Hammer House of Horror: Visitor from the Grave is set in rural England & starts late one night as rich American Penny Van Prutten (Kathryn Leigh Scott) is home alone in her isolated cottage in the woods, loud banging on the front door wakes her & a man named Charles Willowbee (Stanley Lebor) breaks in. Charles says he wants her boyfriend Harry Wells (Simon MacCorkindale) but he isn't there so Charles turns his attention to Penny & tries to rape her but Penny grabs a double barrelled shotgun & shoots him. The next morning & Harry arrives back at the cottage to find blood on the floor, Penny is hysterics & Charles dead body. Harry says he will bury the body & no-one will ever know what happened, unfortunately Penny is haunted by visions of Charles whose ghost seems to want revenge on her...
Visitor from the Grave was episode 11 from the one & only season of this British horror anthology series of macabre tales produced by Hammer studios for TV, originally airing over here during November 1980 one has to say that Visitor from the Grave is one of the poorer episodes from this generally high quality series. The script was by Anthony Hinds who had written many scripts for Hammer including The Brides of Dracula (1960), The Curse of the Werewolf (1961), The Evil of Frankenstein (1964), Dracula: Prince of Darkness (1966), Dracula Has Risen from the Grave (1968), Taste the Blood of Dracula (1970), The Scars of Dracula (1970) & Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell (1974) to name but a few & with this sort of pedigree one would have thought Hinds might have been able to come up with something a little better than this contrived, insanely convoluted & downright silly piece of telly. You can see the twist ending coming quite literally a mile off, it's so obvious & predictable it's almost embarrassing when it happens. The whole thing is one big con but there are many flaws in the plan, for a start what if Penny had called the police after shooting Charles? That would have buggered their plans up wouldn't it? The whole fifty odd minutes is full of holes, script problems, improbabilities & just poor plotting which makes Visitor from the Grave a less than satisfying way to spend fifty minutes.
Director Peter Sasdy does alright but no-ones heart seems to be in it, the opening scenes of Charles breaking into the cottage are quite effective but some of the set-pieces thereafter are hilariously bad including the climatic séance which has to be seen to be believed. It's a wonder any of the actors involved kept a straight face especially the guy in the bad false beard, turban & dark sunglasses. There's no blood or gore in this one, unfortunately.
Visitor from the Grave is one of the poorer Hammer House of Horror episodes with a bad script & a bad central premise, I don't know what else to tell you really other than there are better episodes out there to watch instead of this.
Visitor from the Grave was episode 11 from the one & only season of this British horror anthology series of macabre tales produced by Hammer studios for TV, originally airing over here during November 1980 one has to say that Visitor from the Grave is one of the poorer episodes from this generally high quality series. The script was by Anthony Hinds who had written many scripts for Hammer including The Brides of Dracula (1960), The Curse of the Werewolf (1961), The Evil of Frankenstein (1964), Dracula: Prince of Darkness (1966), Dracula Has Risen from the Grave (1968), Taste the Blood of Dracula (1970), The Scars of Dracula (1970) & Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell (1974) to name but a few & with this sort of pedigree one would have thought Hinds might have been able to come up with something a little better than this contrived, insanely convoluted & downright silly piece of telly. You can see the twist ending coming quite literally a mile off, it's so obvious & predictable it's almost embarrassing when it happens. The whole thing is one big con but there are many flaws in the plan, for a start what if Penny had called the police after shooting Charles? That would have buggered their plans up wouldn't it? The whole fifty odd minutes is full of holes, script problems, improbabilities & just poor plotting which makes Visitor from the Grave a less than satisfying way to spend fifty minutes.
Director Peter Sasdy does alright but no-ones heart seems to be in it, the opening scenes of Charles breaking into the cottage are quite effective but some of the set-pieces thereafter are hilariously bad including the climatic séance which has to be seen to be believed. It's a wonder any of the actors involved kept a straight face especially the guy in the bad false beard, turban & dark sunglasses. There's no blood or gore in this one, unfortunately.
Visitor from the Grave is one of the poorer Hammer House of Horror episodes with a bad script & a bad central premise, I don't know what else to tell you really other than there are better episodes out there to watch instead of this.