The Ghost of Sierra de Cobre

Blind, incredibly wealthy Tom Simcox keeps getting phone calls from his mother. She has been dead for some time, but possessed of a fear of being entombed while still alive, had a phone installed in her crypt. Simcox's wife, Diane Baker, seeks out architect and skeptical ghost hunter Martin Landau to find out what is going on. Does this link to an earlier case of murder-by-ghost that turned out to be poisoning?

It's a very well cast and run little spooky movie, originally intended as a pilot for a TV anthology series. Landau's intelligence and low-affect performance serve it well, and writer-director Joseph Stefano has a good arc of what starts out as atmosphere, and bursts into something more disquieting. With Judith Anderson and Nellie Burt.

This film was produced by Joseph Stephano after he left the Outer Limits series. It was apparently intended as a pilot for a new TV series.

I first found out about the film when many years ago I read a limited edition book about TV pilots, it may be "Unsold TV Pilots: The Almost Complete Guide to Everything You Never Saw on TV 1955-1990" or not. The book belonged to a friend. Regardless the description of the pilot features a colorful comment by Martin Landau who describes the network executives at the first screening soiling their garments. He also says it was one of the best things he had worked on ever.

The pilot may have been re-edited for a theatrical release but it apparently never was shown in the United States outside that network executive screening. If "INCUBUS" was found, somebody should dig this one up

It was thrilling to see this artistic off-shoot of Joseph Stefano's "The Outer Limits" after so many years -quite an achievement and true craftsmanship. Especially the black & white cinematography by the great Conrad Hall -even his camera operator here William A. Fraker (who also worked on "Incubus", made by Stefano's "Outer Limits" partner Leslie Stevens), graduated to shoot such distinguished films as "Rosemary's Baby", "Bullitt", "WarGames" and "Looking for Mr. Goodbar".

Stefano's mixing of so many horror elements, ranging from the Gothic waves crashing against the rocks at the climax, even a late in film white nightown sequence for the final ghos appearance, plus the familiar reverse negative optical effects from "The Outer Limits" is most satisfying. Casting Diane Baker, just before her memorable caqreer highlight in "Mirage" provided that beauty with her always perfectly coiffed hair as a perfect counterpoint to Hitchcock's parade of blondes. I can envision cool Martin Landau emerging as the Frank Lloyd Wright architect cum ghost hunter entertaining us weekly, but alas, CBS, despite its adventurous sponsoring of the series "Route 66" at the time found this concept one step beyond their network's outer limits of content.

Nice ghost story, directed by Joseph Stefano and starring Martin Landau as architect and paranormal investigator, Nelson Orion. He agrees to look into the case of a man apparently receiving phone calls from beyond the grave - but things soon take another turn. Tom Simcox plays the blind client, Diane Baker his wife, and the new housekeeper is Judith Anderson (the sinister Mrs Danvers in Alfred Hitchcock's version of Rebecca). The performances are good - especially from Landau and Anderson - and despite some of the effects looking a bit hokey today, it's pretty atmospheric with some great seafront and clifftop locations. This was originally intended as a pilot for a proposed TV series called The Haunted (the whole thing has a distinctly Dan Curtis feel to it). In the end the series wasn't picked up, so additional scenes were filmed and it was released as a standalone feature. Very enjoyable - should be better known. 7/10.

I also saw this film on TV in Sydney Australian several times in the late nineteen sixties and early seventies. Very scary and Moody with a great soundtrack . martin landau was a skeptical paranormal investigator and there was a twist with a tourist scam going wrong .and a tragic death and mistaken supernatural identity.the scene where the "ghost" is revealed is super scary and original i have most of my favorite ghost story films on DVD like "lets scare Jessica to death" "ugetsu" "the uninvited" "13 gantry row" "carnival of souls" and "The shining so if there is a DVD of ghost of it can be found I want a copy too