Purely Joyful Movie!

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

Blistering performances.

An adaptation of a modern gothic tale "Malpertuis", written by Jean Ray aka John Flanders. The acting is good and the story is full of symbolism. There are two versions of this movie: the original (in French or in English) feels more like a horror film but the longer re-edited Dutch version lacks most of the superb atmosphere created by the haunting score of Georges Delerue and is therefore disappointing.

Yes, Malpertuis is extremely impressive, in my opinion the best Euro-horror movie! I read the Jean Ray book - which is by far my favorite horror writer - and the adaptation by Harry Kumel, altough not extremely tight to the novel, is quite decent.Sadly, this movie is nearly impossible to find...

Opening scenes that confuse instead of establish a story, followed by more obscure scenes and dialogue that go nowhere, topped off with an ending completely unrelated to the rest of the movie.And all of it peopled by non-actors, save for Orson Welles with his usual gravitas (no pun intended), as the dying master of the house, and Susan Hampshire cutting loose in three different parts: a flighty, sheltered, and developmentally-arrested young girl; a repressed school-marm type who is a sex-maniac underneath; and a draped, firey-wigged ur-dame with the coolest set of eye-contacts this side of "Count Dracula" (1977) with Louis Jourdan.The only evil in this picture was the wasting of these two Lights of Stage and Screen in this waste of film and time.Yes, the movie could have been better if it had been made differently. VERY differently.

Based on a novel by Jean Ray, Malpertuis is a "haunted" house, unescapable by those who live in it. Characters hiding their true nature, disguised as a "family" to which sailor Jean-Jacques returns unwillingly. Susan Hampshire plays 3 different characters beautifully, and Orson Welles is the perfect actor to play the dominating shadow. The film has an unreal, nightmarish atmosphere, and goes far beyond the scope of the book. Malpertuis is a labyrinth whose secrets are kept behind locked doors, and reveals itself as the film reaches its climax. We come to realize that the mind has as many labyrinths as the house itself. Full of mythology, dimly lit and spooky as dreams use to be ("what is life but a dream?"), Malpertuis is a cult. Jung would have loved it.