After a slew of monsters, the formidable Christopher Lee gets much more of a character to create, in this turn-of-the-century Hammer horror. And his performance is a revelation. Lee really chews round his portrait of a dusty, crusty old university professor - who unravels a series of macabre murders in 'Vandorf' - until he has moulded it to the life. Otherwise, as soon as the film opens on an eerie castle at night, surrounded by woods and undergrowth, we know this is much the Hammer mixture as before. Peter Cushing's appearance as a warped scientist only confirms our suspicions. Still, Cushing still cuts a brain out of a corpse with considerable aplomb, and director Terence Fisher races through the action while investing the film with a sense of brooding menace. The monster at large here is Megaera, a gorgon whose habit of appearing at the full moon gives her something in common with werewolves and leads to no end of people being turned to stone. One poor victim loses most of his hair as well, which is perhaps what comes of actors wearing wigs.


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