but it's not a children's movie—Village of the Damned would expand on this idea two years later. Individually, only Michel Ray (as Bud) and Johnny Washbrook (as Tim) get any real characterization, and adults get most of the lines, but it's the actions and fate of the group of children that interest us most. Among the adults, Adam Williams (as Dave) comes off fairly realistically as a distracted dad—he's also one of the least movie-star-looking actors to get a lead role in a 50s movie. Jackie Coogan (Uncle Fester on The Addams Family) plays another dad, and Russell Johnson (the Professor on Gilligan's Island) is the drunken stepdad. Also recognizable are Raymond Bailey (Mr. Drysdale on The Beverly Hillbillies) and Ty Hardin (hunky TV Western star of Bronco). I'm glad I don't give star ratings with my reviews because I wouldn't know what to give this one. It's short (a bit over an hour) with fairly threadbare production values, but on its own terms, it works well enough. [Amazon Prime]

THE GHOST OF SIERRA DE COBRE (1967)

We first see Nelson Orion (Martin Landau), architect and amateur investigator of paranormal activities, wandering moodily at twilight down the beach below his very modern house up on a cliff. Meanwhile, in another house somewhere nearby, Henry Mandor, rich but blind, stands by a window waiting for his wife Vivia who is returning from a weeks-long business trip. When she returns, she finds Henry nervous and fearful. His late mother is buried in the family vault with a phone near the coffin, a private line attached to the Mandor mansion, which she had put in because of a morbid fear of premature burial. Since Vivia left, Henry has been plagued by calls on that phone in the middle of the night from a crying woman. The servants abandoned him and the house is run by Paulina (Judith Anderson, at right), a new and somewhat menacing-looking housekeeper (picture an older Mrs. Danvers from Rebecca). Nelson is called to get to the bottom of the apparent haunting. The narrative points in a couple of different directions. We strongly suspect Paulina is behind this because we see her lurking in the family crypt. But at one point, Vivia sees what seems like an actual ghost, blood-spattered and moaning (effectively creepy, pictured below). There is also some momentarily confusing backstory about a ghostly occurrence in Mexico (featuring the title ghost) involving a poisoning death that Nelson investigated some time ago and that may not have been wrapped up satisfactorily. More backstory: Henry's father went mad on the night of his birth and Henry fears the same fate. I kept yelling at the screen, "For God’s sake, just unplug the phone!" But that would have made for an awfully short movie. In fact, we discover by the halfway point that Paulina has a branch-off phone line from the crypt in her room, but there is more than that to the ultimate solution of this haunting. It turns out there actually is a ghost, but Nelson must discover who it is and who it is haunting. The ending is satisfying even if I'm not sure I could explain it in detail to anyone.

The internet has a fair amount of information (and misinformation) about this movie: it was originally shot as an hour-long pilot for a CBS show focusing on the Nelson Orion character, but it was not picked up for a series. There are newspaper accounts from 1965 that indicate it was seen as a possible mid-season replacement, but despite some rumors, the pilot doesn’t seem to have been broadcast nationally. A couple of years later, it was padded out with twenty more minutes of footage that had been trimmed from the pilot. But though IMDb says it was released in Japan, there's no information about an American release. It was thought lost for some time, but now we have it on DVD along with its TV version, titled The Haunted. It plays out like a TV movie but it's beautifully shot in eerie black & white by Conrad Hall who later won Oscars for shooting Butch Cassidy and American Beauty. Landau is nicely low-key, coming off like a modest playboy-wannabe beachcomber type, balancing out the slight over-the-topness of Diane Baker as Vivia and Judith Anderson as Paulina—much as I respect Anderson, she's a bit much here, mostly due to some unfortunately overdone makeup. Tom Simcox is believable as the beleaguered Henry, and Nellie Burt, as Nelson's housekeeper, has a couple of nice bantering scenes with Landau. There is one very odd scene in which Landau chats with a sexy young woman on the beach and asks her to meet up with him later, but we never see her again. Maybe that was pilot footage that was setting her up as a recurring character, but it's weird. Directed and written by Joseph Stefano of Outer Limits fame. The TV version is shorter and has a very different, less downbeat ending. No masterpiece perhaps, but interesting and atmospheric. [The audio commentaries on both versions start out well but, as with most Kino Lorber commentaries, become repetitive, off-topic, and tedious.] [DVD]

