The Crimson Cult Reviews

An 80-year-old Karloff in wheelchair is pathetically cast as an expert on the supernatural with a wide array of torture devices he has collected over the years. The evil Lee owns Greymarsh Lodge, to which he invites Eden, a descendant of the bloke who burned Lee's descendant at the stake. Lee's tortured relative is a green-faced witch played all-too-unconvincingly by Steele, who is reincarnated in an attempt to terrorize Eden. The tongue-in-cheek humor is at its peak when early on Eden notes the similarity Greymarsh has to "one of those houses in the horror films." Wetherell answers, "I know, it's like Boris Karloff is going to pop up at any moment." And sure enough Karloff pops up--as well as one can pop up in a wheelchair--and scolds them, "It's not nice to joke of such things." The loathesome marketing of this one tried to capitalize on Karloff's subsequent death by billing this as his last film. It wasn't, thankfully. He made four more in Mexico. A semifaithful, though uncredited, adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft's "The Dream in the Witch House."