The Shuttered Room – 1967 | 90 mins | Horror | Colour

Plot Synopsis

Eerie suspense thriller about a young woman whodiscovers a terrifying secret in a locked room after returning to her childhoodhome. The screenplay is loosely-based on a supernatural short story by masterof the macabre H P Lovecraft that is alleged to be more the work of"posthumous collaborator" August Derleth. Directing his first featurefilm, David Greene had become a prolific television director since crossing theAtlantic and frequently turned his nose up at film scripts, but at his wife’sinsistence accepted Seven Arts’ offer of The Shuttered Room. The film had been alreadybeen deserted by Ken Russell, so Greene did all he could to salvage a projectby rewriting the screenplay and stylistically managing to convey a genuinesense of evil into a sound horror formula. Oliver Reed is splendidly menacingin a glowering key role, remarkably similar to the one he played in The Damned.Set in New England, the film was actually shot in Norfolk and completed atTwickenham.

Twenty years after she was driven away from her bleak ancestralisland home, Susannah Kelton (Carol Lynley) anxiously returns with her new husband,Mike (Gig Young), to the village of the unhappy childhood and the old mill sheremembers. However, the locals are far from welcoming and respond with words ofwarning when she talks of returning to the old mill and making it a vacationretreat. Susannah also meets her deliriously malevolent cousin Ethan (OliverReed) and his gang of New England delinquents who resent the well-heeled NewYork couple.

Susannah also encounters hereccentric Aunt Agatha (Flora Robson) who also learns warns of the ‘Whateleycurse’ and how evil dwells in the old mill. They disregard all words of cautionand make plans to spend their first night in Susannah’s former home. The eveningpasses relatively quietly, but the following day Mike is beaten up by the fengang whilst Ethan is back at the mill and considering forcing himself on his niece.