THE POSSESSED (1977)

Father Kevin (James Farentino, at right) is an alcoholic priest who is beginning to show signs of his struggles even when holding mass. While impaired, he crashes his car and dies, but is brought back to life by a supernatural force that tells him he can redeem himself by seeking out and fighting evil. Meanwhile, at the Helen Page School for Girls in Salem, Oregon, strange incidents of what seem to be spontaneous combustion are occurring regularly: a dorm room is burnt up, a piece of paper in a typewriter catches on fire. The headmistress Louise (Joan Hackett) is dealing with stress from financial problems. Her stepsister Ellen (Claudette Nevins) is a teacher whose daughter Weezie is enrolled at the school and is often on the brink of getting into trouble, even having a secret fling with Paul, an instructor (Harrison Ford), who also flirts with Louise. When one student's legs are burnt badly while she's giving a speech, the cops get involved as does Father Kevin—it's never explained whether he's flesh and blood, or a supernatural being, or even what he does for a living anymore, though he suspects that a possession is happening and an exorcism may be in order. 

This was made a few years after The Exorcist when possession movies were the rage, but it was made for television so the gore and horror had to be toned down. The various occurrences of fire are mostly as explicit as things get, but the fire effects are well done, especially one near the end involving a swimming pool in flames. Though the ending leaves things with the priest's character vague—he basically just vanishes—this has the feel of a TV pilot in which Father Kevin would have solved a possession case each week. Farentino, darkly but quirkily handsome, underplays his role (some call him wooden, but I prefer taciturn) and still manages to seem fairly charismatic. Hackett and Nevins look enough alike that I was getting them mixed up for the first half-hour of the movie. It’s fun to see Harrison Ford, weeks before the release of Star Wars would change his life, playing a role not dissimilar from Indiana Jones. I suspect his character is supposed to be a bit slimy and unsympathetic, but his youthful charm comes through to add a bit of complexity to the part. Diana Scarwid (the older Christina in Mommie Dearest) and Ann Dusenberry are quite good as two of the students. Eugene Roche is the cop. Not necessarily one to hunt down but a solid example of the 70s made-for-TV horror film. [YouTube]

QUATERMASS AND THE PIT (1967)

In London, a subway redevelopment project runs into a snag: the discovery of a five million year old skull of what the newspapers call an underground ape man. Dr. Roney (James Donald), a paleontologist, is called in to investigate. Soon they find a large metallic object which they fear could be an unexploded German bomb from the Blitz so the military is called in. Prof. Quatermass (Andrew Keir), who works on a national missile planning committee, goes to the site with his assistant Barbara Judd (Barbara Shelley) and immediately stirs up friction with Colonel Breen (Julian Glover) from the Army, who is trying to muscle his way into Quatermass' missile work. The metallic object, with a surface harder than diamond, turns out to be a hollow cylinder and another skull is found in it. Could this be an ancient spacecraft which once held living beings? Quatermass and Judd hear that an abandoned house across the street from the subway station is haunted, and they discover that, over the years, whenever the ground in the area has been disturbed, strange sightings occur. Soon, workers are having similar sightings of creepy life forms darting about. While a workman tries unsuccessfully to drill through the metal, a "freak vibration" is set off causing all in the area to have mini-seizures. Next, they find dead bodies of insectoid creatures, like giant locusts. Quatermass and Roney theorize that these are Martians who (if I've got this right) were trying to colonize the Earth in the altered form of an ape-like creature who eventually evolved into man. The locusts, who have horns, may be in our "race memory," having become the image of what we call the devil. Breen thinks the whole thing is some kind of weird Nazi propaganda and the government opens the excavation to the public. This is about where the plot went a bit wonky for me. Through some electronic device, race memory visions of the Martians can be viewed on a video monitor. Some people become possessed by the alien forces which seem to be emanating from the spaceship and they start behaving threateningly toward others who are not possessed and are therefore "different." Then a huge demonic vision of a locust Martian towers over London, leaving Quatermass, Judd and Roney to try and fight the madness.

