Director: Norman J. Warren
Writer: David McGillivray
From: Cult Cinema; Pure Terror
A young woman visits estranged family members who may have sinister plans for her.
As with so many of these movies, feel free to look at that title and then brace yourself for disappointment. We open on a Satanic ritual with a topless woman on the altar. She gets sacrificed and then we cut to a country house where Steven has brought a girl. He convinces her to stay the night, but then tries to rape her. As she leaves, he kills her, but is seen by Francis, the family secretary, and looks ashamed.
Tonally, not the best opening to a movie, but it’s a double-fail here because the movie plays up Steven as kind, sensitive, and potentially someone who’s going to save Catherine. Except we saw him try to rape a woman in the first scene and murder her. So rather than wonder if he’s going to save Catherine and then get hit by the twist that he’s evil and sadistic, we’re just waiting for him to be evil and sadistic. The movie still tries to play the reveal to Catherine as a twist anyway, but we’ll get to that. The decision to play him up as a potential love interest made me think a bit of The Night Evelyn Came Out of the Grave. That also opens with a character actively murdering someone and then tries to play him up as the victim. That doesn't work.
Catherine has been having premonitions of something terrible so her family decides to take a vacation in the country to visit her estranged uncle Alexander. As they arrive at Alexander’s estate, Catherine’s father is hit with some psychic blast and crashes into a tree. Catherine leaves the car to get help from the house, but the car explodes with both her parents inside.
As she recovers in the house, she starts to find her place with her cousin Steven, her uncle Alexander, and their secretary Francis. Steven takes her on a variety of walks around the grounds telling her stories of witches who were burned there in the past. Catherine has visions of these events that tend to overwhelm her.
Meanwhile, someone in Satanic robes is stealing things from Catherine’s room to cast spells on various people. Also, Francis is breaking into her boss’ drawers to try to reclaim something as well.
Catherine and Steven start to fall in love and then hook up (COUSINS!). Their increasing familiarity has been getting on Francis’ nerves because she had an arrangement or a relationship (it's not clear) with Steven herself.
Anyway, turns out everyone in the house is part of a Satanic cult that wants to sacrifice Catherine in hopes of resurrecting her witch ancestor. The person sacrificed at the start was Alexander’s wife, but the ritual didn’t take. Francis spills the beans to Catherine and makes plans to escape, but gets killed. Steven and Alexander then take Catherine to the sacrificial spot, she escapes, and as she runs through the woods she comes back to the estate to find her father. He’s not dead at all and all of this has been a dream.
Only it’s not. He’s been part of the plot the whole time and Catherine is captured once again and presumably sacrificed. THE END.
I’d suggest giving this movie a pass. It’s at once too convoluted and too slow. I was never clear on what Francis was doing or why she was trying to prevent the sacrifice because she’s also working very hard to bring it about. Steven is a creeper and a threat so the movie trying to play him up as a romantic interest, especially since they’re cousins, becomes really strange. Then there’s the constant background threat of this impending sacrifice that never seems to be developing in the background. To put it briefly, the movie has lots of violent nudity, but not enough Satan. Overall there’s nice atmosphere and cinematography at points, but the final twist doesn’t carry weight because of the opening rape scene. Throughout the movie, rather than creating an atmosphere of mystery, we’re just left waiting for psycho boy to snap. That's not impressive.
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