Schoolteacher Robert Heller (Ralph Bates) takes his new, emotionally fragile, young bride Peggy (Judy Geeson) to take up their quarters at the boarding school where he works. Here, she meets the distinctly weird septuagenarian Headmaster, Michael Carmichael (Peter Cushing), and his improbably young and sexy wife Molly (Joan Collins). Michael has a prosthetic arm, and, twice in the early scenes, Peggy is attacked by just such an assailant, but is more or less told by her passive/aggressive husband not to be silly, she imagined it all. Later, Robert reveals that Michael's odd behaviour is explained by an horrific accident at the school some years earlier, since which time the school has been closed, but the traumatised Michael continues to act as if it were still functioning, and that he is still the Head. Robert is not a teacher, but is in fact Michael's carer. Later still, Michael corners Peggy alone, and she shoots him, though we don't see his death scene, and he has appeared to be impervious to the bullets. Cut to later, and we discover that Robert and Molly are lovers, with a plan to drive Peggy so crazy that she kills Michael, is thus sent back to a mental hospital, and the lovers can pocket Michael's wealth. But Michael turns the tables, and both the villains end up dead.
If that synopsis sounds ludicrous, the truth is that the plot is even more ludicrous than any summary can adequately convey. One of the many problems with this film is that it doesn't play fair with the audience. It spends two-thirds of the time portraying Michael as an insane old creep, roaming the school like a madman, engaging in odd conversations -'Do you enjoy tying knots?' he asks Peggy on their first meeting - spending an eternity lecherously untying the scarf in her hair (just after the knot remark), and later pursuing her from home to school, and using his bionic arm to smash his way through a door, because, he explains later, 'I wanted to talk to you.' But in the last third of the film it is revealed that he is aware of the lovers' plans, and sane enough to outsmart them, (and load the gun with blanks because he, obviously, knows that Peggy will try to shoot him, with his own rifle that he doesn't know she will have) with an unlikely sequence of events at the end that somehow meets his objectives. The plot itself, beyond this chicanery of characterisation, is laughable. Robert and Molly's cunning scheme - that they can send Peggy so doolally that she will, quite naturally, kill Michael, is absurdly unlikely to have any chance of success (though, of course, in this narrative drivel it almost does succeed), and why two rational people should choose this as the obvious Plan A bears no scrutiny. Then there's the script, which has so much wrong with it that's it's difficult to know where to start. The zero continuity suggests at times that the two writers responsible for this twaddle took it in turns to write lines of dialogue without first checking what the other had written immediately before. In one scene Peggy think she's seen someone walking through the school at night. Robert tells her not be ridiculous - who would be walking the school at night? She insists, but again, he says 'There's nobody there.' When she repeats it for a third time, Robert says 'Well, it was probably Michael.' Peggy queries this and Robert explains 'Michael often walks the school at night.' What kind of script-editing meeting decides that that is any kind of plausible conversation for two adults to have? In another scene, Robert tells Peggy that he has to go to a conference in London with Michael (presumably to wangle some love time with Molly, though Peggy is so gullible that nothing so elaborate is necessary). When he is told that Michael can't come, so he must go alone, he says 'Damn! I was hoping to have an evening at home.' Again, the two conversations make no sense when taken together. Robert keeps reassuring Peggy that she is quite safe, but gives her a shotgun 'just in case', to reassure her further. This kind of contradictory nonsense goes on and on. Meanwhile, poor old Judy Geeson has to spend the entire film screaming, or running, and sometimes screaming and running, and putting up with the illogical storyline around her, while Joan Collins phones in her ten minutes of screen time as only she can. Add in some cheapo fake blood, shenanigans with tape recorders and dust sheets, and it all amounts to a monumental turkey of a film, as hilarious as it is ridiculous. It is a salutary reminder that to make a realistic and credible thriller requires more than a couple of nubile actresses, an in-vogue leading man, and a stalwart of the genre - it also requires a coherent plot, a convincing script and believable characters.
If that synopsis sounds ludicrous, the truth is that the plot is even more ludicrous than any summary can adequately convey. One of the many problems with this film is that it doesn't play fair with the audience. It spends two-thirds of the time portraying Michael as an insane old creep, roaming the school like a madman, engaging in odd conversations -'Do you enjoy tying knots?' he asks Peggy on their first meeting - spending an eternity lecherously untying the scarf in her hair (just after the knot remark), and later pursuing her from home to school, and using his bionic arm to smash his way through a door, because, he explains later, 'I wanted to talk to you.' But in the last third of the film it is revealed that he is aware of the lovers' plans, and sane enough to outsmart them, (and load the gun with blanks because he, obviously, knows that Peggy will try to shoot him, with his own rifle that he doesn't know she will have) with an unlikely sequence of events at the end that somehow meets his objectives. The plot itself, beyond this chicanery of characterisation, is laughable. Robert and Molly's cunning scheme - that they can send Peggy so doolally that she will, quite naturally, kill Michael, is absurdly unlikely to have any chance of success (though, of course, in this narrative drivel it almost does succeed), and why two rational people should choose this as the obvious Plan A bears no scrutiny. Then there's the script, which has so much wrong with it that's it's difficult to know where to start. The zero continuity suggests at times that the two writers responsible for this twaddle took it in turns to write lines of dialogue without first checking what the other had written immediately before. In one scene Peggy think she's seen someone walking through the school at night. Robert tells her not be ridiculous - who would be walking the school at night? She insists, but again, he says 'There's nobody there.' When she repeats it for a third time, Robert says 'Well, it was probably Michael.' Peggy queries this and Robert explains 'Michael often walks the school at night.' What kind of script-editing meeting decides that that is any kind of plausible conversation for two adults to have? In another scene, Robert tells Peggy that he has to go to a conference in London with Michael (presumably to wangle some love time with Molly, though Peggy is so gullible that nothing so elaborate is necessary). When he is told that Michael can't come, so he must go alone, he says 'Damn! I was hoping to have an evening at home.' Again, the two conversations make no sense when taken together. Robert keeps reassuring Peggy that she is quite safe, but gives her a shotgun 'just in case', to reassure her further. This kind of contradictory nonsense goes on and on. Meanwhile, poor old Judy Geeson has to spend the entire film screaming, or running, and sometimes screaming and running, and putting up with the illogical storyline around her, while Joan Collins phones in her ten minutes of screen time as only she can. Add in some cheapo fake blood, shenanigans with tape recorders and dust sheets, and it all amounts to a monumental turkey of a film, as hilarious as it is ridiculous. It is a salutary reminder that to make a realistic and credible thriller requires more than a couple of nubile actresses, an in-vogue leading man, and a stalwart of the genre - it also requires a coherent plot, a convincing script and believable characters.