That old horror movie cliché, the reading of a will, kicks off this gruesome slice of grand guignol, which is surprisingly nasty at times given its vintage. The film opens with the interment of abusive tyrant Rufus Sinclair, much to the delight of his living relatives and staff, who are keen to lay their hands on the dead man's fortune. Suffering from a malady that could give the appearance of death, Rufus's greatest fear was to be buried alive and so his will demands that each beneficiary take steps to ensure that this does not happen; if they violate his trust, they will not only be disinherited, but will be cursed by the supposedly dead man who threatens each with a violent end in a manner according to their worst fears. It's not long before they have all failed to adhere to the dead man's wishes, and start to turn up dead. Could Rufus really be back from the grave? A local police inspector and his inept constable investigate...
With it's remote country building, hidden passageways and even a portrait with eye holes to spy through, Del Tenney's The Curse of the Living Corpse is chock full of tried and tested 'old dark house' tropes, but keeps things reasonably interesting with its graphic killings. The best and bloodiest comes early on, with the discovery of a sexy blonde maid's severed head on a breakfast platter, but other mean-spirited moments include the face slashing of vain lothario Bruce (Robert Milli) who is dragged to death behind a horse, the burning of Rufus's widow Abigail (Helen Waren), and the drowning of Vivian Sinclair (Margot Hartman, the director's wife) as she takes a bath (the actress providing the film with some brief nudity).
By no means great, but still worth a fair-to-middling 5.5/10 for the murders, which definitely help to make this otherwise routine gothic chiller more memorable
N.B. The big screen debut of Roy Scheider, who plays drunken Philip Sinclair.
With it's remote country building, hidden passageways and even a portrait with eye holes to spy through, Del Tenney's The Curse of the Living Corpse is chock full of tried and tested 'old dark house' tropes, but keeps things reasonably interesting with its graphic killings. The best and bloodiest comes early on, with the discovery of a sexy blonde maid's severed head on a breakfast platter, but other mean-spirited moments include the face slashing of vain lothario Bruce (Robert Milli) who is dragged to death behind a horse, the burning of Rufus's widow Abigail (Helen Waren), and the drowning of Vivian Sinclair (Margot Hartman, the director's wife) as she takes a bath (the actress providing the film with some brief nudity).
By no means great, but still worth a fair-to-middling 5.5/10 for the murders, which definitely help to make this otherwise routine gothic chiller more memorable
N.B. The big screen debut of Roy Scheider, who plays drunken Philip Sinclair.