Joan Fontaine is purportedly the star of this picture, but it is English actress Kay Walsh in the second female lead who really monopolizes the picture and brings it to its crazy end.
Walsh was a preeminent English actress, married to David Lean at one time, and starring with Sir Alec Guinness in five films, including Oliver Twist, Last Holiday and Scrooge. She first made an impression in In Which We Serve and she won a BAFTA nomination for Best Actress in The Horse's Mouth. She even collaborated with Lean, helping to write and edit his movies, and acting in several.
I'm not sure how she ended up as the kinky head of a devil worshipping cult, wearing a buck's horn headdress, chanting some foreign language and preparing to sacrifice the town's teenage virgin, so that she (Walsh) could extend her life as a young and beautiful girl again.
The choreography, if you can call it that, was incredible: Walsh in her crazy robes and horns shouted commands to the hypnotized townspeople who responded by writhing on the floor, lifting first one arm then another, lifting right leg then left; eating sacred slithery mud that Walsh has blessed and thrown to them; then simulating **** on the floor with the nearest member of the opposite sex.
This movie has to be seen to be believed. It has just enough fanatical elements to move it along: Fontaine suffers a nervous breakdown in Africa due to voodoo, then moves to England and finds a local cult in the tiny country town she has come to recover in. Walsh and her cracked brother take her in and there she learns about the local cult. There's a crazy grandma who works her own kind of magic with potions; a sadistic butcher who skins and guts rabbits at the counter of his shop; someone putting voodoo dolls in the trees; and somehow it all comes together and works with the final scene worth the price of admission.
Walsh was a preeminent English actress, married to David Lean at one time, and starring with Sir Alec Guinness in five films, including Oliver Twist, Last Holiday and Scrooge. She first made an impression in In Which We Serve and she won a BAFTA nomination for Best Actress in The Horse's Mouth. She even collaborated with Lean, helping to write and edit his movies, and acting in several.
I'm not sure how she ended up as the kinky head of a devil worshipping cult, wearing a buck's horn headdress, chanting some foreign language and preparing to sacrifice the town's teenage virgin, so that she (Walsh) could extend her life as a young and beautiful girl again.
The choreography, if you can call it that, was incredible: Walsh in her crazy robes and horns shouted commands to the hypnotized townspeople who responded by writhing on the floor, lifting first one arm then another, lifting right leg then left; eating sacred slithery mud that Walsh has blessed and thrown to them; then simulating **** on the floor with the nearest member of the opposite sex.
This movie has to be seen to be believed. It has just enough fanatical elements to move it along: Fontaine suffers a nervous breakdown in Africa due to voodoo, then moves to England and finds a local cult in the tiny country town she has come to recover in. Walsh and her cracked brother take her in and there she learns about the local cult. There's a crazy grandma who works her own kind of magic with potions; a sadistic butcher who skins and guts rabbits at the counter of his shop; someone putting voodoo dolls in the trees; and somehow it all comes together and works with the final scene worth the price of admission.