This film has been rather unfairly rated on this site. It's hardly a horror classic, but The Curse of the Crimson Alter boasts a strong horror cast, a nice storyline and an atmosphere borrowed from one of Hammer Horror's many successes. When you look at all elements, to be honest, it should have been a lot better; but you cant expect too much from a sixties low budget horror movie, and this film delivers one and a half hours of fun. Usually with this sort of film, if it bills two or more big actors; you can expect to see them for all of about five minutes. However, this movie stands out because the film's two big heavyweights; Boris Karloff and Christopher Lee appear for quite a while, and while they don't exactly 'star' in the film; their big billing is justified by the amount of time that they appear in the film for. Joining these two is cult beauty Barbara Steele, who basically reprises her role from the Mario Bava masterpiece 'Black Sunday'. She stars as a witch that was burned at the stake, but not before putting a curse on the descendants of the people who killed her. We pick up the story when one of those descendants travels to the town to find his brother.
While Curse of the Crimson Alter doesn't offer us anything new where the story is concerned ("if I had a pound for every witch curse movie ever made..."), it still manages to add some verve and imagination to the familiar plot. Not a great deal, mind; but enough to keep it an interesting ride throughout. The atmosphere is well done, and while it's obvious that the film only had a small budget to work with; it makes the best of it, and the house at the centre of the film makes for a nice location to film a horror movie. The two biggest billed stars; Karloff and Lee, haven't been given characters that require them to really flex their acting muscles, but even on autopilot; these two great thespians are able to show what it is about them that makes them so important to the horror genre on the whole. It's obvious that the people who put this movie together wanted to ensure that it had everything about it that made Hammer's films a success; and although it doesn't quite capture the high camp style, it does well enough to ensure that it's still a fun movie. On the whole, it's not great; but fans of this sort of stuff will no doubt find something to like.
While Curse of the Crimson Alter doesn't offer us anything new where the story is concerned ("if I had a pound for every witch curse movie ever made..."), it still manages to add some verve and imagination to the familiar plot. Not a great deal, mind; but enough to keep it an interesting ride throughout. The atmosphere is well done, and while it's obvious that the film only had a small budget to work with; it makes the best of it, and the house at the centre of the film makes for a nice location to film a horror movie. The two biggest billed stars; Karloff and Lee, haven't been given characters that require them to really flex their acting muscles, but even on autopilot; these two great thespians are able to show what it is about them that makes them so important to the horror genre on the whole. It's obvious that the people who put this movie together wanted to ensure that it had everything about it that made Hammer's films a success; and although it doesn't quite capture the high camp style, it does well enough to ensure that it's still a fun movie. On the whole, it's not great; but fans of this sort of stuff will no doubt find something to like.