Curse of the Crimson Altar

Robert Manning travels to a remote country house in search of his missing brother, who was last heard from there. The owner, J.D. Morley, receives him politely, and Morley's niece Eve is friendlier still, yet Manning senses something threatening beneath the hospitality. Hanging over the household and the surrounding district is the legend of Lavinia Morley, remembered as the Black Witch of Greymarsh. A professor named John Marsh, versed in the occult, becomes involved as Manning's inquiries deepen.

Vernon Sewell directed the film, from a screenplay by Mervyn Haisman and Henry Lincoln, produced by Louis M. Heyward for the British company Tigon together with American International Pictures. It runs eighty-seven minutes and belongs to the cycle of late-1960s British horror productions that paired veteran genre performers. Christopher Lee plays J.D. Morley, Boris Karloff appears as Professor Marsh, Mark Eden is Manning, Virginia Wetherell is Eve, Barbara Steele plays Lavinia and Michael Gough takes the part of Elder, among twenty-five credited cast members. Sewell's earlier work as a director reaches back through the 1950s and 1960s.

The film has drawn modest audience scores: on IMDb it holds 5.5 out of 10 from around 3,500 votes, while on TMDB it stands at 5.2 out of 10 from about 85 votes. The larger body of viewers on IMDb and the much smaller group on TMDB arrive at broadly similar assessments of the finished picture.