I was a big Roger Corman fan back in the 1960's but somehow was lucky enough to miss this mess. Reportedly made from an idea by Leo Gordon written on a napkin during a lunch date with Corman. Boris Karloff owed the director a couple of days so Corman set to work with the ghostly help of Monte Hellman and Francis Coppola and cobbled together this supernatural nightmare. To be fare the available DVD is a dreadful transfer and is panned and scanned but it hardly seems worthy of better treatment let alone a restoration. The plot is jumbled and not helped by interminable padding. The cast is interesting with not only Karloff but the young Jack Nicholson and Corman regulars Dick Miller and Jonathan Haze but it hardly rates as a milestone in anybody's career. When it was first shown in Britain critic John Cutts, writing in Films and Filming magazine said the film was comparable with Ingmar Bergman. I can only assume he was joking. Rating *
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