This is an unusual movie, a mix of sci-fi, horror, mythology and maybe mysticism. There's a lot of backstory you can read on the Internet about the Quatermass series, three films which were adapted from three BBC TV serials. Suffice it to say that Prof. Quatermass is a somewhat gruff scientist involved in a British space program and each film was about some kind of contact with extraterrestrial life. This is often considered the best of the batch: it's the only one in color, it seems to have had a pretty decent budget, and Andrew Keir is usually judged to be a better Quatermass than American actor Brian Donlevy who played him in the first two—Keir certainly gives the character more dimension than Donlevy. Though I don't think anyone would call this a character-driven drama, the four main actors do very nice jobs giving their characters some roundness and fleshing out their relationships with each other. If there is a bad guy figure, it's Breen, standing in for the government, but as embodied by Julian Glover, even he doesn't come off as exactly villainous. Roney is a bit stiff and formal, but that’s how he should be and James Donald makes him likable enough. Barbara Shelley makes Judd compelling and full-blooded without going into caricature, and Keir seems perfect as the in-control but very human Quatermass. 

Other actors who have their moments include Duncan Lamont as a workman who is the first one affected by the Martian vibrations, Maurice Good as a military man, and Robert Morris as an assistant scientist ("cute guy with glasses" is how I described him in my notes; pictured at right). The plot details are quite fuzzy; even on a second viewing, I wasn't always sure what was happening in terms of machines and thought waves and race memory and telekinesis. But the idea that life on earth might have been seeded by aliens is interesting, and was echoed the next year in Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. It's a bit talky but the last twenty minutes or so are full of action. The Blu-ray print is clear and gorgeous, and there is a very good audio commentary by film historian Bruce G. Hallenbeck. Another commentary by Constantine Nasr and film historian Steve Haberman is OK but gets repetitious and focuses a bit too much on comparing this film to the original TV serial. Recommended. Original American title: Five Million Years to Earth. Pictured at top are Keir and Glover. [Blu-ray]

FRANKENSTEIN CREATED WOMAN (1967)

The time: the 1800s. The place: rural England. A boy named Hans witnesses the execution by guillotine of his father for murder. Some twenty years later, Hans is a young man working with Baron Frankenstein and the disgraced alcoholic Dr. Hertz on experiments to revive the dead. We see Hans and Hertz pulling Frankenstein out of a freezing cold trunk where his dead body had been for an hour. Frankenstein returns to life none the worse for the wear. He is most excited by what this says about metaphysical death and the persistence of the soul, and wants to carry out more experiments. Now (hang on) he wants to perfect his invention that can create an impenetrable force field so he can capture the soul of a recently dead person and transfer it into another body, and that person's soul would remain alive in that body. Got it? Meanwhile, at a local inn, Hans has a thing for Christina, the disfigured and crippled daughter of Kleve, the innkeeper. One night, a trio of obnoxious dandies come to the inn for drinks and spend their time insulting Christina. Hans, upset that Kleve doesn't do more to get rid of them, fights them for Christina's honor, leaving one, Johann, with a knife wound across his head. That night, while Hans and Christina sleep together, the three dandies return to the inn to vandalize the place. Kleve catches them and they end up killing him. The next day, the police, knowing that Hans was upset with Kleve, arrest him for murder, saying, "Like father, like son." He won't disgrace Christina by using her as his alibi so, in short order, he is guillotined, she kills herself, and both bodies wind up at the Frankenstein place. His soul is captured, her body is brought back to life, and after extensive surgery to make her look beautiful, Hans's soul is put in Christina's body. Since she has Hans' memories, she soon goes on a rampage to kill the dandy hooligans who started all this trouble.

