Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee star in a non-Hammer horror film about a huge monster that is the source of primal evil. Columbia pictures produced this mini-classic, which was directed by veteran British actor Freddie Francis. It's a bonkers story by any standard, with Cushing as the idealistic but careless boffin who unearths a giant skeleton in the East Indies. This being, the natives say, should not have been unearthed because it is very, very evil indeed... So of course he brings it back to his English country home for further analysis. It turns out that the creature can be restored to full fleshy awfulness by simply adding water - it's dehydrated evil! Cushing discovers this by starting to clean a finger then lopping it off - a move that has unfortunately consequences later.
Meanwhile Lee, as Cushing's nasty brother, is keen to get the credit for the discovery himself and finds this easier to achieve as things get rather weird. Lorna Heilbron co-stars as Cushing's daughter, who is saved from one of those Victorian diseases by an injection of evil juice. Having recovered her physical health she flees to London and turns into a sex-crazed murderer.
I could go on, but it's just mad stuff and played looks very like a decent (if not first rate) Hammer effort. Worth seeking out for the performances by old pals Cushing and Lee, plus some of the ideas - implicit or otherwise - lurking in a lurid Gothic plot.
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