The
late great British actor Michael Gough is no stranger to horror, having
appeared in The House in the Woods and Horror of Dracula before
taking on the chilly cool of Alfred in the Batman film series. He even acted at times in a couple of enfant
terrible Ken Russell’s films including Women in Love and Savage
Messiah. What he isn’t necessarily
known for, however, is playing a nasty, a role he dives into with devilish glee
in the 1971 British slow burning swim through the macabre Crucible of Horror,
a largely forgotten horror thriller about an abusive aristocratic patriarch
whose wife and daughter conspire to try and kill him.
The
one and only film by frequent television director Viktors Ritelis and
co-starring Gough’s real life son Simon Gough and daughter-in-law Sharon Gurney,
this all but completely forgotten little spooker recently revived by Shout
Factory doesn’t quite reach the scary heights of most macabre chillers but Gough
makes it mostly fun to watch. For those
used to seeing Gough as the kindly cuddly grandfatherly Alfred are in for a
rude awakening, particularly in a painful scene where he discovers his daughter
stole money from him and he proceeds to mercilessly beat her.
A
product of it’s time of 1971, the film is undeniably dated with John Hotchkis’
oogie boogie Halloweeny score and muted reddish cinematography by John Mackey. The film has overtones of the supernatural
but mostly is a modestly sized and paced chiller less interested in overt
scares or screams than it is in establishing an overarching mood of dread and
doom. One particular hallucinatory
mid-picture sequence will remind viewers of the color dye inversion concluding
Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey but while the use of that technique in
his film was timeless, it dates Ritelis’ film.
While
the title is certainly misleading and nondescript (other titles included The
Corpse) and the film itself never really elicits or provokes screams from
the viewer, Crucible of Horror was a fine little number that mostly
served as an open playground for the aristocratic Gough to behave like a
complete monster. Not an easy or earnest
recommendation as modern moviegoers accustomed to the volume levels being
cranked up in between jump scares will get bored easily but it’ll hold your
attention on an October night while surfing through late night cable
television.
--Andrew Kotwicki
