CRUCIBLE OF HORROR

UK, 1970, 91 minutes, Colour.
Michael Gough, Yvonne Mitchell, Sharon Gurney, Simon Gough, Olaf Pooley.
Directed by Viktors Ritelis.

The Corpse is a film about a dysfunctional family – leading into touches of a horror film. Michael Gough (later best known as the butler for Bruce Wayne in the Batman series) is a sadistic husband who idolises his son (played by Gough’s own son, Simon Gough) and physically and mentally abuses his wife and daughter, played by Yvonne Mitchell and Sharon Gurney. They decide that enough is enough, play to kill the villain and make it look like suicide. However, this is not what exactly happens …

Michael Gough is a strong and sinister screen presence. Yvonne Mitchell, a stage actress, had had a very successful career in a number of socially significant films of the 1950s and 60s including Yield to the Night, Woman in a Dressing Gown, Tiger Bay, Sapphire. The writer Olaf Pooley appears as Reid. The director had a thirty-year career, principally in directing British television series.

1. A successful and interesting horror film.

2. Comment an the techniques and structure of the film as being helpful for the story, horror, suspense, lesson?

3. The meaning of the title? Was it too sensationalistic?

4. Was the film itself too sensationalistic? Why?

5. How was the family situation built up in small details eg meals? How was the interaction of the family shown so that we understood the tensions there?
* The father? pedantic, obsession for hand washing, sarcastic, unfeeling, cruel even whipping his own daughter?
* Jane as a daughter, extravagant, her preoccupation with money, her kissing the visitor, the bitterness in being whipped, her deceiving her father?
* Edith as a wife, as a women, neurotic, her tensions in the family, her painting, her hatred?
* Rupert as a son, as offensive, as unfeeling, a younger version of his father?

6. Horror at the plan to kill the father? Did it seem reasonable or unreasonable? Was it possible for these two women to plan such a killing? Why were they pressed to kill him?

7. The sequences of the murder, Were they suspensefully shown? Compassion for the father? Sympathy for the mother and daughter?

8. How ironic was the fear and tension in the mother and daughter as they waited? How did the film build up suspense? the use of the telephone, neighbours, the absence of the son?

9. The inclusion of the dream sequences, effective? What did they mean?

10. How ironic was the conclusion? what went on? What did happened? What future did the family have together? Who won?

11. Any lesson in this horror parable?