cult film freak: CLOCKWORK BEAUTY VIRGINIA WETHERELL IN 'THE CRIMSON CULT'

Smoking hot Virginia Wetherell in The Crimson Cult YEAR: 1968

Only wish this review could be more than a celebration of a beautiful blonde Brit who played the ultimate temptation in Stanley Kubrick's A CLOCKWORK ORANGE... Virginia Wetherell as the naked "Actress" who enters a well-lit stage and eventually just stands there, robotic and sublime, while Malcolm McDowell's "cured" Alex can't lay his hands on her dynamic breasts before retching at the mere site and thought of it...

from Clockwork Orange

For a more human side to Virginia there's THE CRIMSON CULT, a haunted house/manor b-movie starring Christopher Lee as basically the same character he was in THE WICKER MAN, only far less interesting while his secret dominion partakes in a midnight celebration of killing the representation of a witch.

Virginia Wetherell as Eve

Buried lead and the film's pre-possessed Renfield is Mark Eden, whose line, "Of course she does... She's an artist" finishes David Lean's DOCTOR ZHIVAGO, and here he's the pawn in a twist that's not worth spoiling or, for that matter, even mentioning...

It does have to do with a coven of witches once led by horror fixture Barbara Steele in green makeup and a strange headdress, only she's merely seen in hallucinatory dreamlike flashbacks, and her BLACK SABBATH co-star and overall legendary veteran actor is Boris Karloff, a professor who's nicer than he seems... or is he?

As "Actress" In Clockwork Orange

At one point, in the beginning, as Eden's Robert... in search of his brother who had vanished in that vicinity... is being led by our central CLOCKWORK ORANGE ingenue Virginia Wetherell... the future epic epitome of wanton, hypnotic, heavenly and devilish yet futile desire... through the spooky manor...

Before the professor shows his wheelchair ridden self, Eden quips about the dark surroundings, breaking a verbal fourth wall: "It seems like Boris Karloff will show up at any minute."

Virginia's Eve character is not only the ingenue but carries most of the plot through overall vulnerability, winding up in predictable peril as only the hero, a good actor who's rather sluggish and would be far better fit as a second or third banana, can save her... And their budding romance is more interesting early on as she'll deliberately, perhaps even strategically, shy away from his rather clumsy if cliché advances...

CrimsonCultScore: **

Her trepidation of what's around each corner of the mansion, despite being raised there, embodies the film's genre and makes up for the standard cog to the wheel of British horror flicks (this one not produced by Hammer). As for the anticipated collective of Lee, Karloff and Steele, well...

They are (including Hammer regular and future BATMAN butler Michael Gough as a mute Igor type) hardly even shown together at all. Like our young hero and his beautiful damsel in inevitable distress, when the characters, and the movie itself, loses its initial mystique, suspense and mystery, what's left is a very pretty face to look at, who herself is surrounded by a cool gothic setting that should've held within its ominous grounds more of a complete three act story. This CULT seems like a short story adaptation stretched to 90-minutes, and a long one at that.