Opening scenes that confuse instead of establish a story, followed by more obscure scenes and dialogue that go nowhere, topped off with an ending completely unrelated to the rest of the movie.
And all of it peopled by non-actors, save for Orson Welles with his usual gravitas (no pun intended), as the dying master of the house, and Susan Hampshire cutting loose in three different parts: a flighty, sheltered, and developmentally-arrested young girl; a repressed school-marm type who is a sex-maniac underneath; and a draped, firey-wigged ur-dame with the coolest set of eye-contacts this side of "Count Dracula" (1977) with Louis Jourdan.
The only evil in this picture was the wasting of these two Lights of Stage and Screen in this waste of film and time.
Yes, the movie could have been better if it had been made differently. VERY differently.
And all of it peopled by non-actors, save for Orson Welles with his usual gravitas (no pun intended), as the dying master of the house, and Susan Hampshire cutting loose in three different parts: a flighty, sheltered, and developmentally-arrested young girl; a repressed school-marm type who is a sex-maniac underneath; and a draped, firey-wigged ur-dame with the coolest set of eye-contacts this side of "Count Dracula" (1977) with Louis Jourdan.
The only evil in this picture was the wasting of these two Lights of Stage and Screen in this waste of film and time.
Yes, the movie could have been better if it had been made differently. VERY differently.