Black Torment (1964)

Review by Josh Felty



Ah, Europe during the Baroque period. Horse-drawn carriages, Gothic architecture, full bosoms pouring out of bodices. Such a palatial, romantic sort of time, one would assume. That underlying feeling of dread beneath it all is brought to the surface in Black Torment, a 1964 period piece of that bygone era, day-for-night shots and all.

Black Torment tells the story of Sir Richard Fordyce and begins with the brutal rape and murder of a bodice-hitched young woman. Richard, a hundred miles away with his new wife Elizabeth on hand, has been instigated in the incident as the murdered lass muttered his name before she expired. The lavish English estate Lord Richard and his new bride return to is anything but completely welcoming--everybody from his right hand man to the lowest servant are very standoffish, almost green in the gills upon his return. The jealousy is nearly palpable when Lord Richard introduces Elizabeth to the blonde-haired maiden to his father, an ailing vegetable in a wheelchair who speaks through the maid via sign language.

What follows is a Gothic spook story/who-dunnit that finds Lord Richard seeing apparitions of his previous wife, who jumped to her death from a window of their manor bedroom. Lord Richard orders the pesky window to be barred shut the next morning, while that night a stable hand and flowering milk-maid roll in the hay and meet their demise at the hands of a mouthbreathing shadow. There's much that happens to Lord Richard; the question 'Is it paranormal or corporeal?' comes up a lot, albeit not very well. Must be something in the wig powder. The actor portraying Richard (a poor man's Sean Connery if there ever was one) bursts out in mad tirades of barony frustration, a performance that is laughable at best. You can't help but feel sorry for Elizabeth throughout all this; but in all honesty, you're left questioning Richard's past, which seems to be regurgitated with glowering exposition in almost every scene.

I have to commend the filmmakers, however, especially given the time this work was produced. Period pieces of such sweeping detail are not an easy feat to accomplish. Sure, it's rough in parts (mostly on the parts of some of the actors) but its British charm definitely reminds one of some of the Hammer films. There's something magnetic about the Gothic mystery, no matter the setting or look. Something ethereal that lurks in the shadows of a long lost age. One would do better by watching something (hell, anything) else of the genre though, unless you're like me and love to throw something obscure and jarring into the DVD player every now and then, thanks in part to Dirty Dave.