This surprised me by its sense of urgency - the writer-director had a point to make and did - with a straight ahead drive, never straying from powering the plot along with extraneous moments. I'd have guessed its running time to be less than 104 minutes.
This is a credit to Walker who stamped his savage vision on a witch's brew of a film that is one quarter horror, one quarter suspense, one quarter giallo (the Father Cutler, Miss Brabizon, Mrs. Meldrum revelations - some dark secrets from the past are responsible for the twisted actions of the present) - and one quarter brutal social commentary.
While not as terrifying as FRIGHTMARE, a horror film with a shocking feel for family dysfunction in extremis, pitting family member against family member, until the jealousies and hatreds of the past build to a unremitting apex of cruelty, this film nonetheless makes the viewer feel as if something very dark has been learned about mankind.
Walker and McGillivray have a way with turning out a tight, creepy script. There's not a boring moment. It builds to a satisfying, and as in FRIGHTMARE, terribly cynical denouement. If FRIGHTMARE dealt with familial cruelties and WHIPCORD with sexual permissiveness, SIN deals with the discarding of free will for the rigidity of a fundamentalist belief that Walker tells us will surely destroy anyone who by nature is unable to sublimate his humanness to the point where his own earthly needs and desires for individual ideas are dsetroyed. SIN takes its place as part of a trilogy which deals, as with FRIGHTMARE and WHIPCORD, with unreasonable expectations, loss of control and ensuing madness leading to the victimization of and violence against others, especially against those who are felt to challenge or threaten the fixed ideas of the perpetrators. The least successful of the three is WHIPCORD, overlong and a bit unbelievable that the victims can't fight back against their dotty, frail captors.
The cast is excellent. Though Peter Cushing was offered the role of Father Cutler, I'm glad it was taken by a less familiar face and an actor not known for so many horror roles. More sinister than Cushing, Norman Eshley underplayed if anything, making the character's lunacy believable. The two sisters (staples of the other two films in the trilogy though used in different relationships) were well-cast. The heroine was a symbol of her day, a symbol for spunkiness, free expression and the questioning of authority. I thought it wise not to have her capitulate to the priest's sociopathic behavior "because he was a priest". In her mind he was a sick then evil man. Her sister was more given to doubts. Though in the end it didn't matter - not when they came up against a tortured mind, a disturbed psychosis, singular in its goal. Cast well to the last of the secondary characters, the sad Mrs. Davey stands out as the distraught mother of a daughter driven to suicide by the priest's hypocrisy and/or blackmail. She presents a pathetic picture in her sorrow that has nowhere to morph into except excitement at believing she is a match for the monster and can lay a trap for him.
The actual murders of the real and imagined heroine's lovers were horrific. The hospital scene where innocence collides with savagery left no doubt that the beast had won out - as he did through to the end. The death of the 'mistaken libertine' in his hospital bed had a sense of future doom.
The imposing actress Sheila Keith (happily) commands the screen whenever she is in the frame. In a role quite different from the petulant but vengeful cannibal of FRIGHTMARE, she is oddly affecting as the would-be bride of the killer priest who has waited chastely by his side all these years - though of course her affect (and that great eye patch) add sinister touches. The death throes of those who inhabit this house of mortal sin would live up to any horror or giallo fan's dreams.
If there is anything to quibble about it would be the younger priest's believing Father Cutler's every word and hurriedly renouncing the thought of not continuing in Cutler's shoes. But better than having him run to the police accusing Cutler. There is now the implication that evil will grow in his own church garden.
The shock ending shot of the priest pulling on his glove to kill the only "normal" human being left in the film illustrates his psychotic obsession left to flourish, because he has carte-blanche to carry out his murders hidden by the sanctity of the church. Great, unexpected last shot. The themes of Walker's trilogy seems to be there are unknown houses of horrors set amongst the everyday world of those trying to go about their own lives, who don't know they are viewed as sinners by unknown psychotics and don't even realize they are standing in some psychotic's path, viewed as an adversary to be dealt with. It makes you think - there are houses like that in every city - you could pass one unknowingly. Walker is a director not given anything like his full due. Just the quiet shot of the parishioners in SIN sitting joylessly and gullibly on the pews in the dank church are as disturbing as the shots of bloodshed. The film seemed real and menacing and I loved it.
