This ghoulishly fun Grand Guignol horror piece from director Pete Walker features a tour-de-force performance by Sheila Keith as Dorothy Yates, committed to an insane asylum for the murder and cannibalism of six people, along with her husband played by Rupert Davies who covered up her crimes. They are released years later whereupon they take up residence at an old farm, and Dorothy, far from cured, starts drawing people there (through classified ads promising Tarot readings) and murdering them with metal pokers, electric drills and pitchforks. Deborah Fairfax is Jackie (Edmund's daughter from a previous marriage) who visits them in the dead of night, bringing packets of offal to try and control her stepmother's still-insatiable lust for flesh, and who has been looking after her half sister Debbie who turns out to be a chip off the old butcher-block herself. Andrew Sachs (Manuel from Fawlty Towers) plays a victim in the movies grim opening sequence. A creepy, entertaining bloodbath, directed completely without pretense by Walker who keeps the plot moving when it it needs moving, and shocking the audience when they need a shock. It has all the usual trappings of an early 70s low budget film (a bit of nudity, motorcycle riding teenagers, gratuitous violence) but Frightmare is still terrifying stuff and one of Walker's best movies. It is also known also known under the titles of Cover Up and Once Upon a Frightmare.
Review of Frightmare
