Unholy Terror

Trailer—Crucible of Terror

Artist, Victor Clare (Mike Raven), is wowing the art world with his life-sized, bronze sculptures of female nudes. We are shown in the first few minutes just why his pieces are so lifelike! Gallery owner, John Davies (James Bolam), decides to visit Victor's home / studio, in order to secure further sculptures. What he discovers is a bizarre family with many problems and many more secrets. Predictably, multiple deaths occur. Will anyone survive the weekend? CRUCIBLE OF TERROR is a slow-building, one might even say plodding, horror film, filled with oddball characters, mystery, murder, and a touch of the supernatural. If the pace was quicker, it could have been much more enjoyable. As it is, it's sort of a bleak version of Roger Corman's A BUCKET OF BLOOD, minus the humor and beatnik sensibility. Not to be confused with CRUCIBLE OF HORROR...

So this movie is about a bunch of characters who are spending the weekend with a mad artist who turned a girl into a statue years ago (using a method that probably would never work, but never mind, plot armor). Slowly the characters are picked off one by one, and you think it's the mad artist doing the killing, but no, it was the ghost of the girl he killed in the first minute of the movie taking over the body of another girl through a cursed Kimono. I wouldn't have had as much of a problem with this ending if the first victim/vengeful spirit had been better established as a character early on in the movie. Except, of course, she wasn't. So you have an hour and a half of creepy characters being knocked off and you get this twist ending at the end that makes little sense. Why would Vengeful Spirit Girl kill the other people? It really made no sense.

There's more boring drama than horror in this chunk of British trash. The poor man's Christopher Lee, Mike Raven was a radio DJ who dabbled in the occult and tried to be the next big horror star of the 70s. He has a menacing look and some screen presence but films like this ruined his career. There are some brief and nasty murders to keep you awake but this film is hardly worth the effort. Me Me Lay, who would go on to appear in some notoriously gory Italian cannibal movies, appears under heavy makeup as a vengeful undead Japanese woman which was the highlight of this sorry excuse for a horror film.

"Crucible of Terror" is amazingly bad...which is hard to believe since the initial premise was so good. You see a LIVE woman being used to make a statue...and molten metal is poured over her!! Next, you see her statue being displayed in an art gallery and folks LOVE it. Pretty cool idea...a bit like "Bucket of Blood"...though not a comedy. The problem is when the film leaves London and the gallery and goes off to the countryside....where the film drags on and on and on. Additionally, the ending is amazingly stupid...and confusing. So, there is an epilogue that actually explains what happened and why!! Unfortunately, the explanation is just stupid. Overall, what looked like it would be an exciting horror film is just dull, stupid and slow.

Just rewatched this for the first time in about 30 years and it is every bit as good and bad as I remembered. It has so much going for it - some real heavyweight acting talent; fantastic settings and atmosphere; Judy Matheson at her most luminous in a substantial role; and, best of all, a really off-kilter story. The pieces are all there. Of course it often belies its low budget and while there are some great actors on display others may not be quite so top-drawer. But none of that reduces the enjoyment of Crucible of Terror. Like several other British horrors it succeeds because of its shortcomings rather than in spite of them. If you're a fan of the genre you owe yourself a viewing.

I saw this thing in part on late night TV in the seventies. Being a mere lad at the time, I was taken a back at how gory the killings were and surprized in retrospect that it wasn't cut for TV. I found this flick recently in a $5.00 bin put out by STAR CLASSICS. I wanted to see what I'd think of it now, so I bought it. Now I wasn't surprised that at that price it was a cheezy 16mm VHS copy in the LP mode, but I was surprised that all the gory scenes were cut out! Apparently, it was transfered from a more prudish television print! I see here that it's on DVD, but I ain't gonna buy the darn thing.. I would rent it though, just to see if it still holds the same impact it did for me so long ago..

hammer fans may like this, fair enough it is pretty predictable and stupid at times(most of)but it does have a nice twist at the end. Mainstream movie fans and people with a penchant for glossy turdoid do not have the mental capacity for enjoying the crap value of such films as "Crucible of Terror" you'd better of sticking with "Titwankit" sorry titanic.I am a tree !!!

A cheaply made British film from the early 1970s is what CRUCIBLE OF TERROR is , but you`ll never believe how bad it is untill you actually watch it . The plot is just basically a whodunnit where it`s so obvious that you know straight from the first murder who`s behind the killings , except at the very end there`s a plot twist that will have you reeling and not in a good way either . It`s as though the producer realised how obvious the killer was that he instructed the screenwriter to forgo any credibility to make ( You`ll never guess who ) the murderer at the very last minute . The other thing that had me reeling was the performance of Mike Raven who struck me as a cross between Roger Delgado ( The original master from Doctor Who ) and Christopher Lee . It`s not too difficult to believe that Mr Raven disappeared from the acting world after making this crazy movie

Well this is NOT the worst film I've ever seen - If you want a down right bloody awful film try "Hillbillys in a Haunted House (1967)". Crucible of Terror (1971) is not good but it's not all that bad either. The big let down is the ending. The supernatural element in the film is revealed about 20 minutes into the movie by Michael Clare (Lacey) to John Davies (Bolam) about Chi-San (Lay) and this throws a hint about the ending BUT the ending is terrible. I have to agree with other reviewers that the actors are a bit "wooden" but they are not all that bad either. And as far as the story goes it is somewhat interesting - can hold some people's interest until the very end (even if the ending is a bit corny). Not a bad watch late at night if there is nothing else on TV that you care to watch. 6/10