The Gorgon

In a small European village in the early twentieth century, a series of deaths leaves the victims turned to stone. A young woman is found petrified and her lover is discovered hanged, and the locals are quick to blame him for the killings, though his father, a respected scholar of myth, suspects an older and stranger cause. When the professor himself falls victim, his second son, Paul Heitz, arrives to learn what happened to his brother and father.

The trail points toward a creature from Greek legend, a Gorgon whose gaze turns anyone who meets it to stone and who appears as a beautiful woman except during the full moon. Professor Karl Meister and his assistant come to the village to investigate, while Dr. Namaroff, who runs the local asylum, and Inspector Kanof each have their own reasons for controlling what is known.

Terence Fisher directed the film for Hammer Film Productions, with a screenplay by John Gilling and Anthony Nelson Keys producing. It was the tenth of the sixteen features Fisher directed in chronological order, following The Phantom of the Opera and preceding Dracula: Prince of Darkness. Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, Richard Pasco, Barbara Shelley, Michael Goodliffe and Patrick Troughton lead the cast. On IMDb the film holds a rating of 6.4 from around 8,000 votes, matching its TMDB score of 6.4 from 177 votes, while a critics' rating stands at 5.6 from 12 reviews.