Like most Peter Cushing vehicles, this one makes a nice rest for the brain. We almost prefer the horror-effects to be amateurish - plastic dungeons, baffled police, cod-scientific arguments - and we are not disappointed.
A top cancer researcher has set-up his laboratory on a small island off the Irish coast, and feels he is close to finding a cure. But he has accidentally let loose a genome that mutates into an entirely new kind of creature that feeds on bone-marrow. When a human body is found, literally filleted, a mighty alarm is raised. It turns out that the tentacled and bullet-proof creatures (oddly named 'silicates') keep dividing into two, and at that rate, they will soon dominate the island.
This is more-or-less H.G. Wells' 'War of the Worlds' all over again, and the methods by which the silicates are eventually killed-off need not detain us. The film has more to do with atmosphere, and there is always something Dracula-like about a small remote community coping with the supernatural.
The cast do not get many opportunities to excel, which is bad luck on the only significant female, Carole Gray, clearly capable of better. But the dialogue is depressingly poor - literally not one notable line. ("Nasty little creatures, aren't they?" is a fair specimen.)
The surprise ending, not to be revealed, is easily recognisable as a little slice of 1966, echoing the irreverent humour of the Bonds.
A top cancer researcher has set-up his laboratory on a small island off the Irish coast, and feels he is close to finding a cure. But he has accidentally let loose a genome that mutates into an entirely new kind of creature that feeds on bone-marrow. When a human body is found, literally filleted, a mighty alarm is raised. It turns out that the tentacled and bullet-proof creatures (oddly named 'silicates') keep dividing into two, and at that rate, they will soon dominate the island.
This is more-or-less H.G. Wells' 'War of the Worlds' all over again, and the methods by which the silicates are eventually killed-off need not detain us. The film has more to do with atmosphere, and there is always something Dracula-like about a small remote community coping with the supernatural.
The cast do not get many opportunities to excel, which is bad luck on the only significant female, Carole Gray, clearly capable of better. But the dialogue is depressingly poor - literally not one notable line. ("Nasty little creatures, aren't they?" is a fair specimen.)
The surprise ending, not to be revealed, is easily recognisable as a little slice of 1966, echoing the irreverent humour of the Bonds.