Sometimes a film slips through the cracks of time not because it was misunderstood or ahead of its time, but because the universe has a sense of taste. Craze, a 1974 horror film directed by Freddie Francis, is one such exhumed corpse. The title promises mania, possession, maybe a touch of psychosexual madness. Instead, what you get is Jack Palance stalking around in a funeral director’s tuxedo, yelling at everyone like Bela Lugosi on a four-day bender, and sacrificing women to a statue named Chuku. Yes, Chuku. As in, “Chuku, please make this end.”
Watching Craze is like staring at a damp velvet painting in a junk shop—faded, tacky, and vaguely cursed. It’s a film where every line of dialogue is delivered with the frantic energy of a man trying to return an expired sandwich, and every performance feels like it was directed via semaphore from another county.
Let’s get into it, shall we? But bring a flashlight. And maybe a stiff drink.
Jack Palance, the Human Migraine
Our leading man, if you can call him that, is Jack Palance as Neal Mottram, an antiques dealer with a hobby for homicide and a pathological devotion to Chuku—a hideous African idol that looks like it was carved from a tree that hates you. Palance doesn’t so much “act” in this film as he prowls. He hisses, snarls, and squints like he’s trying to read the script off a teleprompter submerged in gin. It’s as if Dracula took a correspondence course in real estate and snapped somewhere around Lesson 3.
Mottram believes that by feeding Chuku a steady diet of screaming women, he’ll be granted power, success, and immunity from the fashion police. It’s the kind of cult logic that might make sense at 3 a.m. in a van filled with glue fumes, but even Chuku looks embarrassed. At one point, Mottram dons a ritual robe and starts chanting in a language that sounds suspiciously like “mah-koo-cha-haka-baka,” and the statue’s eyes light up in what I swear is visible boredom.
This isn’t high camp, mind you. This isn’t Plan 9 from Outer Space so-bad-it’s-hilarious. No, Craze is that special breed of bad where the movie thinks it’s being scary, but the audience is just checking their watch and wondering if they left the stove on.
The Plot, Such As It Is
The story, stitched together from a screenplay that reads like it was written during a bar fight, follows Mottram’s descent into ritual murder as he tries to appease Chuku. He starts killing women—some friends, some strangers, all of them dressed like rejects from a Seventies bingo hall—and the police are none the wiser.
There are some detectives (including a sleepwalking Trevor Howard) who investigate with all the urgency of men shopping for wallpaper. Every time the film cuts back to them, it feels like the script is apologizing for the supernatural subplot and trying to ground things in “reality.” But the only thing grounded here is the pacing, which crawls slower than a hungover turtle in molasses.
Meanwhile, Mottram’s life spirals. He gets more arrogant, more violent, more sweaty. He talks to the statue more. He slaps around employees. He hosts elaborate occult rituals that look like PTA meetings with better lighting. The whole thing culminates in a climactic chase sequence that feels like it was shot by accident.
Chuku the Bored God
We need to talk about the statue.
Chuku is supposed to be an ancient African deity of violence, lust, or… something. But he looks like someone left a tribal art exhibit too close to a radiator. He just sits there, bug-eyed and unimpressed, blinking every time Jack Palance throws a virgin at his feet. There’s never a sense of menace, only vague confusion, like Chuku is wondering when this film will wrap so he can go back to being a paperweight in some producer’s den.
If there’s any metaphor to be had here—colonial exploitation, the madness of obsession—it’s drowned under layers of cheap gore and Palance’s wandering accent. One moment he’s talking like Vincent Price after three bourbons, the next he sounds like he’s doing an impression of himself doing an impression of Bela Lugosi. It’s chaos, but not the fun kind.
Freddie Francis, Director of the Damned
Freddie Francis, once a master of atmospheric horror, directs Craze with the indifference of a man trying to finish before last call. This is the cinematic equivalent of shrugging. There are no memorable shots, no eerie compositions, just dim rooms and shadows that hide absolutely nothing. It’s all stilted interiors and flat lighting, like a horror film produced by a tax accountant.
Francis clearly doesn’t know what kind of movie he’s making. Is it a psychological thriller? A slasher? An occult drama? A cautionary tale about art collecting? He throws everything into the cauldron and hopes it boils into something resembling coherence. It doesn’t. It steams, it stinks, and eventually, it evaporates into cinematic nothing.
A Supporting Cast That Deserved Better (Or Maybe Not)
You’ve got Diana Dors showing up to chew scenery and get sacrificed, Michael Jayston popping in with all the energy of a man waiting for the bus, and a parade of extras who look like they wandered in from a Benny Hill sketch. None of them seem to understand what they’re doing in this movie. And who can blame them?
Palance slaps them, shouts at them, occasionally murders them, and they all take it with the stunned blankness of people who forgot their safe word.
Final Thoughts: Chuku Save Us All
Craze isn’t just a bad movie—it’s a confusing, listless one. It wants to be horror, but it’s not scary. It wants to be camp, but it takes itself too seriously. It wants to be shocking, but it’s about as edgy as a wet sponge.
At the center of it all is Jack Palance, who delivers one of the most baffling performances of his career, staggering through the wreckage like a lounge singer trapped in a haunted wax museum.
And yet, there’s something bleakly admirable about Craze. It really commits to its madness, even if that madness is deeply stupid. It’s like watching a man try to wrestle a lawn chair. It’s not art. It’s not entertainment. But it is, in its own broken way, unforgettable.
So light a candle. Say a prayer to Chuku. And if you’re brave—or drunk—enough to endure it, Craze will be waiting. Smirking. Blinking. Wondering why it was ever resurrected.
