Chilling and atmospheric, “Crucible of Horror” sets its horror in the crucible of the family, in the form of the upper-middle class Walter Eastwood (Michael Gough) who subjugates and terrorises his wife, Edith (Yvonne Mitchell) and his daughter, Jane (Sharon Gurney). The pair suffer daily humiliation and abuse until they resolve to murder Eastwood when he is away at the family cottage for a shooting weekend. Their plan seems to succeed – until the body mysteriously disappears. Director Viktors Ritelis’ film is slow and studied; his narrative dominated by powerful psychological rather than physical violence. The atmosphere is grim and downbeat throughout with Ritelis using music, jagged editing and some creepy dream sequences to cleverly realise the psychological torture under which Edith and Jane are living. The ending of the film is strangely ambiguous but seems to point to the utterly hopelessness of Edith and Jane’s situation. Michael Gough delivers a powerful performance as the cruel, obsessive, sadistic patriarch, while both Yvonne Mitchell and Sharon Gurney are excellent as the psychologically tormented mother and daughter. “Crucible of Horror” is claustrophobic, atmospheric and genuinely chilling film – it very clearly and very cleverly places the monsters and the horror squarely behind closed doors in the very heart of the family. ( )