DVD Region 2: Optimum Releasing B001NDT9XW. 92 minute film DVD. Price: £15.99 (UK). stars: Vincent Price, Christopher Lee and Rupert Davies.

Made 40 years ago, 'The Oblong Box' certainly isn't a classic horror even with the addition of Christopher Lee and Vincent Price to the cast. Today it appears rather stereotyped and dated, full of cinematic clichés, doomed from the start. However, in saying that it is an entertaining enough film especially for people coming back on a Friday night with a takeaway pizza, having consuming half a dozen points of lager earlier in the evening.



It's rather a dark film full of remorseless murder, devoid of compassion and it ends up rather predictably by being cyclical in nature when the curse is passed on to a new host. We've seen this so many times before in horror films of that era.

'The Oblong Box' takes its name from an Edgar Allan Poe story but there is very little similarity between the two except for the premature burial, which was a particular phobia of the American author who lived in the first half of the 19th century.

The film commences in darkest Africa with natives performing a voodoo ceremony in which a man is grotesquely tortured. Vincent Price, playing Sir Julian Markham, arrives at the scene and is suitably horrified by the event. We then switch to a large house in the English countryside. Sir Julian's brother, Edward, played by Alistair Williamson, is locked away in the attic, chained up no less, because he is a raving madman. We don't see Edward's face, leaving us to assume that he is indeed the voodoo victim.

While Julian is going about in lovestruck ecstasy with his young fiancée, played by Sally Geeson, Edward is trying his damnedest to get out. This involves a protracted plot of a fake burial, murder and an encounter with a witch doctor. Eventually, Edward hides out with an unscrupulous doctor, Christopher Lee, but he can't stop himself from going out on the town to associate with prostitutes and murder a few people.

After a series of pointless events, involving more brutal murders, we get the final showdown between the two brothers. Julian kills Edward with a shotgun but having been bitten during the struggle, he takes on the curse. Fortunately, a sequel wasn't contemplated.

This isn't the worst horror movie ever made but it is way down there with the mediocre, maybe making 3/10. It really hasn't stood up to the test of time and even when it was made, it was pretty dire just the same. However, it has been re-released on DVD so there must be a market for it somewhere. Hopefully in 40 years time this will be completely dead and buried in an oblong box.

Rod MacDonald