When this movie came out, a publisher brought out a tie-in edition of the novel, with a nude dancer on the cover. For this reason I'd been looking forward to the movie; but it never appeared, and I'm only seeing it on video now. And it's okay: not worth waiting twenty years for, but okay.
Its prefatory sequence promises a story about a family curse laid down by an ancestor who was burned as a witch. But there's no real curse and no real witch; this is just a red herring. The story isn't a horror story but a murder mystery with spooky overtones. As a mystery, it starts slowly but gains in interest as it goes. It's set in a French château, where a family gathers, officially to hold a ball, but in effect mainly as an excuse for squabbling. One of them turns up dead; the only witness to the crime swears to an event that seems impossible; presently the body presently vanishes. In the absence of a detective as the leading character, the script has no solid structure: it starts with one pair of characters and ends with another, the motives for the characters' actions, other than the murder, are obscure, and the surprise ending seems to belong to another movie. But the direction kept me intrigued most of the way, the black-and-white photography is attractive, and the actors are good enough, as far as can be judged from the dubbing (which is not bad, for dubbing). It's okay--not not-okay-okay, but really okay.
Only, I'm still looking for that nude dancer from the paperback, because there are none in the movie. And no burning court, either.
Oh, well.
Its prefatory sequence promises a story about a family curse laid down by an ancestor who was burned as a witch. But there's no real curse and no real witch; this is just a red herring. The story isn't a horror story but a murder mystery with spooky overtones. As a mystery, it starts slowly but gains in interest as it goes. It's set in a French château, where a family gathers, officially to hold a ball, but in effect mainly as an excuse for squabbling. One of them turns up dead; the only witness to the crime swears to an event that seems impossible; presently the body presently vanishes. In the absence of a detective as the leading character, the script has no solid structure: it starts with one pair of characters and ends with another, the motives for the characters' actions, other than the murder, are obscure, and the surprise ending seems to belong to another movie. But the direction kept me intrigued most of the way, the black-and-white photography is attractive, and the actors are good enough, as far as can be judged from the dubbing (which is not bad, for dubbing). It's okay--not not-okay-okay, but really okay.
Only, I'm still looking for that nude dancer from the paperback, because there are none in the movie. And no burning court, either.
Oh, well.