Crucible of Horror (1971)

Simply Perfect

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

This 1971 film is known as "Crucible of Horror" and "The Corpse". This is not to be confused with the 1971 film "Crucible of Terror" starring Mike Raven. Both horror films came out in 1971 and have a similar title.Michael Gough plays Walter Eastwood - a sadistic madman towards his wife and daughter. His son Rupert Eastwood (played by Simon Gough - Michael's real life son) is just as bad. Jane and Edith Eastwood plans to murder Michael for they have grown tired of his ways.It's a great but twisted film from start to finish. The ending of the film will leave you guessing, wondering "what just happened?" "Was is all a dream - or was it real?" This is an odd film that is worth a watch if you like evil or twisted "family secrets" type of horror movies.7.5/10

Growing tired of his controlling behavior, a woman and her daughter conspire to kill her husband and hide the body away but get into trouble when he disappears from his hiding spot and sets out to avenge their behavior.There's not a whole lot about this one that really works. The main thing going for this one is the fact that there's a rather fun set of scenes in the later part of the film that really sells how possible it was that he was never affected by the poisoning attempts. The varying matters of trying to escape the potential return are the film's sole interesting areas with the two constantly trying to get over the idea that he has indeed returned not being dead originally, so their efforts to reassure themselves come against the concept of whether or not what they're seeing and experiencing is true. Running around the house closing doors and windows, barricading themselves in rooms across the house or trying in vain to keep each other sane through the countless interrogations and questioning from their friend that adds a classic sense of paranoia and freak-outs that run wild in old-school Gothic horror which really gets worked out here due to the classic style layout of the house and the actions at that time. The fact that all this good stuff occurs at the end, and is really all that matters for it anyway, means that there's not a whole lot about the rest that works at all, oftentimes being flat-out intolerable. The business with the manager appearing at the house for as long as he does here, the rather innocuous segments with the brother and the interactions with the two at the end while they argue about the different ways to get away with the death is where this goes off-track by filling the first half with such absolutely banal plots that this becomes so hard to get into. This series of scenes is such a hard intro to the film that it feels like a banal drama/thriller at times and only occasionally feels like a horror film during these parts, which is the biggest issue weighing this one down.Rated R: Violence, Language and Brief Nudity.

This seemed a much better film in premise than it ended up being in reality. It's an absolute disaster, despite good acting from the solid main cast. The story is repellent and the main character, played well by Michael Gough, a complicated character who is nonetheless absolutely repugnant and gets what he deserves...except through some extremely contrived circumstances...well, actually I have no idea what actually was supposed to be conveyed by the final half-hour or so, because so many dead-end characters and plot points were brought up and then went nowhere and did nothing. Frankly, I don't quite see what the ending even accomplished. Were we then supposed to believe that, just because the jackass managed to cheat death once -- somehow -- that they couldn't just do the job right this time?This was a pretty significant example of a script that desperately needed some revision. It thinks it's far more clever and poignant than it is. It only ends up being incoherent, inexplicable, and asinine; points of continuity are brought up and then, not five minutes later, are seemingly forgotten about, as if they had never happened, or contradicted by something explicitly shown. Not much actually does happen in the film, so any viewer will likely be spending more time picking out the inconsistencies and plot holes than actually appreciating any part of the film itself.Please don't waste your time with this film. While it does have the incomparable Michael Gough, he was really and truly wasted on this piece of offal. If this film were forgotten tomorrow, nothing of value would be lost. It's a shame, because it's an interesting premise, but it is so incapably handled that it ends up being only a waste of time, and not a satisfying one in the slightest.

I've always enjoyed this film, better known under the export title CRUCIBLE OF HORROR than the more descriptive British release title THE CORPSE. Nearly every Gothic horror fan over the age of 30 will remember seeing it on a local late nite creature feature at some point, where it would play along such related fare as CONQUEROR WORM or IT! with the rampaging Golem, though it's more of a psychological drama rather than a full-blown horror outing. But while it may seem slow there isn't a wasted or unnecessary scene in the whole film, which is essentially an update on DIABOLIQUE with a dysfunctional British family dynamic instead of a boarding school.CRUCIBLE centers on priceless British character actor Michael Gough as the tyrannical, sadistic patriarch of a staid British family. He's the kind of guy who unwinds after a long day by putting on a shirt & a tie to work on the gardening for a bit, then psychologically tortures his long suffering wife and daughter over a thoroughly unappetizing looking dinner. Then maybe a glass of sherry and take the riding crop to the daughter for no good reason. The guy is stuffy, uptight, demented, weird, and heartless, which is all we need to know about him, and Gough does a magnificent job of making us hate his guts.His son Rupert plays along with the old man, seeming to get a kick out of the mental abuse hurled at his sibling & mum, and in my opinion is the most twisted character in the drama. He works at the insurance firm with his father and likewise relaxes around the house in his tweeds, the two men driven spare by things like a random Kleenex on the night table or the family guns in slight disarray. Their off-hours consist of an endless pursuit of wrongdoings by the women of the house, who in due course get sick of it and plot a murder.One interesting aspect of the movie that I don't see others raise is the question of who is more evil: The domineering, abusive, sociopathic men of the house, or the women who grind up a bottle of sleeping pills, blend them in with a bottle of cognac and force it down someone's gullet with the aid of a huge funnel? The movie then picks up a bit of steam when the (apparently) dead body first disappears and then begins turning up in odd, inconvenient places at just the wrong moment, say when the nosy neighbor turns up with his bloodhound wondering where the old man has been. A great deal of time is spent with the two women fretting out the night, wondering what will happen next, raising the interesting question of just who is playing whom here, and is there some supernatural force at play or are they just inept killers?What works with the film is an almost unbearable sense of claustrophobia, comprehensive creepiness and dread, as well as Gough's delightfully nasty performance as the emotionless father. What doesn't work is one of the standard complaints about British horror from the period in which it was made: There are no real fireworks in terms of violence, gore or sexuality. Instead the film's perversity is suggested by a serious of flashbacks & dream sequences that seem to imply a forced incestuous relationship and spousal abuse, all of which is brimming under the surface while never really being elaborated upon. The audience's own polymorphously perverse nature is projected onto the film by such grimace inducing scenes as a father feeling his daughter's bicycle seat to see if it's still warm (ewww!) and a mother regarding her son with quiet resignation after witnessing him slapping around his sister.And while it isn't very shocking the final climactic scene is one of the strangest sequences in the subgenre of British horror, raising more questions than it answers -- was anybody really murdered at all? If not then why did a particular character go through so much bother to creep everybody out? Was there some sort of a plot in works even before the ladies hatched their murder scheme? And was that a calculated part of this greater plan? The film succeeds by not answering any of these questions and closing on a great Hitchcokian downbeat that would have been undone by having somebody explain what may or may not have happened. Hitchcock would have approved.5/10