Sir James Forbes, a renowned professor of medicine, receives a letter from an old pupil, Dr Peter Thompson, who has set up practice in a remote Cornish village. Peter is worried by the recent outbreak of a mysterious sickness which has claimed the lives of several of his patients, so Sir James, with his daughter Sylvia, travels to Cornwall to find out what is going on. Once there, he finds himself embroiled in a terrifying chain of events which lead him to the conclusion that someone in the village is practising witchcraft!
Production details
A Hammer film production presented by Associated British Pathe Limited and released through Warner-Pathe Distributors Limited (UK) and Twentieth Century Fox (USA)
Copyright MCMLXVI Hammer Film Production, Ltd, – All right, reserved
MPAA Approved Certificate
RCA Sound Recording
Produced at Bray Studios, England
Technicolor 90 mim
Filming Began: 30th June 1965
UK Release: 9th January 1966
Studio:
Bray Studios, Down Place, Oakley Green, Berkshire, England
Locations:
Black Park Lake, Black Park, Iver Heath, Buckinghamshire
Frensham Ponds, Farnham, Surrey
Stills from film
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Original Poster
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Footnotes
This film marks a high water mark in Hammer’s history, and the five-minute graveyard sequence – part reality, part nightmare – is justly considered to be one of the most frightening in the British cinema.
Jacqueline Pearce’s characters at Hammer did not have a good time and no sooner had she been ‘zombiefied’ and beheaded in this film, she was promptly doomed to become “The Reptile”. Perhaps she should have taken the advice of the title of the Carry On film Don’t Lose Your Head, in which she appeared in 1967! More recently, she gained a cult following for her role as Servalan in the BBC TV sci-fi series Blake’s 7.
Diane Clare was no newcomer to scary films, having also had parts in Robert Wise’s The Haunting (1963) and Don Sharp’s Witchcraft (1964).