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.
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.