Dark Places is not a very well known seventies British horror movie; probably owing to the fact that it's not a Hammer movie, but it features an interesting story and a great cast, and overall this is certainly a very decent little thriller! The story has some fairly strong horror themes running throughout, but personally I wouldn't say this is a horror flick; Dark Places is a thriller, and the main focus is on the thing that makes the world go round - money, and a huge stash of it. At the centre of the film is a spooky old house, once owned by a mental patient who died. The house has now being taken over by the Asylum administrator who inherited the house. This is bad news for a few different people in the village - mostly notably scheming couple Dr Mandevile and Sarah. The reason being that before he died, the owner of the house hid a huge sum of money somewhere within the walls and the pair have been on the trail of it ever since. Not wanting to risk losing their cash, Sarah and the doctor hatch a plan to turn the situation to their advantage...

The key thing about this film is the old house at the centre, and therefore the chilling atmosphere stemming from it. Director Don Sharp has a history in horror, with a handful of films made for Hammer, as well as the excellent cult trash classic 'Psychomania' to his name, so it's quite unsurprising that this film has a horror atmosphere. The plot is well done also, with many different characters having a stake in the money at the centre of the story, and thus ensuring that the film remains interesting and varied. Dark Places features a very good cast, which makes it even more surprising that this film isn't better known. The great Christopher Lee is the biggest standout in his role as the doctor with an ulterior motive, while Joan Collins gives good support and provides some nice eye candy as his accomplice. The film also features performances from fellow British stars Robert Hardy and Herbert Lom, who also do well. Overall, this might not be a masterpiece; but it's certainly a good film and comes recommended to fans of British horror!

This 'haunted house' movie is not very well-known (and, whenever mentioned, it is generally dismissed) despite the star cast and name director it attracted: both of these have ties to Hammer Horror (Don Sharp having helmed, among others, KISS OF THE VAMPIRE {1963}, and the former including Christopher Lee, Joan Collins, Herbert Lom and Robert Hardy) but the style is not necessarily reminiscent of their output (especially since the company never actually dabbled in this particular subgenre).

Anyway, I quite liked the film if ultimately emerging as nothing special: that said, the plot does provide some novelty to the formula of ghosts haunting the current owner of some old mansion in order to expose some long-ago crime. In fact, here we not only have the protagonist (played by Hardy, from Hammer's DEMONS OF THE MIND {1972}) being a dead-ringer for the man who previously lived there (though the probability of both being, concurrently, in the same mental asylum is very unlikely) and who gradually has his personality overtaken by him, but his actual goal in possessing the property concerned is to find the old man's fortune hidden behind one of the walls! The handful of people who make it a point to befriend him (doctor Lee, his sister{!}Collins and solicitor Lom) all know about the money and are understandably miffed that the house was ultimately bequeathed by the dying former occupant (not played by Hardy in this guise!) to a casual acquaintance. Collins, typically playing a man-eater, actually decides to seduce the stout Hardy (by first volunteering to clean up the place for him) in order to 'follow' the search for the loot first-hand – which displeases Lee, who constantly berates his sister for her loose morals (incidentally, he and Collins do not look favorably upon Lom either, whose interest in the 'financial' matter is more subtly deployed).

Eventually, as already intimated, Hardy starts to re-live his predecessor's experiences within the household: it transpires that he was unhappily married, with a couple of apparently fiendish children in tow, but he finds solace in the arms of the latter's much-younger nanny (Jane Birkin). However, when he decides to leave with her, the wife throws a fit and the kids, who never liked their governess anyway, murder her! This, of course, sends the poor man off the deep end and he takes to his family with a pick-axe, though none of the bodies were actually found. Towards the end, as the modern-day Hardy identifies more and more with his 'doppelganger', he begins to see the obstacles to his contentedness everywhere so that, during a country stroll with Lee and Lom, he physically assaults (leaving his companions perplexed) a couple of children he takes for the ones tormenting his love Birkin! Later still, when Collins turns up ostensibly to comfort him, he sees her in the image of the wife the previous owner loathed and strangles her to death – just then, Lee himself happens along and, rather bloodlessly, ends up on the wrong end of Hardy's pick-axe!

When Lom turns up there too and is about to meet the same fate, a couple of cops he had called arrive just in time to take the deranged Hardy away. The double twist here involves Hardy being not an employer of the asylum as he had let on but really a patient, and that his attempts to unearth the cache' of money by tearing down the walls also reveals the resting-place of the former murdered victims. Lom being responsible for the house offers to take charge of a couple of bags the cops come upon, conscious of course as to their actual contents, but the latter insist they be checked first and, once they are, these are naturally confiscated…so that, predictably, nobody gets anything after all!

As I said, the approach is not really inspired but the performances by all concerned (but, needless to say, Hardy in particular) are committed enough to keep one watching. For the record, this is the third and last film genre icons Lee and Lom appeared in together after the ludicrous 'female Tarzan' adventure THE FACE OF EVE (1968) and Jess Franco's interesting but unsatisfactory COUNT Dracula (1969).

"Dark Places" tells of a man who inherits a house that is reputed to contain a stash of money hidden somewhere by the original owner. The new owner moves in, despite warnings from local people that the house is cursed, and enthusiastically begins hunting for the loot. Unfortunately for him, there are other people trying to get to the cash before he does, but worse still, the house really is haunted.

"Dark Places" is a moderately successful film that does a good job of weaving a mystery with it's storyline. The acting is also all pretty good, and with such star names as Christopher Lee and Joan Collins, it's amazing that this isn't one of the major British horror films of the 1970's, but once it gets going you'll soon realise that, as with a lot of other UK horror films of this period, the chances of something significantly exciting happening are pretty slim.

What doesn't help is having the lead character played by Robert Hardy, who, while being an excellent actor and playing the character well, just does not have the "leading man" quality required to carry the entire focus of the film. Joan Collinsd and Christopher Lee look great in their supporting roles, but then again, they always do. What does work well is the way the film starts to move between present day and flashback as Hardy starts to uncover more of the truth about what went on in the house before it's original owner died, and what the truth is behind all the stories of murder. The flashback scenes are great, and they reminded me the great things some 1970's films from the UK could do with a period setting. Look out for a fantastic cameo from Jean Marsh as the wife in the flashbacks, although many men may be more entranced by the young Jane Birkin as the governess, even though she doesn't do very much.

Sadly there's no real meat on this bony story, but it does have a couple of mildly grisly scenes and a kind of surprise ending, so it's fairly enjoyable.