The two latest victims were students of the renowned entomology professor Dr Carl Mallinger, who lives nearby with his beautiful daughter Clare and their scar-faced butler, Granger.

Britewell becomes her latest victim after watching her in an amateur horror play performed by some of her father's students (which seems to be a spoof of the Hammer Frankenstein genre[citation needed]) but lives long enough to exclaim 'deaths head' to Quennell before he dies.

Quennell informs his superior he will be taking leave after all: he and Meg go to Upper Higham incognito as a vacationing banker named Thompson and his daughter.

There they meet a young insect collector who shows him the proudest exhibit in his collection, a Deathshead moth and Quennell discovers that Mallinger is also incognito as a Dr Miles staying at a nearby estate.

[5] The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote: "Further adventures in the monsters of 19th century rural England cycle, lamely directed and sloppily scripted.

The screenplay is in fact a permutation of a dozen similar efforts (country house laboratory, sinister butler, innocent girl lured into the mad professor's den), padded out with irrelevant interludes and notable only for some startling anachronisms.

The monster moth itself might have succumbed to mothballs in the studio props department for all we see of it; and when it does finally make an appearance, it turns out to be a very flimsy creation of sackcloth and coloured stones.

Peter Cushing, Robert Flemyng and Wanda Ventham turn in reliable performances, but Vanessa Howard is embarrassingly wooden as the unfortunate Meg.

Peter Cushing gives one of his well-known, stealing performances as Inspector Quennel, and Robert Flemyng, as the Professor, and Wanda Ventham, as Clare, lay on the horror faithfully.