Ranting Raven (Crucible of Terror (DVD))

Member Name: hogsflesh

Product:	Crucible of Terror (DVD)
Date:	23/03/09 (141 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Um, nice scenery?

Disadvantages: The acting, the plot, everything else

A review of just the film - the DVD costs a waaay too expensive £13 on amazon and has no extras.

This is a British horror film made in 1971. It is comprehensively disappointing. It was a vehicle for a chap named Mike Raven, a disc jockey on Radio 1 who fancied himself a horror star. He did a couple of unsuccessful bit parts for Hammer and Amicus, and took the lead in two films he part-funded himself, this being one of them. He then retired, probably wisely. 'DJ vanity project' is a particularly shabby reason for a film to exist, so the dice are loaded against this one before it even starts.

An artist named Victor is seen killing his model and covering her in bronze at the beginning of the film. Victor's art sells for hefty fees, especially the bronze 'statue' of the dead girl. Victor lives a reclusive life in Cornwall with his insane wife, his trusty chum Bill, and a pretty young model named Marcia. An art dealer in need of money befriends Victor's no-good drunkard son, and they travel down together to try and buy some of Victor's art. Unwisely, they both take their pretty wives along with them. And then people start dying under mysterious circumstances...

The basic premise - an artist killing women to use in his art - has been wheeled out many times before, usually in films about waxwork museums. But this wobbles about all over the place trying to inject some novelty into the formula. The murders are committed by an unseen character, almost in the style of a giallo, and to the film's credit, the final plot revelations are impressively random. The only other thing the film has going for it is that it's filmed in often lovely countryside around (I assume) Cornwall.

The biggest problem is Mike Raven, who plays Victor. He does look quite imposing - he's tall, with an impressive goatee, and has good, glowering eyes. But he really can't act. At times his voice sounds like he's trying to do a Karloff impression, at other times he just sounds like, I dunno, a university lecturer or something. He's especially poor when required to go into full rant mode, usually when some leggy lovely has spurned his advances ("You can't just turn me on and off like some damned switch!"). We're evidently meant to regard Victor as some terrifying, elemental force of evil, but are given no reason at all to do so. He doesn't in any way justify the fear other characters claim they feel when he's around. His seduction technique involves kneeling down and trying to kiss ladies on the knee, which meets with just as much success as it would in the real world.

The rest of the cast are just about OK. James Bolam is a bit superfluous as the art dealer, but he has incredible sideburns, and I was amused by his stupid pronunciation of 'déjà vu'. Ronald Lacey, later in Raiders of the Lost Ark, gives a decent John-Hurt-lite performance as Victor's son. There are a number of pretty ladies (the victim at the beginning is Me Me Lay, later in some of the grottier video nasties). But no one can make much headway against such a dire script.

The film is full of red herring characters - everyone is required to behave suspiciously just to prolong the final revelation. The dialogue is poor - I can't believe that anyone ever talked like that, even in 1971. Some of it is appallingly lazy, signposting things so heavily in advance that you can almost write the script in your head before it happens ("Mind that vat - it's full of sulphuric acid!"). The film dangles promising snippets of dialogue in front of the eager viewer but leaves a lot of threads dangling - I for one was hoping to see Marcia's bisexuality very comprehensively explored, but was frustrated in that respect, as in so many others.

There's not a lot more to be said. The violence is quite nasty, if unconvincing, which I guess is why this has an 18 certificate. There's a brief glimpse of nipple at the start, but no other nudity (a surprise for a film like this). This turns up on TV every once in a while (unlike Raven's other self-financed film, Disciple of Death, which I've been trying to track down without success), so there's certainly no reason to buy it. Nor is there really a reason to watch it at all - almost everything about this film is bad. It even has a stupid title. For completists only.

Summary: A shockingly poor horror film