I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

Fresh and Exciting

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Horrors of the Black Museum is directed by Arthur Crabtree and written by Herman Cohen and Aben Kandel. It stars Michael Gough, June Cunningham, Graham Curnow, Shirley Anne Field, Geoffrey Keen and Gerald Anderson. A CinemaScope/Eastman Color production, with music by Gerald Schurmann and cinematography by Desmond Dickinson. Thriller writer Edmond Bancroft (Gough) has his own private black museum modelled on the one at Scotland Yard. Needing ideas to spur on his muse, Bancroft hypnotises his assistant Rick (Curnow) to commit increasingly horrific crimes that he can then write about.You can understand why it has become a cult favourite in horror circles, it's so cheese laden and ridiculously lurid it's almost impossible to not have fun with it. Though the much celebrated novelty murder sequences do tend to detract from the many passages of dullness and bad acting on show. The blood beams bright, the girls flash their undies and Michael Gough is a wonderfully demented villain. We are of course asked to buy into the fact that the coppers must be dense to not know who is behind the killings, whilst you would think that anyone would notice that someone has built a guillotine over their bed and that there is a man perched above that as well! But hey, that's just being picky; right?Bonkers, Boring, Brutal, Bloody, all things that make it unforgettable... 5/10

Bitter, haughty, and cynical crippled crime journalist Edmond Bancroft (essayed with tremendous lip-smacking fiendish gusto by Michael Gough) commits a series of gruesome murders in order to create material for his writing and runs a museum showcasing the devices he uses for his heinous misdeeds. Director Arthur Crabtree, working from a tight, but overly talky script by Herman Cohen and Aben Kandel, stages the cheerfully nasty and gruesome murder set pieces with ghoulishly inventive glee (the infamous needles-in-the-binoculars scene rates as the definite grisly highlight), but alas allows the pace to drag and the story to meander in between said murder set pieces. The net result is a picture that fails to gain much momentum and hence only works in fits and starts. Luckily, things really perk up for the lively and exciting, but overly rushed and sloppy climax set at fair ground. Moreover, Gough's gloriously hammy eye-rolling histrionics are an absolute ball to watch; he receives sturdy support Graham Curnow as Bancroft's loyal brainwashed assistant Rick, ravishing redhead Sally Ann Field as Rick's sweet and charming girlfriend Angela Banks, June Cunningham as brash tart Joan Berkley, Geoffrey Keen as the no-nonsense Supt. Graham, Gerald Anderson as concerned psychiatrist Dr. Ballan, and Beatrice Varley as shrewd junk shop owner Aggie. Desmond Dickinson's vibrant color cinematography makes exquisite use of the sumptuous widescreen format. Gerard Schurmann's robust full-bore orchestral score does the rousing trick. A pretty fun, but flawed flick.

As another reviewer mentioned, this film was horrifying to those of us who saw it as kids when it first came out. Horrors of the Black Museum was produced before technical effects became morph-driven and so fake they're not believable (even though they might be scary). Unlike Fiend Without a Face (also mentioned in these reviews) or The Blob, this movie doesn't rely on mechanically produced monsters. which means an imaginative child or paranoid adult could perhaps picture its horrors actually happening. A stretch, surely, but still . . .Pre-movie sequence demonstrating colors and hypnosis was funny and hokey even when the film was first released. The horrors, however, had many children (me included) suffering from nightmares for years. The binocular scene was particularly frightening, but not as frightening as the beheading scene. I cautiously checked the tall bedroom ceiling in the old farmhouse where I grew up for a long while after seeing this flick.Overall, after getting over the heebie-jeebies that lingered for years afterward, I have fond memories of this film. Anyone who is a fan of the 1950s chiller genre might enjoy the dated look and feel of it as well as the scare-factor it can generate in a viewer.

You can only visit the real 'Black Museum' (now based at New Scotland Yard) by invitation so you may have to make do with visiting this version of the 'Black Museum' put together by crime writer Edmond Bancroft (played by Michael Gough) which is a third rate approximation of the real thing. You would certainly get more of a thrill by visiting 'The Chamber Of Horrors' at Madame Tussauds which at least has more authentic looking waxworks than the pathetic efforts displayed here. The museum also seems to double as a laboratory with banks of electronic machines (all flashing lights, dials and levers) whose purpose is never really made clear but comes in handy for electrocuting an interfering busybody. So you may think viewing this film would be a complete waste of your time but it's not quite like that. For starters this film contains the most gruesome and bizarre murders shown on the screen up to that time and even now they have quite an impact. People still talk about the binoculars with the deadly spikes which kill by piercing the eyes and brain - although I'm not sure how the victim would have removed them once they were embedded into her eye sockets. Then there is murder by an improvised guillotine - although it does seem strange that the victim didn't notice a maniac with a huge blade standing at the head of her bed before she got into it. An old lady is murdered by ice tongs (!) and a man who is lowered into a vat of acid is retrieved as a (fully articulated!) skeleton. The special effects are distinctly lacking and compared to the excesses of today you actually see very little but the murders still achieve an immense shock value. The acting is variable but the performances bring lots of incidental pleasures. Michael Gough is madly intense as the owner of the museum, June Cunningham as the 'sexy' blonde performs a 'torrid' dance at the local pub, for the benefit of no-one in particular, before losing her head and Beatrice Varley entertains us nicely as the wizened and canny antique shop owner. Blink and you'll miss lovely old timer Hilda Barry with just a few lines as 'the woman in the hall'. The climax takes place at a funfair (probably the long gone Battersea Park) with a double death at the Big Wheel, witnessed by all and sundry, but the police establish what's what and who's who in a couple of minutes, the ride reopens immediately and the crowds disperse to carry on enjoying themselves as though nothing has happened. It's British, it's bizarre and there's been nothing quite like it before or since.