- Director: Pete Walker
- Writers: Michael Armstrong, Earl Derr Biggers, George M. Cohan
- Stars: Vincent Price, Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing
- Run Time: 1 Hour, 40 Minutes
Synopsis
Kenneth Magee’s plane lands, and his agent isn’t pleased with his book sales. His new book, “The Lie” is having a booksigning very soon. He bets his agent $20,000 that he can knock off a gothic novel to rival “Wuthering Heights” in 24 hours. All he needs is an old manor house to inspire him. Mr. Allyson knows just the place, it’s been abandoned for forty years. The name of the place is Baldpate Manor.
Magee drives out there the next day. Naturally, by the time he arrives, it is a dark and stormy night. He stops at a train station and warned not to go there. He arrives, and it’s a big old empty house, with all the furniture covered in sheets, just as expected. He lights a candle, sets up his typewriter, and gets right to work. Two lines into the writing, he decides to get up and explore.
Then he runs into Lord Elijah and Victoria Grisbane, the caretakers, who wants to know what he’s doing there. He runs into Mary Norton, who comes in wearing a Halloween mask for no apparent reason other than a jump scare. She warns that Magee is in terrible danger and needs to leave immediately. She tells him some nonsense about a terrorist organization, but doesn’t really explain anything. She appears to be working for Allyson, who wanted her to sabotage the bet. Allyson mentions that there are no caretakers.
Elijah and Victoria storm in and order her to leave the house immediately. She warns Magee about the old couple, but he doesn’t really care; they’re so old they must be harmless. Mary goes back downstairs to leave and runs into Sebastian Grisbane, who let himself in the front door. Magee goes downstairs to encounter the old trio. Sebastian says he’s been in Africa for the last forty years, so he’s a bit out of touch.
The door opens, and Lionel Grisbane comes in. “I have returned,” he announces. “Please don’t interrupt me while I’m soliloquizing,” he says. “This was once my home until the dust claimed it,” he states. Now there are four Grisbanes in the house. Magee and Mary find paintings of all the characters we’ve met so far, and they’re all dated from 1935, over forty-five years ago. One painting is missing.
They run into Mr. Corrigan later. He says he’s about to purchase the property and saw the lights. The Grisbanes explain that they’ve all arrived here as a sort of family reunion. They’ve owned this house for three hundred years. Corrigan explains that he plans to tear the place down. This is the first time the family has been together since they were forced apart so long ago. They all agree to sit for dinner, and now the party can really begin.
The family wants Magee, Mary, and Corrigan to leave before midnight. It seems Roderick, one of the family, is still alive upstairs in a locked room. Corrigan storms up to see what that’s about. Has there been a prisoner locked in his house for forty years? Roderick is supposed to be a thing of evil, but they were planning to release him at midnight. Corrigan goes into the room and finds a secret passage; he’s gotten outside. Suddenly, a dead body falls from the rafters. Elijah keels over with a heart attack and dies.
Corrigan goes out to his car to get the police and finds the tires have been slashed, and then he finds a pair of hikers. They were attacked by an inhuman maniac just outside. Magee’s and Mary’s cars have four flat tires as well. They find Victoria’s dead body, strangled with piano wire. Diana, one of the hikers, washes her face in acid and dies. Andrew, her husband, drinks poison immediately after. Two others go exploring in a secret passage, and when the candle blows out, someone hangs Sebastian in the dark.
“Destiny and retribution are often related, aren’t they, brother,” says Corrigan to Lionel. Corrigan admits it; he’s really Roderick Grisbane. He’s waited forty years for his revenge. Corrigan insists that it was Lionel who raped and murdered that girl all those years ago, and that Roderick had always been innocent. Corrigan hacks Lionel up with an axe as Mary watches and screams.
Corrigan/Roderick strangles Magee and then chases Mary with an axe, but Magee, who was faking being dead, throws him down the stairs to his death.
Then, all the dead bodies get back up and it’s clear that everything was faked. Everything. Mary smiles; this was all a distraction to keep Magee from writing his novel. Mr. Allyson laughs maniacally. Later, all the actors get together and compliment each other on their careers and drink champagne.
Actually, no. We pull back and see that this has all been Magee’s novel that he has written, alone in the house as the sun rises. He collects from Allyson and meets Mary, Allyson’s secretary, so maybe he can be happy after all; it’s love at first sight.
Commentary
The whole “moral” that Magee learns as he writes his book is that characters matter more than plot, but that’s not actually something that comes through in the film. All the characters are really one-dimensional and generic stereotypes. The film is based on a stage play, and you can tell. There are only a few rooms and a lot of talking. The murders almost all happen offscreen, and we’re only told how terrible Roderick is.
Apparently Desi Arnaz Jr. had no idea how to deliver lines, as it sounds like he was just reading the script through the first few scenes and barely improved later on. The plot is really basic, the sets are pretty generic, and the story overall is mediocre at best. The only thing this film has going for it is the casting. The four horror icons that appear here are all old, and some of them were really starting to show it, but none of them had lost their touch. Of course, Christopher Lee had thirty-five more years to his career, but Price, Cushing, and Carradine had less than a decade left. Still, you get the impression that the film company would hope that they could cash in on this being “ ’s final film,” but they didn’t get so… lucky?