‘It drives you mad before it kills!
House of the Living Dead is a 1974 South African sci-fi horror film directed by Ray Austin from a screenplay by Marc Marais. It was also released as Doctor Maniac.
Plot:
A white family runs a plantation farm in Brattling on the Cape Colony in South Africa. The family consists of a mother (Margaret Inglis) and her two sons, Michael and Breck (both played by Mark Burns). Michael runs the house while Breck spends his time alone in his room, deformed and insane, conducting experiments to try to prove a soul is an organic object able to live outside the human body.
Michael’s fiancée, Mary (Shirley Anne Field) arrives to marry him, much to the mother’s dismay as she wants the family to end so the long history of madness can stop. Meanwhile, strange things begin to happen at the plantation, such as voodoo, which is assumed to be the work of the local black neighbours, and murder…
Trailer:
Free to watch on YouTube:
Cast and characters:
Mark Burns … Sir Michael Brattling/Doctor Breckinridge Brattling
Shirley Anne Field … Mary Anne Carew
David Oxley … Doctor Collinson
Margaret Inglis … Lady Brattling
Dia Sydow … Lina
Lynn Maree … Annie
Bill Flynn … Simeon
William Baird Clark … Captain Turner
Ronald France … Colonel Pringle
Don Furnival … Brand
Pieter Geldenhuys … Shoemaker
Ben Dekker … Jan
Limpie Basson … Hugo de Groot
Amina Gool … Aia Kat
Film facts:
Filmed as Skaduwees Oor Brugplaas “Shadows over Bridge Place”
