Ghost Story (1974 film)

Ghost Story (also known as Madhouse Mansion and Asylum of Blood) is a 1974 British mystery film directed by Stephen Weeks and starring Marianne Faithfull, Leigh Lawson, Larry Dann and Anthony Bate.

The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote: "Ultimately adding up to a rather neat and engaging horror tale, Ghost Story begins somewhat less auspiciously as a slightly strained genteel comedy of manners.

The bumbling good humour of Talbot colliding with the more snobbish university sensibilities of Duller and McFayden over such matters as the preparation of jam sandwiches is groaningly familiar and overextended drawing-room stuff, made less palatable by the overplaying of Larry Dann (who gets much better as the film progresses) and the oily Dracula-like affectations of Murray Melvin, which comprise an equally illusory red herring about where the movie seems to be headed.

But once the lengthy "ghost" flashbacks get under way and the intrigue divides into a double-plot – a sort of poor man's Céline et Julie vont en bateau without the formal doubling, with Talbot figuring strangely and effectively as an unseen witness of the various events – the film gradually arrives at a style and direction of its own. ...

...Otherwise, a graceful use of period detail and odd locations  ... help to make Ghost Story a competent foray into supernatural territory, with lyrical intimations of an irredeemable past of incest and madness.