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Young Luc complains to his sister in law Elsa about a recurring nightmare, of
an old hag boiling his head in a cauldron in a spooky kitchen. He claims his
wife Martha & her almost unhealthy interest in witchcraft might be the
reason - that & their marriage being in shambles anyway.
To give him a rest & to save their marriage, Martha suggests a holiday
in the country, but the house where they are staying - the mansion of blind
pianist Mason (Paul Muller) - & especially the kitchen immediately remind
Luc of his nightmares. ... & then the first killing occurs, the old hag of
Luc's dream killing a priest. Luc sees this from his bedroom window, but when
he arrives at the scene of the crime, he only finds his wife, as if in a
trance, & Mason's lovely niece Sharon ...
Soon the situation becomes unbearable for Luc, especially since the
situation between him & Martha doesn't improve at all, & he calls Elsa
for help, who comes to stay over the weekend with her daughter Brenda.
Soon though, young Brenda's boyfriend goes missing - killed by the witch of
course - & when Brenda goes looking for him, she also meets a violent end
...
& while Martha again seems to be totally in trance & Luc locks her
away, believing her to have to do something with the killings, he, Sharon &
Elsa, worried about Brenda's whereabouts, go look for her.
Elsa is soon killed by the witch too, though, & Luc & Sharon find
footprints of a cat besides her corpse. Thus Luc deducts that his wife must
have the ability to turn into a cat, which was also the only way she could have
escaped the room he locked her into, & really when they enter that room,
Luc & Sharon don't find Martha but a black cat.
That does it for Luc, & he borrows Mason's seeing-eye dog & lets him
kill the cat, who, once dead, really turns out to be his wife.
The horror is over it seems, until Mason shoots himself, & a letter he
leaves behind claims that he was the actual killer ... neither Luc nor Sharon
believe it, but they head off to the next hotel anyways & have passionate
sex. The next day, Sharon is gone, & when Luc goes looking for her, he soon
finds his path is leading back to Mason's mansion, to the kitchen, where he
finds the old hag of his nightmare ... who turns out to be Sharon, who was the
witch all along, & only used Martha's sleepwalking & her interest in
the occult to shed suspicion onto her. Having confessed that much to Luc, she
decapitates him & boils his head in her cauldron ...
Director Umberto Lenzi was never a man for subtleties, & this
made-for-tv-spooker further proves it, as he doesn't shy away from using every
tried-&-true shock-effect in the book, from knifewielding warty old witches
& mutilated murdervictims to swinging skulls & a Grim reaper walking
around drenched in maggots, never minding if it goes along with the story or
not or if it would destroy the built-up atmosphere or suspense.To add to that
feeling of inadequacy, most of the actors are genuinely substandard &
invariably lack charisma - even genre-fave Paul Muller seems pale here.
... & for some reason this still is an enjoyable little trash movie ...
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