Author Archive: Retro

The film begins in a BBC studio with the 100th edition of “In Town Tonight”. Flotsam and Jetsom open with a “topical number”. Then there is an interview with a distinguished actor, which dissolves into a performance of one of his famous melodramas about a wicked moneylender etc.

A madman murders Sir Percival Glyde. Taking on his victim’s identity, the man returns to the Glyde ancestral home, Blackwater Park, in hopes of claiming a large inheritance. However, the estate is heavily in debt. Still hungry for wealth, the false “Glyde” takes advantage of a long-standing betrothal promise to marry young and beautiful heiress Laurie Fairlie. Having his true identity revealed could ruin everything, but this lascivious and diabolical “Glyde” is more than willing to kill anyone who stands in his way… This story is loosely based on Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White.

While King Louis X of France is on a campaign, Queen Marguerite is reigning in Paris. During this time, the inhabitants of the city are disturbed by mysterious murders near a tower.

A satanist cult leader is burnt alive by the local church. He vows to come back to hunt down and enslave every descendant of his congregation, by the power of the book of blood contracts, in which they sold their souls to the devil.