Dark Places (1973) – Don Sharp.

Edward (Robert Hardy) inherits Marrs Grove, a once grand, now dilapidated manor house, the forbiddingly doom-laden domicile of the ill-fated Marr family, stricken by terrible tragedy, the cobwebbed walls are reluctant to give up their haunting secrets, much less the hidden bounty of £200.000!!! Don Sharp's gripping, supernaturally unhinged psychodrama Dark Places is brought to vivid, elemental life by an especially starry cast of British and international film & TV icons. Credible performances from Robert Hardy, Herbert Lom, and Christopher Lee, with a devastatingly sultry Joan Collins being on deliciously vulpine form! With lesser actors, and a director lacking the genre clout of the estimable Don Sharp, Dark Places may have been lacklustre fare, but the absolutely welcome, handsomely restored Blu-ray highlights the myriad diabolical delights of this eerily slow-burning 70s chill-fest! Exquisitely British, the compellingly spooky admixture of E.C comics, Edgar Allan Poe, and M.R James remains a vintage terror treat, the brooding Dark Places will draw you deeply into its strange, unhallowed mysteries. As a final thought, it is interesting to note that Hardy's increasingly unstable character appears not hugely dissimilar to the deranged patriarch he portrayed so persuasively in 'Demons of The Mind'.