It suffers from a few pacing issues and the script owes more than a little debt to Hitchcock's Psycho, but despite the odd lull in action and lack of originality, I can't help but like The Ghoul, an atmospheric chiller set in the Roaring Twenties that stars Hammer/Amicus stalwart Peter Cushing, and Ian McCulloch, hero of Italian horror classics Zombie Flesh Eaters and Zombie Holocaust.
The film kicks off in fine style with beautiful blonde Daphne (Veronica Carlson) being lured to a gloomy attic by eerie voices where she is confronted by a corpse with a meat hook through the neck hanging from the rafters; this turns out to be a macabre jape perpetrated by the woman's playful socialite friends, who proceed to party like its 1929, downing copious glasses of champers and kicking up their heels to the Charleston. With the alcohol rapidly running dry, Daphne and Billy (Stewart Bevan) challenge Angela (Alexandra Bastedo) and Geoffrey (Ian McCulloch) to a race to Land's End in their newfangled motorised carriages. But none of them make it to their intended destination, instead winding up at the fog-bound marshland estate of Doctor Lawrence (Cushing) who keeps his son, a crazed flesh-eating ghoul, locked in the attic.
Daphne is the first to arrive at the doctor's creepy house, Billy having vanished into the fog only to be dispatched by wicked gardener Tom Rawlings (a pre-fame John Hurt). Dr Lawrence makes her welcome, but his housekeeper Ayah ensures she gets a nasty surprise while asleep: the ghoul (Don Henderson in a bed-sheet and bad make-up) pays her a visit with his dagger in hand. Like Marion Crane's death scene in Psycho, only executed with slightly less finesse, Daphne's demise is something of a shocker that pulls the rug from under the viewer (note that much is made of the mosquito net around Daphne's bed—it's this movie's 'shower curtain'!).
Another scene heavily influenced by Hitchcock is the death of supposed hero Geoffrey, which mirrors that of Milton Arbogast in Psycho: Geoffrey storms up to the attic only to be attacked by the ghoul, falling to the bottom of the stairs with the monster's dagger embedded in his skull (a nice touch of splatter for the gore-hounds). It's another genuine surprise, expertly handled by director Freddie Francis, who wraps up his film with a suitably nihilistic finalé: a distraught Lawrence shoots his son as he advances towards a petrified Angela, before turning the gun on himself, leaving the young woman to flee the house screaming, presumably in desperate need of some psychiatric treatment.
The film kicks off in fine style with beautiful blonde Daphne (Veronica Carlson) being lured to a gloomy attic by eerie voices where she is confronted by a corpse with a meat hook through the neck hanging from the rafters; this turns out to be a macabre jape perpetrated by the woman's playful socialite friends, who proceed to party like its 1929, downing copious glasses of champers and kicking up their heels to the Charleston. With the alcohol rapidly running dry, Daphne and Billy (Stewart Bevan) challenge Angela (Alexandra Bastedo) and Geoffrey (Ian McCulloch) to a race to Land's End in their newfangled motorised carriages. But none of them make it to their intended destination, instead winding up at the fog-bound marshland estate of Doctor Lawrence (Cushing) who keeps his son, a crazed flesh-eating ghoul, locked in the attic.
Daphne is the first to arrive at the doctor's creepy house, Billy having vanished into the fog only to be dispatched by wicked gardener Tom Rawlings (a pre-fame John Hurt). Dr Lawrence makes her welcome, but his housekeeper Ayah ensures she gets a nasty surprise while asleep: the ghoul (Don Henderson in a bed-sheet and bad make-up) pays her a visit with his dagger in hand. Like Marion Crane's death scene in Psycho, only executed with slightly less finesse, Daphne's demise is something of a shocker that pulls the rug from under the viewer (note that much is made of the mosquito net around Daphne's bed—it's this movie's 'shower curtain'!).
Another scene heavily influenced by Hitchcock is the death of supposed hero Geoffrey, which mirrors that of Milton Arbogast in Psycho: Geoffrey storms up to the attic only to be attacked by the ghoul, falling to the bottom of the stairs with the monster's dagger embedded in his skull (a nice touch of splatter for the gore-hounds). It's another genuine surprise, expertly handled by director Freddie Francis, who wraps up his film with a suitably nihilistic finalé: a distraught Lawrence shoots his son as he advances towards a petrified Angela, before turning the gun on himself, leaving the young woman to flee the house screaming, presumably in desperate need of some psychiatric treatment.