Wicked, decadent Baron Zorn (a robust, rip-snorting portrayal by Robert Hardy) keeps both his frail daughter Elisabeth (touchingly played by the delicately comely Gillian Hills) and tormented son Emil (Shane Briant in his excellent film debut) locked up inside his dismal castle because of a hereditary family curse of insanity. Meanwhile a bunch of gorgeous peasant girls in a nearby village are being brutally murdered by a mystery maniac. Pretty soon the frightened townspeople succumb to mass hysteria. Director Peter Sykes, working from a quirky, intricate, literate and compellingly subversive script by Christopher Wicking (who also wrote "The Oblong Box" and "Scream and Scream Again"),expertly crafts a spooky, artsy and intriguing psychological portrait of madness and despair, relating the story at a slow, stately rate and deftly creating a potently gloomy and melancholy atmosphere. Popping up in enjoyably colorful supporting roles are Patrick Magee as a cynical, unhelpful charlatan psychiatrist, Yvonne Mitchell as a loyal housekeeper, Manfred Mann lead singer Paul Jones as Elisabeth's ardent suitor, and Michael Hordern as a deranged, doddery priest. Arthur Grant's exquisitely lush'n'lovely pastoral cinematography, the brooding 19th century setting, Harry Robinson's eerie, elegant score, and a dark narrative which boldly explores such disturbing themes as incest, repression and the sins of the fathers further enhances the overall fine quality of this flavorsome Gothic horror outing.

Hammer's psychological horror opus bypasses the usual monster elements and instead gives us a horror film with purely human villains. That's right, there are no rubbery limbs or bats in this film, instead all of the chills and spills are in the mind. The murders that take place aren't even that gruesome, just bloody, which makes them all the more disturbing through the power of suggestion.

There are dozens of adjectives I could use to describe this film. Distorting, disturbing, strange, unusual, unnatural, weird. Abnormal fear. The psychology used in the film is strictly Freudian, with a twisted form of the Oedipus complex coming into play. The actors and actresses are exceptional in the film and make it all the more effective, from Robert Hardy as the obsessed father to Shane Briant making his impressive debut as the mentally unstable son.

Gillian Hills is also great in another mentally ambiguous role, while Virginia Wetherell is a female victim who screams loudly and is more than willing to strip for her role (indeed, she spends a five minute sequence wandering around completely naked while choosing a dress). Lower down in the cast list are Michael Hordern as a psychotic religious lunatic and the maniac from the same year's monster movie THE CREEPING FLESH as the sinister and bald coachman. Finally, Patrick Magee is on hand as an unlikable but noble doctor, in a role which Peter Cushing usually would play.

DEMONS OF THE MIND has a Gothic fairy-tale like ambiance, helped by the use of forest locations to add to the atmosphere, with a spooky music-box like score to add to the feelings of sadness and madness echoing throughout the film. Pretty powerful stuff and an interesting one-off.

The widower Baron Zord (Robert Hardy) keeps his teenage children Elizabeth (Gillian Hills) and Emil (Shane Briant) drugged and locked in separate rooms in his manor. Zord believes that they have inherited the insanity of his wife, who committed suicide, and uses his servants Hilda (Yvonne Mitchell) and Klaus (Kenneth J. Warren) to help him to keep the siblings under control and to bleed their "evil blood". Zord invites the infamous Dr. Falkenberg (Patrick Magee) to heal Elizabeth and Emil. Meanwhile there is a rapist serial-killer murdering young women and the young man Carl Richter (Paul Jones) is in love with Elizabeth and is trying to rescue her from her insane father.

"Demons of the Mind" is a movie by Hammer with a messy screenplay and ham performances. Despite the good production, the story is confused and hard to understand the subplots of the serial-killer and who is Carl. My vote is four.

Title (Brazil): Not available on DVD or Blu-Ray