Crucible of Terror is a 1971 British horror film and directed by Ted Hooker and starring Mike Raven, Mary Maude and James Bolam.
They and their wives - respectively Millie and Jane - travel to Cornwall, where Victor's house and studio sit atop an abandoned tin mine.
When Millie and Jane arrive, they all meet Bill Cartwright, Victor's only friend for the past thirty years.
Then, as Jane dresses, someone stabs her to death, throws her body out a window, stuffs her remains into her car and drives off.
When John says that it is Sunday and the banks are closed - a dodge because he does not have £2000 - Victor gives him a deadline of that night to make good.
Someone knocks and when Marcia opens the door, the person throws acid in her face, disfiguring her and killing her.
In the mine, she finds Michael's body floating in water and Dorothy dead, her wrists slashed with the razor.
as the ghost of the woman Victor killed appears as a laughing face in the flames of his burning head.
The film was based on a script by writer Tom Parkinson and television editor Ted Hooker, who had worked together previously on a documentary.
Finance was obtained from the independent Glendale Film Productions, the company of Peter Newbrook, who had been assistant cameraman on Dr Zhivago.
[1] Filming started in July 1971 and took six weeks, four and a half of which took place at Shepperton Studios with the rest on location.
[1] Exteriors for Crucible of Terror were shot around St Agnes on the Cornish coast and Hammersmith in London.
[6][4] Denis Meikle, who visited the set during filming, later wrote "while allowing for its speed of execution and necessary economies of scale, it nevertheless seemed like an amateur affair.
"[4] The budget was 'allegedly £100,000'[7] part of which was put up by the film's star, Michael Raven, 'a British disc jockey turned actor'.
[9] Crucible of Terror played in theatres in the UK on a double-bill with Lady Frankenstein, both of which carried X-certificates.
The film was distributed theatrically in the UK in 1972 by Scotia-Barber and at unspecified dates in Australia by Filmways Australasian Distributors.
[5] The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote: "A modest but enjoyable variation on the old House of Wax theme, Ted Hooker's feature debut offers some pleasant location footage of Cornwall and good supporting performances from Ronald Lacey and Melissa Stribling to make up for a fairly negligible script and the awkwardness of the leads.
Mike Raven is obviously able to convey charm and intelligence, but he is embarrassingly miscast as a tempestuous artist, while for much of the time the plot consists of a predictable series of murders in which the protagonist is just out frame.
But the opening and closing sequences, in which Raven mixes numerous shining waxes and plasters in his glowing Cornish foundry before pouring molten bronze over his victim, are handled with a nice sense of atmosphere.
However, Newman goes on to write that 'these films, intentionally or not, manage to locate their horrors in a recognisable, seedy British setting, otherwise unexplored in the movies'.
[19] Smith calls Crucible of Terror 'unpleasant and unmemorable'[12] while film historian Phil Hardy takes the opposite position, writing that it is a 'pleasantly eccentric variation on the house-of-wax theme'.
Hardy goes on to say that 'For its climax, the picture shifts into a dreamlike atmosphere, with the mad artist mixing multicoloured concoctions in his cave studio suffused with the glow of the menacing furnace'.
[9] Hamilton says that the film's narrative is 'hopelessly muddled' and that 'the script requires the victims to die in isolation, usually after declaring a desire to leave, which allows the survivors to carry on as if nothing was wrong'.
On the other hand, Hamilton notes that the 'camerawork makes the barren Cornish landscape look suitably chilly and menacing'.