There's trouble out on t'moors when two bright young things, teachers Joyce Howard, she's the prim and proper one and her chalk-and-cheese chum Tucker McGuire, not so much a man-eater but a man-guzzler set out for a walk, ostensibly to retrace the steps of another female teacher friend who took the same walk a year before and mysteriously disappeared. Unfortunately the weather turns and they have to brave both the elements and the treacherous marshlands around them, before James Mason turns up to rather reluctantly rescue them and put them up in his big dark old house.
A damaged Republican-supporting veteran of the Spanish Civil War he's also a pianist-composer but now lives alone, attended only by his trusty housekeeper Mary Clare and her somewhat seedy husband, handyman Wilfrid Lawson, who seems strangely attached to his pet don't-call-it-a-monkey capuchin.
Despite Mason's moods and the foreboding atmosphere surrounding the house, Howard falls for him but she's still curious about the fate of her lost friend plus small animals suddenly seem to have started getting killed for no apparent reason. It really starts to kick off when Ives rather easily discovers a secret room that even Mason hadn't found before, the contents of which apparently point a bony finger of suspicion back at Mason. So is he the murderer or is there a gaslight of a chance that he is being framed for the misdeed...?
Despite the sometimes over-pukka acting, overwrought dialogue, over-starchy direction and over-complicated plotting, Mason is the best thing here as he shows he can brood for England in a way which no doubt got him noticed by the ambitious Gainsborough Studios and launched his distinguished career.
For all its faults, I find it hard not to have a soft spot for this low-budget thriller and I don't just mean the shifting quicksand out there on the marshes.
A damaged Republican-supporting veteran of the Spanish Civil War he's also a pianist-composer but now lives alone, attended only by his trusty housekeeper Mary Clare and her somewhat seedy husband, handyman Wilfrid Lawson, who seems strangely attached to his pet don't-call-it-a-monkey capuchin.
Despite Mason's moods and the foreboding atmosphere surrounding the house, Howard falls for him but she's still curious about the fate of her lost friend plus small animals suddenly seem to have started getting killed for no apparent reason. It really starts to kick off when Ives rather easily discovers a secret room that even Mason hadn't found before, the contents of which apparently point a bony finger of suspicion back at Mason. So is he the murderer or is there a gaslight of a chance that he is being framed for the misdeed...?
Despite the sometimes over-pukka acting, overwrought dialogue, over-starchy direction and over-complicated plotting, Mason is the best thing here as he shows he can brood for England in a way which no doubt got him noticed by the ambitious Gainsborough Studios and launched his distinguished career.
For all its faults, I find it hard not to have a soft spot for this low-budget thriller and I don't just mean the shifting quicksand out there on the marshes.