South Africa

• Doctor Maniac

The once-human horror waits in the attic ... for YOU to open the door!
The setting is a remote corner of the South African Veldt at the turn of the century. Lady Marianne arrives from London to join her fiance [sic] Sir Michael Breckinridge at his stately ancestral home, Brattling Manor. She is met at the railroad station by Sir Michael and a friend, Dr. Collinson, who inform her that Michael's older brother Breck had been kicked in the head by a horse and is confined to an attic retreat in the Manor house. From the outset of her visit, things go strangely wrong for Marianne. Michael's autocratic mother is not at all receptive to the visitor. At night, Marianne is disturbed by strange organ music and ghostly footsteps in the corridor. As time passes, further events increase the tension in the air: a stable boy is found dead, and the horse that kicked Breck is found in a lily pond. A local voodoo witch is murdered, inciting the native populace. A policeman investigating the occurrances [sic] is brutally murdered by a mysterious hooded figure. All the while, Mother Breckinridge is dead set against a marriage between Marianne and Michael, and repeatedly warns the hapless visitor to depart immediately in order to avoid the mad curse of Brattling Manor. Finally, Marianne hears the strange organ music at night once again and goes to investigate. She finds the mysterious hooded figure at the console, and when she approaches, it falls to reveal the hideously mutilated face of a murdered maid. In the ensuing panic, Michael appears, and reveals his true identity, he is actually brother Breck, now deranged, and forces Marianne into his attic laboratory, where the body of brother Michael is kept, amid countless bottles containing stored human essences: the souls of the madman's victims. Mother attempts to save Marianne, and is pushed by Breck over a bannister to her death. Breck then attempts to bore out the soul of the hapless Marianne and unite it with that of Michael's, when Dr. Collinson arrives. In the melee [sic] that ensues, bottles are smashed, and the souls escape, forcing the evil Breck to plunge to his death alongside his murdered mother.