Airy mid-sixties horror flick that I get the feeling I woulda just loved the dickens outta had I saw it back when I was a hefty ten of age, along with a hefty ten years of body for that matter. Nowadays an even heftier me thinks it woulda been better had I saw it back when I was ten because hey, it would've made a greater impact on my ever-budding psyche that it does here at the Halloween of my life when frankly, it all comes off so grand yet I feel like I should be attending an AARP meeting or somethin' instead.
Typical formulaic horror flick here---nothing wrong with that a-tall esp. when you have some pretty good formula being cooked up. Mad scientist catches wife and handyman playin' hide-the-sticky wicket in overtime and does the most logical thing by killing 'em slowly. Then he gets their hearts and uses 'em to make his now aged housekeeper young and bee-youtifal. However there is a catch...y'see wife Muriel happens to blab to hubby right before getting the ax that she had left the entire estate (mad scientist merely living off wife's megabucks) to her on-the-brink-of-madness sister, which certainly does throw a wrench into things.
Later on M.S. shows up at the estate with his new bride who looks remarkably like the old one. Is this the long-lost sister who's about to go nutzo??? (Of course.) Anyway, new bride's starting to have various weird dreams where some guy with a head taped up like the Invisible Man catches her and the old handyman in the greenhouse. Soon a psychiatrist comes to visit and things become even weirder with M.S., the new bride and the psychiatrist playing these weird little cat 'n mouse games that wouldn't be seen for at least a year or so before DARK SHADOWS made it to air.
If you like the gothic horror look that used to get all the gals' hearts a' flutter this one's for you. Nice dreamy mid-sixties ambiance, great musical score (even's got that recurring simple piano theme to telegraph that weirdo feeling) and its got this subdued rumble to it that continues throughout giving you the kinda creeps that you used to get watching this stuff on Saturday afternoon tee-vee. Really worth the effort to find and download, and you don't have to be a fan of Barbara Steele or Eyetalian moom pitchers with dago actors using Anglo names to appreciate it either!
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