To recent film audiences, Michael Gough is best known as Alfred, the Butler, in the first few of the "Batman" movie franchise. But to classic horror movie buffs, he's the forgotten master of terror, brushed aside to obscurity among names like Tod Slaughter and Lionel Atwill. But in rediscovering the series of British grand guignole near masterpieces, I have come to gain an appreciation for the artistic end of the horror movie game, where he, tall and lanky like Boris Karloff and Vincent Price, and not nearly as obvious in his horrific activities like Bela Lugosi or the forgotten Tod Slaughter. In this film, he's the proprietor of a private museum of terrors, and when a series of gruesome slaughters begin to plague London, Scotland Yard goes to see him, not as a suspect, but to aide them in their quest to find the maniacal killer, because of his knowledge of the type of tortures used to knock off the victims.
The killings themselves are done very subtly, but indicate the gruesome ways in which people are killed. A jilting lover gets the guillotine; A nosy shopkeeper becomes a bloody mess thanks to a pair of ice tongs. The very first scene in the film has a woman looking through a dual kaleidoscope, and screams out in agony as blood drips quickly down her body. By doing all of this subtly, the filmmakers really make the viewer prepare for the unexpected, yet when these creepy murders do occur, the way they are presented will still have you either jump, go into a quick shock (then be convulsed with laughter over the ingenious way they are presented), or drop your jaw and want to re-wind to see it all over again. The number of Gough's victims also includes his young assistant (Graham Curnow) who has basically been blackmailed into silence, and then is later drugged into committing his own murder so Gough will be able to keep him in check. The finale, set at an amusement park, is a riveting conclusion to what deserves to be added to the list of "The best horror films you've never even heard of."
The killings themselves are done very subtly, but indicate the gruesome ways in which people are killed. A jilting lover gets the guillotine; A nosy shopkeeper becomes a bloody mess thanks to a pair of ice tongs. The very first scene in the film has a woman looking through a dual kaleidoscope, and screams out in agony as blood drips quickly down her body. By doing all of this subtly, the filmmakers really make the viewer prepare for the unexpected, yet when these creepy murders do occur, the way they are presented will still have you either jump, go into a quick shock (then be convulsed with laughter over the ingenious way they are presented), or drop your jaw and want to re-wind to see it all over again. The number of Gough's victims also includes his young assistant (Graham Curnow) who has basically been blackmailed into silence, and then is later drugged into committing his own murder so Gough will be able to keep him in check. The finale, set at an amusement park, is a riveting conclusion to what deserves to be added to the list of "The best horror films you've never even heard of."