Curse of the Crimson Altar (1968)

 ☆ ☆ ½

Curse of the Crimson Altar (1968) – V. Sewell

The drawcard here is that this late 60s horror film features not only Christopher Lee (Hammer’s Horror of Dracula, 1958, and more) and Barbara Steele (Black Sunday, 1960, and more) but also Boris Karloff (no introduction needed) who was by this point confined to a wheelchair. Each of them is as charismatic as always but there isn’t really much happening in this film, except a bit of high weirdness. Robert Manning (Mark Eden) goes in search of his missing brother to an old village/estate where they celebrate the burning of a witch, Lavinia Morley (Steele), centuries earlier – except that through some magic Lavinia still haunts the place and seeks to destroy the descendants of her destroyers (the Mannings, of course).  There isn’t any gore here and only the mildest of grindhouse titillation and not even any scares, just a few scenes meant to be psychedelic, I think. Perhaps these scenes where Steele tries to force the Mannings to sign their souls away in the devil’s book make the film worth it. Or perhaps Karloff’s gleeful look when he says he collects “instruments of torture” is enough. But other than that, it is just a lot of waiting around while Eden talks to the others or searches the old house and grounds. Not terrible.