The scariest part of this quickie was the prospect of seeing what boded to be the big screen's stupidest-looking monster since 'The Giant Claw' (to which an earlier reviewer has already remarked the similarity). Mercifully, even the film's makers probably realised how ridiculous the monster described in the script was going to look, so thankfully we barely see it.
The film starts well with the ever elegant Annette Carell as a local schoolteacher going boldly were no man would dare to go across a spooky churchyard at night; although what she sees emerge from beneath one of the headstones would have been more likely to have put her in hospital from bursting a blood vessel laughing than - as happens here - giving her such a fright it turned her sleek, brunette mane white. In hospital she gets a visit from the local sexton, a creepy albino who instructs her to keep her trap shut - Or Else! - and hangs about her hospital room apparently planning permanently to silence her, before seemingly forgetting about the idea; although sadly that is the last we see of her.
When the action transfers to the palatial country home of Brian Stroud (played by Broderick Crawford), the pace slows to a crawl and the film becomes an endless succession of scenes in which Dr. Eric Lutens (Robert Hutton), "one of the top nuclear scientists in the world", who just happens to be here on holiday, engages in wild and unsubstantiated - but invariably correct - speculation about the strange events occurring locally, coming to the conclusion that a monstrous creature has been created nearby (in a nod by the script to 'The Fly') "by nuclear transmutation". How the cast kept a straight face talking all this rot is by far the greater mystery, although the leaden lack of any conscious humour makes the film even heavier going to get through.
The film is historically interesting for reuniting two of Hollywood's beefiest hams - Broderick Crawford & Akim Tamiroff - for the first time since 'The Texas Rangers Ride Again' (1940) over a quarter of a century earlier; they have one brief scene together, Akim shuffling about in a cape and wide-brimmed hat borrowed from Orson Welles. The monster leaves gold coins dotted about the village - each bearing the date of the original curse, 1749 (which is the logical equivalent of all the loose change in Dr. Lutens's pocket consisting exclusively of coins minted in 1966; or of none of the coins in my own pocket dating from earlier than 2017). As usual, heroine Diane Clare is the only cast member to come out of a close encounter with the title monster in one piece.
Although set in Cornwall most of the attractive English exteriors were actually shot around Iver Heath in Buckinghamshire in the vicinity of Pinewood Studios. The drippy score is by Eric Spear, who died before the film was released, but whose name continues to appear fifty years after his death on British TV every week in the end credits of 'Coronation Street', for which he wrote the theme.
The film starts well with the ever elegant Annette Carell as a local schoolteacher going boldly were no man would dare to go across a spooky churchyard at night; although what she sees emerge from beneath one of the headstones would have been more likely to have put her in hospital from bursting a blood vessel laughing than - as happens here - giving her such a fright it turned her sleek, brunette mane white. In hospital she gets a visit from the local sexton, a creepy albino who instructs her to keep her trap shut - Or Else! - and hangs about her hospital room apparently planning permanently to silence her, before seemingly forgetting about the idea; although sadly that is the last we see of her.
When the action transfers to the palatial country home of Brian Stroud (played by Broderick Crawford), the pace slows to a crawl and the film becomes an endless succession of scenes in which Dr. Eric Lutens (Robert Hutton), "one of the top nuclear scientists in the world", who just happens to be here on holiday, engages in wild and unsubstantiated - but invariably correct - speculation about the strange events occurring locally, coming to the conclusion that a monstrous creature has been created nearby (in a nod by the script to 'The Fly') "by nuclear transmutation". How the cast kept a straight face talking all this rot is by far the greater mystery, although the leaden lack of any conscious humour makes the film even heavier going to get through.
The film is historically interesting for reuniting two of Hollywood's beefiest hams - Broderick Crawford & Akim Tamiroff - for the first time since 'The Texas Rangers Ride Again' (1940) over a quarter of a century earlier; they have one brief scene together, Akim shuffling about in a cape and wide-brimmed hat borrowed from Orson Welles. The monster leaves gold coins dotted about the village - each bearing the date of the original curse, 1749 (which is the logical equivalent of all the loose change in Dr. Lutens's pocket consisting exclusively of coins minted in 1966; or of none of the coins in my own pocket dating from earlier than 2017). As usual, heroine Diane Clare is the only cast member to come out of a close encounter with the title monster in one piece.
Although set in Cornwall most of the attractive English exteriors were actually shot around Iver Heath in Buckinghamshire in the vicinity of Pinewood Studios. The drippy score is by Eric Spear, who died before the film was released, but whose name continues to appear fifty years after his death on British TV every week in the end credits of 'Coronation Street', for which he wrote the theme.