While staying in an old house to hear the reading of a will, a woman becomes haunted by the spirit of the deceased girl whose room she is occupying. The kindly housekeeper advises her to leave the house quickly, and supports this warning with what is possibly the longest expository flashback sequence in film history.
This fly-ball ghost story is mostly a woebegone romance set during and shortly after the U. S. Civil War. Stir in some soap-suds melodrama and a fat pinch of horse-and-buggy chills of the "old dark house" variety, and there you have The Colonel's secret recipe for one peculiar little movie. It's a noticeably insouciant project filmed almost entirely within a neo-Victorian styled house, and features some laughably unconvincing period wardrobe and wigs. That said, it's a modestly watchable item which transcends slightly the usual expectations held for underprivileged cinema. The has-been female leads(Hendrix and Mackenzie) are commendable, if a bit outmoded in their old-school Hollywood histrionics, but come-off nearly Oscar-worthy in comparison to their less-distinguished support players. Truth is, there's actually little to gripe about where the rudiments of production are concerned...it's adequately overseen for the most part. It does suffer from directorial lassitude and yo-yo pacing, however, and the dearth of gratuitous sensationalism renders it a rather prudent entry to the delectus of horror cinema.
4.5/10...not exactly "bucket list" material.
