Skip to main content

Crucible of Horror (The Corpse) 1970

If you've been thinking to yourself, "I wish Diabolique had more incest, more dream-like acid montages, and more campiness" then I've found the movie your'e looking for: Crucible of Horror. NOT to be confused with Crucible of Terror - of course.

The short version

A terrible man (played by Michael Gough) does terrible things to his wife and daughter. They reach their breaking point and conspire to murder him. Turns out, he's not so easy to murder.

On the surface - this movie seems like a cheap rip-off of better movies; a simple, throw away flick that is rightfully forgotten. But then again, it may be dismissive to simply call this movie a piece of poorly made crap.

One could read this movie as a shitty version of Diabolique: a conspiratory mind-fuck in which an enemy appears to become a friend but is really setting you up to be killed yourself. When Gough appears at the end of the movie, alive and well, his son seemingly unaware of all the previous dealings, you're left to wonder if perhaps his son was in on the whole damn thing from the beginning. The message here? Trust no one.

Perhaps it's really a Tales From the Crypt type story: they really did kill him but, he's such an angry, horrible man that he comes back from the dead to continue tormenting his wife and daughter. The message here? The evil men do lives after them - or some version of that.

Or maybe the entire movie has been a fantasy: a desperate shared dream of getting revenge on your tormentor. Perhaps it's even the inspiration for American Psycho. The message here? Patrick Bateman was right;
"There are no more barriers to cross. All I have in common with the uncontrollable and the insane, the vicious and the evil, all the mayhem I have caused and my utter indifference toward it I have now surpassed. My pain is constant and sharp, and I do not hope for a better world for anyone. In fact, I want my pain to be inflicted on others. I want no one to escape. But even after admitting this, there is no catharsis; my punishment continues to elude me, and I gain no deeper knowledge of myself. No new knowledge can be extracted from my telling. This confession has meant nothing."
Maybe it's more like Lost: these folks are all dead and they're in some sort of purgatory - or even just Hell - where anything can appear to happen but nothing actually changes. The message here? The afterlife ain't much better than this life.

The message here? Anyone can read anything into any movie, given the opportunity.

No trailer for this gem but, you can watch the entire movie right here.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Rebuttal: 17 Disturbing Horror Movies You Will Never Watch Again

When I'm not watching movies, I'm reading about movies. I stumble across all kinds of articles, blog posts, book excerpts, etc. in my quest to absorb as much movie knowledge as possible. Now, I'm snotty and loud-mouthed and opinionated but I'd never begrudge another human their opinion. Seriously. You're absolutely welcome to have any opinion about any thing you want. However, I must warn you, if I think your opinion is stupid, I'm absolutely going to say so. I've recently stumbled on an article completely  brimming with so many idiotic opinions that I'm actually compelled to craft a response. Here's the gist of the original article: there are some horror movies out there that are so disturbing , you'll only ever want to watch them once. I've have taken her original list and refuted her claims without pulling her entire article over. You can read the original article here . Let's start at the beginning, with her opening statement

What Is Genre And Why Should I Care?

There are terms that always seem to come up when talking about films: director, actor, plot, theme, score, etc. These terms are all self-explanatory; no one ever asks, ‘what’s a director?’ However, there are other terms that are equally common but less clear: genre, sub-genre, auteur, oeuvre, etc. These terms are more abstract then ‘director’ or ‘actor.’ It is entirely likely that someone will ask, ‘what is genre, anyway?’ This question specifically is what I will be answering with this paper. The answer to the question ‘what is genre,’ is multi-layered: genre is a means of classification. Genre is a means of communication. Genre is a means of understanding films. Genre is a means of relating to films. To one person all movies rated “PG” are a genre – possibly one also known as “children’s movies” – while to another all movies with similar topics treated in similar ways are a genre: i.e. movies dealing with frontier life depicted in a nostalgic manner are a genre often kn

Contracted Or I Just Watched A Zombie Movie

Seems like horror fans fall into two buckets these days: zombie lovers and zombie haters. That dividing line just keeps getting deeper and darker the more zombies gain "mainstream popularity". I currently fall into the "I am so tired of zombies I could puke" bucket. I haven't stopped  watching zombie movies so much as I've started avoiding them at all costs, literally watching every other subgenre offering I stumble onto, regardless of how terrible it is. I seriously re-watched Wishmaster  this past week. That's how far out of my way I've been going to avoid the significant number of zombie movies flooding Netflix. Then I accidentally watched one. Contracted - 2013 I'm sure it was partially due to the really terrible movie synopsis that Netflix provided, which I'm prepared to admit that they may have nothing to do with and  that I likely didn't read it very well. In a strange twist of events, the movie cover actually helped