Alicia I love this movie so much

Helloturia I have absolutely never seen anything like this movie before. You have to see this movie.

Catangro After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

Mischa Redfern I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

GL84 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.

Woodyanders The sadistic and domineering Walter Eastwood (splendidly played to the nasty and menacing hilt by Michael Gough) rules over his household with the proverbial iron fist; his browbeaten painter wife Edith (a fine performance by Yvonne Mitchell) and rebellious teenage daughter Jane (an excellent portrayal by Sharon Mitchell of "Raw Meat" fame) forces to kill him. However, disposing of Walter's body proves to be easier said than done. Director Viktors Ritelis, working from an intriguing script by Olaf Pooley, does an expert job of creating and maintaining a profoundly grim, depressing, and claustrophobic atmosphere and firmly grounds the downbeat premise in a thoroughly plausible drab workaday reality. Moreover, Pooley's screenplay offers a compelling and provocative feminist subtext on how men do their best to control women through both physical and psychological torture and the impossibility of abused women to successfully overthrow the cruel male hierarchy. The startling moments of sudden brutal violent and underlying themes of incest and spousal abuse give this picture an extra potent emotional sting. The sturdy acting from the able cast rates as a real substantial plus: Gough excels in a tailer-made hateful bastard role, Mitchell and Gurney are both deeply sympathetic, and Simon Gough impresses as Walter's smarmy suck-up son Rupert who's completely indifferent to the women's pain and suffering. The cinematography by John Hotchkis boasts several neat stylistic flourishes. While this movie does suffer a bit from slow pacing, an overdone score, and a rather frustrating ambiguous ending, it nonetheless manages to be genuinely chilling and hence is worth a watch for fans of out of the ordinary fright fare.

Scarecrow-88 An abusive man(Michael Gough, never failing to serve us someone to easily despise) is supposedly poisoned by his long-suffering wife and daughter who decide to kill him after having stomached enough of his vitriol and corrosive personality. The question is did they truly poison him enough to finish the job? I must it that "Crucible of Horror" tested my patience; it is the very epitome of slow-moving. The plot takes quite a while to get to the *murder* of Michael Gough (truly a jerk, but his wife and offspring, including a well-treated, spoiled weakling son, aren't exactly saints), 45 minutes, to be exact. We are treated to the tension and misery prevalent inside this family household. "Crucible of Horror" utilizes the oft-used "perfect murder" scenario where a calculated murder doesn't go according to plan, with complicated results for those responsible. Circumstances such as a friend of Walter's coming over to the cottage while the two were hiding the corpse, worried that he will discover what they are up to, finding the body (they had placed Walter's corpse in his bed) in a different place, and listening to the cottage phone ring despite the fact that the cord was unplugged. There's nothing here you haven't seen on "Columbo" or "Matlock", though, and the stories on those shows moved at a better pace, without the lethargy. I do think the film sets the stage well; we feel, right from the get-go, that this family is on the verge of collapse, Walter creating the contempt that exists between father/husband and the ladies under his roof. We get the "disposing of body" scene that may or may not have a chest containing the corpse of Walter, as well as, the aftermath which follows the guilt-ridden mother and daughter, plagued with paranoia that they might not have gotten rid of the tormentor. The conclusion is a depressing one offering the possibility that the tormented may never have freedom from their oppression. God is Gough good at portraying repellent assholes; in this film he really gets under the skin, just his pompous stare and air of superiority are enough to warrant sympathy for those looked down on. The cast is really solid, with Sharon Gurney (probably best ed for "Raw Meat") as Jane, the daughter who gets a switch beating for stealing and Yvonne Mitchell as the weary, browbeaten wife who seems to have lost her personality after years of living with such a tyrant as Walter. Simon Gough, I believe, elicits bad will from a viewing audience because of his heralded stature in the family, his father's favor the reason we loathe this young man—his Rupert seems oblivious to what his father has done to the other of the family. There's a prevailing sense of sadness that is palpable, not to mention, the ending provides an even worse feeling of hopelessness.

Steve Nyland (Squonkamatic) 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 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 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