Le Manoir maudit

At the start of this otherwise dreary Italian gothic, two teenagers sneak into a familial castle and encounter its owner, the "nasty old witch" Countess Elizabeth. The Countess' moronic servant Hugo captures the girls, tortures, and kills them.

This impressively strong opening is tacked onto a seemingly unrelated, absurd and slow-moving story about an heiress who visits the castle and is haunted by a ghost. Her entourage -- including a comic-relief doctor, an Indian, and a bumbling journalist -- talk a lot about who-killed-who and a treasure buried on the estate.

I wanted to see more scenes of Hugo, the token thing-in-the-cellar who has one eyeball down around his cheekbone, drools, and cackles a lot. The mad Countess dresses up in knight's armor and orders Hugo around, cracking a whip. There's also a laughing skeleton and a bizarre enema joke.

In U. S. theaters, this movie occupied the lower half of a double bill with the campy German-made vampire flick, CAVE OF THE LIVING DEAD. TOMB OF TORTURE was Boccacci's only film.

It starts out with two females that waltzes right into an old castle, gets frighten by a woman there, caught by a madman in a weird mask and then killed.

Another woman starts having dreams of being the Countess that used to run the castle, her father is worried about her naturally. A reporter shows up to find out more about the two dead women and ends up falling in love with the woman having dreams.

Raman is a weird guy that lurks around outside - the only one that might know what is really going on! I guess he's a swami of sorts - he shows up from time to time in the film. OH we even get a knight clubbing the butler! It's just a weird film that starts out promising then falls downhill.

The atmosphere is great - I love it. The story, the plot - lacking - completely lacking. Tries to throw in comedy with cutesy music after trying to build up a scary story at the start. -- Reporter and his car is a good example.

3/10

It seems that I spoke too soon earlier this week when I singled out KATARSIS (1963) as the nadir of the Italian Gothic Horror cycle! To my mind, this one was an even lesser achievement (with totally unfamiliar credits, though it was picked up for U.S. distribution by no less a genre authority than Richard Gordon) – despite having even better possibilities, given the disparate elements that come into play throughout. In fact, the film resembles more the anything-goes attitude redolent of the Mexi-Horror style (think THE BRAINIAC [1962]) – but Italian experiments in this vein, such as SHE (1982) and the notoriously troubled SINBAD OF THE SEVEN SEAS (1989), have always tended towards the worst aspects of Camp. One other case which I may soon be catching is CROSS OF THE SEVEN JEWELS (1987).

Anyway, here we have a horribly (and inexplicably) disfigured and hirsute man with a penchant for torture devices (whose exposure, complete with maniacal laugh, is over-extended), a woman who is a dead-ringer for her mysteriously vanished ancestor (no great beauty, one wonders what all the fuss is about), the current female owner who is clearly unhinged (since she first appears silhouetted in a darkened room and is always clad in black) and even an Oriental Yoghi (though he never accomplishes much). Also on hand are the usual suspects – dumb cop (not helped by being named Dobson!), stern doctor (father of the heroine) and intrepid reporter (who stumbles on the leading lady while skinny-dipping and automatically becomes engaged to her!).

Though lasting for no more than what is considered standard duration for this type of film (87 minutes), the lethargic pace and singular lack of imagination on display results in deadly dullness virtually all the way through! The only two sequences to hold the attention somewhat are the vaguely surreal reconstruction of the dungeon murder (with the woman menaced by a figure in a skeleton outfit, a knight's armor 'come to life' and a monster that resides in a tomb!) and the finale, which sees the faceless sadist (whom the crazed owner, forever in search of the family jewels, disparagingly calls "brainless idiot"!) tripping and hang himself in a welter of chains attached to the ceiling, while the ageing woman herself shares the exact same fate as her victim (an arrow through the heart!).

One of the reasons I am a fan of Italian horror is for films like this; though this particular example is not one of the better ones. The film is directed by Antonio Boccaci and also doubles up as his only directing credit; which isn't really surprising as despite having a recipe for success to work with, he doesn't implement much style or suspense into the proceedings and the result is sadly underwhelming. It's also really slow, and the bulk of the film consists of not a lot of interesting things happening. Tomb of Torture takes place mostly in and around an old Gothic castle. The film gets off to a fairly good start as we get treated to a macabre sequence that sees two girls tortured to death. The plot then takes a familiar turn as we fast forward some years into the future, but the focus still remains on the eerie castle from the beginning. We find out that the Countess went missing years ago and the new female lead is a young girl who happens to look just like the missing countess and who goes to the castle on the advice of her doctor...

The black and white cinematography is undoubtedly one of the best things about this film and helps it immensely when it comes to the atmosphere. This bodes well with the eerie castle, as well as the shots of the torture; which is expected considering the title. However, these two elements actually don't mix as well as they should as the director doesn't direct with much verve and this isn't helped by the slow plotting. The main antagonist is a weird looking deformed hunchback who wanders around the castle grounds unseen. Like the main plot, this one is also derivative and it's also not made good use of as nothing really comes of it and the hunchback itself looks more silly than foreboding (looks kind of like the poor man's Wolf Man). The acting is passable but nothing to write home about with all the leads doing their job and not much more. It takes a long time (or at least it seems to) before the ending is finally upon us, and while it does offer up a suitable climax to the film; it doesn't really justify the eighty minutes that came before it. Overall, this is actually quite a boring movie and I certainly would not recommend anyone goes out of their way to see it.

TOMB OF TORTURE opens with a wordless tour through a creepy castle. Then, we see a skull with an eyeball in one socket.

Great stuff!

The rest involves two young women being tortured to death by a disfigured madman; a woman named Anna (Annie Alberti) who dreams about the torture chamber; and a reporter who investigates the deaths.

TOMB is a macabre, somewhat silly film loaded with lugubrious atmosphere and gothic sets. It's biggest problem is that it has several spots that just drag on.

BEST SCENE: The nightmare sequence, which includes a murderous figure in full plate armor and a giant crossbow!...