Review of Curse of the Crimson Altar (1968) by Kevin R — 27 Dec 2010

Boasting an all star cast (if an underused Barbara Steele), superb sets, marvelous, psychedelic cinematography and a director with a deft hand who could actually bring all of these elements to bear, you would think that Crimson Altar would be a classic talked about in genre circles for decades. Unfortunately though it falls a bit short in the bargain.

It manages to blend together the disparate ingredients of late 60's psychedelia, gothic romanticism and dark ages Satanism really rather well but it suffers from having a bit of a standardy supernatural whodunit premise and an anticlimactic finale.