When I wrote about Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb, I said I would get around to talking about Terence Fisher’s The Gorgon (1964). So today I will. Curse is an example of Hammer at its most workmanlike. The movie, as I said, is fun but slight. The Gorgon, on the other hand, is Hammer and Fisher at their best, a film of considerable beauty and resonance.

After a young artist’s girlfriend is killed and turned to stone, and he hangs himself, the inquest declares the deaths the result of a crime of passion. The artist’s father, understandably skeptical, refuses to leave the little town of Vandorf after the inquest, despite the villagers’ hostility. He discovers the existence of Megara the gorgon, but at the cost of his life. His second son (Martin Pasco) arrives to continue the investigation, and after a near miss that nearly costs him his life, he is joined by his mentor (Christopher Lee), while falling in love with his nurse (Barbara Shelley). The road to true love does not run smoothly, however, as the film makes it quite clear midway through that Shelley is in fact Megara. She doesn’t know this herself, but local doctor Peter Cushing certainly does, but his obsessive love for Shelley leads him to cover everything up.