Dreadfully Boring

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Jack Palance plays an antique dealer who dabbles with murder & black magic in 1970's London. There's many familiar faces in the cast here. The film starts & ends, predictably, well but sadly the middle part goes a bit flat. The picture quality wasn't great on my DVD but I think they did the best they could with what print was available.

This British exploitation movie is an occult horror about a man who lives a double life as a respected antique dealer by day and as a homicidal worshipper of a demonic god by night. As such he sacrifices a series of women to an idol of his deity, the African god Chuku, which he keeps in his cellar.First up, the copy that seems to be available via public domain for this suffers from truly atrocious sound quality. It's well-nigh impossible to hear all the lines of dialogue and the sound in general fades in and out at will. This does compromise the enjoyment level of watching this somewhat, although it does have to be admitted that the events that unfold before us on screen are luckily self-explanatory enough to allow the viewer to know what's going on even without acceptable audio. And what's going on is fairly standard stuff on the whole. The film mainly benefits from star actor Jack Palance fairly chewing up the scenery in a commendably committed performance. He gives it his all, despite the overall shortcomings of the film as a whole – good on you Jack. In truth, this one sports a pretty good cast on the whole with several names fans of genre cinema will recognise, including the star of a couple of giallo classics, Suzy Kendall, pitching up late on as one of Palance's victims and Diana Dors appearing earlier as one of his old flames. The director here is genre specialist Freddie Francis, who made several horror flicks throughout the 70's and 80's but who would eventually go on to become probably more famous as an award winning cinematographer on all manner of great films, including some by the likes of Martin Scorsese and David Lynch. Truthfully, Craze is pretty far from being his finest hour. I would probably have a marginally better opinion of it if I had seen it with even half-decent audio but even taking that into account, this is hardly essential stuff.

I had heard not too good reports of this and with particular reference to 'dark scenes' and poor prints. Well, glad to say, nothing wrong with my bright and colourful print and cannot imagine what scenes had seemed so dark to some. This starts very well and I had to pinch myself to convince that this was a 70s British film, such was the uncompromising nudity and violence. Indeed it carries on in this vein, with Jack Palance turning in a rather effective and restrained performance. Things are fine till about halfway and while all the sacrifices to Chuku have thus far been in house as it were, we now go on the most convoluted exercise to achieve killing and alibi. Quite ridiculous. Had probably been okay in the original book but clearly film doesn't have to be so slavish. Still, we get back on track and all ends fairly well with Palance at last letting go and show his truly demented side. Julie Ege, Suzy Kendall and Diana Dors all put in an appearance but only the latter to particularly good effect.

Well, well, well. Craze. I am assuming a GOOD print does not exist. Caught this on Amazon Prime(I also know I have a copy of it somewhere on VHS). It is indeed grainy. The lighting is of a poor quality, and the sound is abysmal. Real abysmal. I had it turned WAY up and still had trouble understanding all the lines. I guess this was shot with a very small budget indeed which is somehow inexplicable when you take the talents involved in total. We have producer Herman Cohen - essentially his last full producer film. Very able Hammer/Amicus director Freddie Francis is aboard to direct - but not with his usual flair for cinematographic vistas. Remember grainy, bad sound, etc... The acting department has Jack Palance in the lead role as an antiques dealer by day/night-time cult worshiper who prays to an idol called Chuku and which looks like a few prop guys put it together with a very small budget and with the aid of alcohol. A very superior supporting cast with the likes of Michael Jayston(Nicholas in Nicholas and Alexandra), cameos by Trevor Howard and Hugh Griffith, and three beauties with Suzy Kendall(To Sir with Love), drop-dead(no pun intended) Julie Ege, and bountiful, curvy, still lovely, in my opinion, Diana Dors as victims present. AND a brief cameo by Dame Edith Evans as well. Well, this brings this picture up a few notches though it truly is not very good. Palance wildly over-acts(OK, I know no one is surprised with that). But the film is workmanlike if nothing else and oddly held my attention. Of course with Diana Dors and Julie Ege in the film, the cards were STACKED in its favor. Craze is not a horrible film at all, just not a good one. It made me laugh quite often which I know was most assuredly not its intent. Notwithstanding all that, I would give it a peek just for its bizarreness.