Very well executed

Masterful Movie

Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

The movie is made so realistic it has a lot of that WoW feeling at the right moments and never tooo over the top. the suspense is done so well and the emotion is felt. Very well put together with the music and all.

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) join 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.

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 admit 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 remembered 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 members 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.

Just as "Psycho" would inspire any number of American movies, the contemporary French thriller "Diabolique" would influence any number of European movies. This movie is a decidedly British and more familial version of that film. In "Diabolique" a brutal and abusive man's wife and mistress decide to bump him off. In this one it is a mother and daughter trying to do in their cruel husband/father (the relationship between the father and daughter is especially twisted--he seems to enjoy whipping her, he slaps her around after he catches her swimming nude, and he likes to feel her bicycle seat after she's just been riding it). The pair surprise him out at the cabin where he's doing some hunting and force him to drink poison, hoping that his friends will find him and think he died of natural causes. Their plans go awry though for various reasons, not the least of which is that the "body" keeps disappearing and appearing.If you've seen "Diabolique" you know that there's a good chance that the father isn't really dead, and there's also a good chance he has at least one co-conspirator. Fortunately, this movie doesn't follow the plot of "Diabolique" too slavishly, and it has quite a few surprises up its sleeve. The end is very memorable. Michael Gough, who plays the abusive father, really makes the movie. He is very creepy both alive and "dead" projecting a subtle but powerful air of menace. (Unfortunately, most people today remember him as the butler in "Batman", not as the cruel villain he played in movies like this or "Horror of the Black Museum"). Sharon Gurney, who plays the daughter, is also good, but she had the misfortune of appearing two critically regarded but commercially unsuccessful horror flicks (this one and "Raw Meat") and her career went nowhere.Unfortunately, the available prints of this movie look awful. The video is a mess and the DVD looks like a DVD-R recorded from the video by someone who doesn't know how to use a DVD recorder. It's also advertised on the front cover like its another version of "The Stepfather" (also a good movie, but a very different one)which is bound to attract the wrong audience. It's worth seeing though if you get a chance and you know what to expect.

**SPOILERS** A bit uneven but still interesting family drama with an overly strict father Walter Eastwood, Michael Gough, who's constant mistreatment of the women of his household his wife and daughter Edith and Jane, Yavnnoe Mitchell and Sharon Gurney, leads them to a plan and later make an attempt on his life. We see earlier in the film how Walter's daughter drives him batty both with her screwing around and her kleptomania. Jane stealing of money from the local Golf Club has the club's manager Gregson, David Butler, show up at the Eastwood residence asking Walter for the money that she took. Gregson also seemed to have something going with the 16 year-old Jane that had nothing to do with putting a golf ball. We later see that Jane also has something going on with local grease monkey Benjy, Nicholas Jones, who also has the hots for her but only from a distance. Later Walter, after Jane swore that she didn't steal the club's money, finds the stolen money in Jane's wig he gives her the beating of her life. Even though we never see Walter abuse his wife Edith physically he does treat her as if she's a bit mad. Which we later find out that she is. Later Edith and Jane concoct a plan to murder Walter when he goes out to his country cottage hunting that weekend. The "plan" doesn't go off well but in the end the two do in the overly drunk, which they made sure that he was, Walter. Leaving his body to be found later in bed dead from an apparent heart-attack. But later as the two murderesses don't get any call from the people that Walter was to meet hunting it's obvious that something went wrong in their hair-brained scheme. The ending is a bit hard to take but overall the movie "The Corpes" is much better then you would have expected it to be because of the top notch acting by all involved in it, even the dog Sam did a good job of "acting". There were a number of really good dream-like sequences in the movie involving Edith that showed just who mentally unstable she was. There's also a flashback where we see Walter, again, brutally beat Jane in a lake with her almost nude. Walter himself seemed to have this "Mister Clean" faddish where he would vigorously wash his hands every time he touched something or someone he felt had germs or dirt on it, or them. Walter's son Rupert, Simon Gough, was the only one in the family that he didn't abuse since he felt that he lived up to the very high standards that he set for his family members. Rupert was a combination insurance salesman and stock broker.