Shocktober 2024- The Curse of the Crimson Altar (1968)

“Lavinia’s influence has spanned the centuries. She maintained her innocence up until the very end. They didn’t believe her, and burned her at the stake.” - Professor John Marsh

That’s a puzzling speech, because the first scene shows us that Lavinia is as guilty as sin. But then, this is a kind of puzzling film. For those of you who are Stateside, you’ll probably have heard of this movie under its American release title The Crimson Cult. Why there are two titles escapes me, but things were different in 1968.

This was the last film Boris Karloff would make in the United Kingdom. After this, he made four cheap quickies in South America and then, sadly passed away due to his deteriorating health in 1969. His health was visibly poor in this film, he was confined to a wheelchair, suffering from emphysema and rheumatoid arthritis. During one of two-night shoots on this film, he contracted pneumonia, which was his eventual cause of death.

This is one of two films in which Karloff appeared with Christopher Lee, the other was Corridors of Blood (1958). My original Shocktober list this year included Corridors of Blood, but then I saw Afraid, and I thought “oh, rogue A.I. I can do something with that, and replaced it with Demon Seed. Maybe next year – it’s not Shocktober without at least one Boris Karloff movie, after all. Sadly, this is one of those times where the sum isn’t the total of the ingredients. Even Christopher Lee has stated openly that he regards this to be the worst of his entire career. (Bit harsh, I thought. I’m sure I can think of worse.) But there’s no doubt that the film has problems – and those problems are pretty glaring.

But for all that, there’s a certain amount of entertainment value, not to mention some history making, when you have a film that boasts a cast that includes not on the titans of terror Boris Karloff and Christopher Lee, but also Barbara Steele, who’d made a name for herself as a scream queen in Black Sunday where she also played a vengeful witch.

The film is loosely based on a story by H.P. Lovecraft and was produced by Tigon Films, who spent most of the sixties in the shadow of Hammer and Amicus, but occasionally shone just a little brighter. This wasn’t one of those times.

The film opens with a bizarre scene, as the green skinned witch Lavinia appears to be in some sort of medieval chamber, there’s a naked virgin ready for sacrificing on a slab, there’s poultry around, and a goat, who, I suppose aren’t destined to see another dawn. Disturbingly, there’s a guy wearing very skimpy leather bondage gear attending to a blacksmith’s furnace (he has a leather apron so his wiener doesn’t catch any sparks) and there’s an ordinary looking guy, waiting to be inducted into the coven and branded with a red-hot iron, thanks to Mr Skimpypants.

Okay, it’s a promising start.

Robert Manning (Mark Eden) is an antiques dealer worried about his brother, who seems to have gone missing while visiting Craxted Lodge. Driving there, he encounters a sixties style party. Well, I guess more an orgy – or at least the start of one. It’s all drugs, free love and body painting. He meets Eve Morley (Virginia Wetherell) their weird butler Elder (that’s his name not his status and he’s played by Michael Gough, who’d eventually play Alfred, Batman’s butler) before meeting the house owner Morley (Christopher Lee) who assures him that his brother isn’t here, but extends an invitation to stay a few days.

So, he stays, and starts experiencing nightmares about human sacrifice. He’s told by elderly eccentric neighbour Professor John Marsh (Boris Karloff) about the coven who used to inhabit the house, led by Lavinia Morley (Barbara Steele) and with the help of the local vicar (Rupert Davies) Manning confirms that the coven is still active. The modern-day descendant of Lavinia is discovered, to nobody watching’s surprise, to be Morley himself, who dies while trying to burn the Lodge down in an effort to kill Morley and Eve.

And that’s it. That’s the script, which even at a scant 84 minutes of film time seems padded. BUT – here’s the thing, Karloff’s character was supposed to have been revealed as the villainous head of the cult, but when his health wouldn’t allow him to take a bigger role in the movie, his lines were transferred to Lee. As he now had little to do, but was under contract, Karloff was reduced to largely muttering lines about the quality of his brandy in an inconsequential part that really added nothing of value to the story. But as a fan of Karloff, it’s good to know that even in his eighties, and frail, his name still commanded marquee value.