As Hammer horror films of the era go, this one is maybe a notch above average, mostly due to the weird body/soul storyline. For most of the movie, Peter Cushing plays the baron as more metaphysically curious than deranged, though how the capture and transfer of souls is accomplished is left unclear. He's not so much evil as an egotistical ass. There is no staggering monster, but a young and voluptuous woman who is the creation (I guess) of Frankenstein. The title would seem to promise a Bride of Frankenstein plotline, but the resurrected Christina is not stitched together from parts, but one whole body. It should be called Frankenstein Resurrected Woman, I suppose. Maybe because Cushing doesn't get to go into blood and thunder mode until the end, he seems a little restrained. Better are Robert Morris as Hans, Susan Denberg as Christina, who does a nice job of switching personalities from mousy to sexy after she is "created," and Thorley Walters as Hertz. Derek Fowlds is successful at making Johann, the main dandy, thoroughly hateful. I found this more interesting than truly compelling, but worth watching for Hammer fans. Pictured are Denberg and Morris. [Blu-ray]

THE SHADOW OF THE CAT (1961)

Ella Venable is sitting alone at night in a room in her mansion, reciting "The Raven" to her beloved cat Tabitha. The old rich woman is set upon by her brother Walter, her butler Andrew, and her maid Clara. They kill her and bury her body in a swampy woods near her estate. Walter, also old and infirm, eventually calls the police to report that Ella is missing; the plan is that, when Ella is declared dead, the three killers will present a counterfeit will that leaves her estate to them instead of to her niece Beth. But we see that the cat witnesses the murder (shots from the cat's point of view are distorted and stretched) and begins slipping in and out of view of the killers, as though taunting them. Their varied attempts to get rid of or kill the cat all end in failure. Meanwhile, a police inspector arrives with his friend, reporter Michael Latimer. They are on the premises looking for Ella, but when Beth, the niece, arrives, Michael becomes very protective of her (yes, they soon fall in love). Walter, trapped in a cellar with the cat seemingly stalking him, has a heart attack and is laid up in bed, so he calls on his brother Edgar, Edgar's son Jacob, and his wife Louise to come help look for the genuine will so it can be destroyed, and also to get rid of the cat. From here, the film takes a predictable turn as attempts to kill the cat tend to go astray and result in the death of the would-be cat killer. But what about that pesky will?

This Hammer horror film is less well known than most of their 1960s output because for some reason, it was officially released by a one-shot company, BHP, and issued in the U.S. by Universal. Nevertheless, it has most of the Hammer hallmarks—an imposing mansion, gloomy rooms, a string of deaths (not graphic), and several people known for their Hammer work, such as Andre Morell (top billed as Walter), Barbara Shelley (Beth), Freda Jackson (Clara), and director John Gilling. I watched this because the Criterion Channel aired it as part of a Cat Film collection, and in that context, this is decent viewing, although the use of the cat leaves something to be desired. Bunkie, the real name of the cat who plays Tabitha, is cute but almost too cute to seem really menacing. In shots of her watching and stalking the villains, she looks like she's placidly waiting for someone to pet her. Occasionally you see her being chased, but she never really looks vengeful, or even irritated. The actors are all pretty much low-energy B-level performers, except for the old pro Barbara Shelley who works up some chemistry with Conrad Phillips (the reporter) and Alan Wheatley who is low-key but effective as the inspector. The gloomy gothic black & white cinematography is also a plus. A big minus is the absolutely awful discordant score by Mikis Theodorakis (Zorba the Greek, Z). The opening 10 minutes or so are made very irritating by the noisy and shrill background music, though it gets more tolerable as it goes on. [Criterion Channel]