The Devil's Jest

This film lives up,or should it be down to all its reviews.It is trully awful and must be a contender for the worst British film ever.Acting,direction and writing are uniformly bad.

Recorded this from Talking Pictures and, had only been watching for 10 minutes when I realised it was another remake of Castle Sinister, which I slated in an earlier review. As I said then - Why? Same bad acting, same awful stilted dialogue, same waste of good film stock. Even the same leading lady! Is it some right of passage, or punishment for bad directors that they have to turn out this rubbish? No more please! Lay it to rest in an unmarked grave!

No-one told them that the days of quota quickies were over!

In the realms of bad movies, this clunker sits in a prime spot. Pretty much everything about it is low level - the story, the acting, the production values, the script, the editing and the direction. In fact, it seems like a silent film with dialogue added in afterwards. The addition of regular blasts of third rate stock footage, detracts even further from the whole thing. The acting is so stilted and wooden, and the fight scene near the end is just plain laughable. The whole film reeks of amateurism in every possible aspect. Mercifully, it only runs for about one hour, although it seems longer. This film really needs to be seen to be believed!

The amazing Mara Russell-Tavernan (usually holding a cigarette beween her "slender and cruel" fingers and wearing what looks like the same slinky thirties cocktail dress she wore in 'Castle Sinister') arches her eyebrows like Gale Sondergard in 'The Letter' and Vampira in 'Plan 9 from Outer Space' as another matriarch in this tinny but atmospherically shot (although the shots don't always match up) remake of the 1948 classic told in flashback to Valentine Dyall.

This time she's the glacial Irma, Marquis of Enderby, described as "50% Hun" (like our own dear Queen), presiding over the same big old house about which her Nazi lover skulks and signals to library footage of a German sub before (SPOILER COMING:) they share a similar fate on a sandy beach to the damned lovers in 'Duel in the Sun'.