A young psychiatrist and a tabloid journalist interview the girl's mother, hoping to enlist the aid of the hospital's senior member, Sir Mark Ashley.

And one has to wait a very long time indeed – until the revelatory but over-crowded climax – before catching here a glimpse of the originality of style, inventiveness and visual flair which enriched his Countess Dracula and Hands of the Ripper.

As in the disappointing Doomwatch, he seems to have abandoned the Gothic terrors he can handle so well in favour of the trickier grotesqueries of fringe science-fiction; and (even more so than in his previous film) he is saddled with a flabby, laborious, top-heavy, at times impenetrable script.

Indeed, there is so much irritating build-up, so much concentration on the endless red herrings perpetuated by the tireless exertions of Diana Dors' rampaging Anna Harb, that the swift and complicated dénouement, when it comes, manages only to add confusion to the mystery and mayhem that have gone before... Cushing, in fact, is virtually the sole member of the cast to bring any sense of conviction to his part, and he does so by maintaining a deadpan remoteness.

"[4] In Fantastic Cinema: an illustrated survey, Peter Nicholls wrote: "Lacklustre performances all around in this confused, badly developed, laborious movie, especially from the children who are so important to the plot.