Bad first half, good second half
Catherine (Stephanie Beacham) moves to the Fengriffen manor in rural England, 1795, to marry her fiancé Charles (Ian Ogilvy) where she’s immediately fascinated by a portrait of his dead father, Henry (Herbert Lom), as well as harassed by spectral images, including that of a severed hand. Does the loner woodsman (Geoffrey Whitehead) hold the key to why the estate is cursed? Peter Cushing dominates the second half as a doctor of the mind.
Amicus’ “And Now the Screaming Starts!” (1973) has a typical plot for British horror of that era, but it lacks finesse in execution, like the curious overuse of the quick zoom on Henry's portrait to suggest a sense of foreboding and the cheesy severed hand that rears its fingers too early. Catherine’s hysterics don’t help.
Thankfully, the second half gets compelling with the arrival of Dr. Pope (Cushing) and an interesting flashback to 1745 that explains the weird goings-on. Of course Stephanie was one of the most beautiful women to walk the earth.
So this is a tale of two halves: The first half veers toward “What were they thinking?” bad while the second half is quite good.
The film runs 1 hour and 31 minutes and was shot at Shepperton Studios, Middlesex, England, with the exteriors of Fengriffen Castle done in Windsor, Berkshire.
GRADE: C
