Curse of the Crimson Altar
The Manning brothers running an antiques business together, it is not unusual for them to not see each other for a few days, Peter out on the road on buying trips while Robert keeps things in hand at the shop, but when a delivery arrives packaged with a letter dated ten days before indicating an imminent return from their ancestral home town of Greymarsh Robert becomes concerned, visiting Craxted Lodge where the letterheaded paper originated.
Arriving during a party, Eve Morley welcomes him in and introduces Robert to her uncle, J D Morley, but neither have knowledge of Peter having been a guest, though he is invited to stay at the house where he succumbs to sleepwalking and strange dreams which Professor John Marsh, a friend of the family and expert on witchcraft, ties to the legends of Lavinia who cursed the locals even as they burned her at the stake.
Unofficially adapted from The Dreams in the Witch House, published by H P Lovecraft in 1933, Curse of the Crimson Altar was written by The Web of Fear’s Mervyn Haisman and Henry Lincoln based on an outline by Jerry Stohl and directed by The Blood Beast Terror’s Vernon Swell, with early Doctor Who guest stars Mark Eden and Virginia Wetherell as Robert and Eve, The Raven’s Boris Karloff in one of his final roles as the moody Professor Marsh and The Wicker Man’s Christopher Lee as Morley.
Released in December 1968 only months after Lee had appeared in The Devil Rides Out, it is not so meaty a role as that, cool to the point of indifference, though still a better role than some of his Hammer appearances of the time, but Curse of the Crimson Altar is a curio unsure of what to be, the sixties party scene downstairs, hip young things and free love and body paint while up the grand stairs Morley sits by the fireplace in his library, Grim’s Dyke in Harrow Weald serving as the exterior of the mansion and, unusually, also used for some interiors.
A surprisingly risqué film for the time, with partial nudity, whippings and witchcraft cults in Little England, Michael Gough and Barbara Steele are largely wasted as the near-mute servant Elder, dobbed in to his master by Robert when he tries to warn him of strange goings on, and the witch Lavinia, and the comings and goings dull any urgency; Robert could leave at any time, yet chooses to stay, but his missing brother never feels like a driving force so much as the presence of Eve with whom he is forcefully handsy even after she has rebuffed him twice.
The conclusion awkward, a trail of clumsy evidence followed by the reveal that there was knowledge of the secret shenanigans which was not divulged to those in immediate danger, used as patsies to flush out the cult, the new edition of Curse of the Crimson Altar is supported by an audio commentary, two trailers, one under the American title of The Crimson Cult, a “making of” and two featurettes, on Tigon Films and on Lovecraft, a stills gallery and a reversible sleeve.
Curse of the Crimson Altar is available on Blu-ray from 88 Films now and also streaming on Shudder