This is a credit to Walker who stamped his savage vision on a witch's brew of a film that is one quarter horror, one quarter suspense, one quarter giallo (the Father Cutler, Miss Brabizon, Mrs. Meldrum revelations - some dark secrets from the past are responsible for the twisted actions of the present) - and one quarter brutal social commentary.
While not as terrifying as FRIGHTMARE, a horror film with a shocking feel for family dysfunction in extremis, pitting family member against family member, until the jealousies and hatreds of the past build to a unremitting apex of cruelty, this film nonetheless makes the viewer feel as if something very dark has been learned about mankind.
Walker and McGillivray have a way with turning out a tight, creepy script. There's not a boring moment. It builds to a satisfying, and as in FRIGHTMARE, terribly cynical denouement. If FRIGHTMARE dealt with familial cruelties and WHIPCORD with sexual permissiveness, SIN deals with the discarding of free will for the rigidity of a fundamentalist belief that Walker tells us will surely destroy anyone who by nature is unable to sublimate his humanness to the point where his own earthly needs and desires for individual ideas are dsetroyed. SIN takes its place as part of a trilogy which deals, as with FRIGHTMARE and WHIPCORD, with unreasonable expectations, loss of control and ensuing madness leading to the victimization of and violence against others, especially against those who are felt to challenge or threaten the fixed ideas of the perpetrators. The least successful of the three is WHIPCORD, overlong and a bit unbelievable that the victims can't fight back against their dotty, frail captors.
The cast is excellent. Though Peter Cushing was offered the role of Father Cutler, I'm glad it was taken by a less familiar face and an actor not known for so many horror roles. More sinister than Cushing, Norman Eshley underplayed if anything, making the character's lunacy believable. The two sisters (staples of the other two films in the trilogy though used in different relationships) were well-cast. The heroine was a symbol of her day, a symbol for spunkiness, free expression and the questioning of authority. I thought it wise not to have her capitulate to the priest's sociopathic behavior "because he was a priest". In her mind he was a sick then evil man. Her sister was more given to doubts. Though in the end it didn't matter - not when they came up against a tortured mind, a disturbed psychosis, singular in its goal. Cast well to the last of the secondary characters, the sad Mrs. Davey stands out as the distraught mother of a daughter driven to suicide by the priest's hypocrisy and/or blackmail. She presents a pathetic picture in her sorrow that has nowhere to morph into except excitement at believing she is a match for the monster and can lay a trap for him.
The actual murders of the real and imagined heroine's lovers were horrific. The hospital scene where innocence collides with savagery left no doubt that the beast had won out - as he did through to the end. The death of the 'mistaken libertine' in his hospital bed had a sense of future doom.
The imposing actress Sheila Keith (happily) commands the screen whenever she is in the frame. In a role quite different from the petulant but vengeful cannibal of FRIGHTMARE, she is oddly affecting as the would-be bride of the killer priest who has waited chastely by his side all these years - though of course her affect (and that great eye patch) add sinister touches. The death throes of those who inhabit this house of mortal sin would live up to any horror or giallo fan's dreams.
If there is anything to quibble about it would be the younger priest's believing Father Cutler's every word and hurriedly renouncing the thought of not continuing in Cutler's shoes. But better than having him run to the police accusing Cutler. There is now the implication that evil will grow in his own church garden.
The shock ending shot of the priest pulling on his glove to kill the only "normal" human being left in the film illustrates his psychotic obsession left to flourish, because he has carte-blanche to carry out his murders hidden by the sanctity of the church. Great, unexpected last shot. The themes of Walker's trilogy seems to be there are unknown houses of horrors set amongst the everyday world of those trying to go about their own lives, who don't know they are viewed as sinners by unknown psychotics and don't even realize they are standing in some psychotic's path, viewed as an adversary to be dealt with. It makes you think - there are houses like that in every city - you could pass one unknowingly. Walker is a director not given anything like his full due. Just the quiet shot of the parishioners in SIN sitting joylessly and gullibly on the pews in the dank church are as disturbing as the shots of bloodshed. The film seemed real and menacing and I loved it.