Crucible of Terror (1971)

A discordant brass orchestral track plays us in. A creepy red light strobes slowly and the fire of a forge flares up under the air of a bellows as a creepy old man with a long goatee roughly smears mud on a naked girl.

A red-hot crucible is removed from the oven and poured over the encrusted lady, giving us our film's title. The music is "international art theify", but it could pass for a murder mystery.

An rich old man who looks very much like the king of Sweden and who can't act whatsoever introduces us to the very poor quality of the speech track. It's muddy and clips a bit even at normal volume. The old man sets the stage for a plethora of actors who respond to each other unnaturally swiftly. The old man wants to buy this statue of a laying down naked woman, which we're presuming is the girl from the first scene. The art dealer informs him it has already sold, and he is quite upset about it.

The rich old man sneaks in late at night to fondle the lady statue, and seemingly gets smothered to death by one of those plastic air pillows that they use as padding for packages. We don't see how this happens, but he seems to hallucinate some paintings while dying.

The artist's drunkard of a son reluctantly tells the art dealer that he can setup a meeting with his reclusive father to talk about acquiring more pieces. The art dealer says "we can have a good old nag" as he hops into a car and drives off into the windy, barren, castle-peppered English countryside with the artist's son. They meet his mother and father on arrival, neither of whom are even slightly welcoming.

Some woman is in several scenes, but I think they forgot to introduce her or explain why she is here? Her fourth scene is a supremely stupid "I think I'm being followed!" scene on some cliffs. Her friend teleports into the cliffs to save her, and I still don't know who she is.

A whole bunch of people have dinner, a few of whom I can identify, and the artist calls his wife ugly and yells at her. He's only attracted to 20-somethings and aggressively pursues them. His wife is considerably older, but dresses like a child and always carries a doll or stuffed animal.

Mystery girl sees a fancy asian bowl in the artist's house and freaks out, saying something about blood and running off. Later she has a nightmare about somebody throwing a bowl of blood in her face, and it's all vaguely Japanese-themed. When she wakes up, that's when we can finally deduce that she's the art dealer's wife/girlfriend.

The artist makes out with his son's wife for a few second, then gets angry, and then she gets stabbed to death by a masked and gloved intruder seen neither by her nor the viewer. There's a long scene of close zoom-ins on a hand moving the body to the car, loading it in, and driving off.

The men go off to talk business. The artist knows his son has been stealing and selling off his paintings, and definitely doesn't appreciate it. He's not particularly keen on selling them directly to the dealer, either. He mysteriously agrees anyway, in exchange for cash on the spot.

The girls hang out at the beach. They explain what stores are to each other while the artist's model tries and fails to get the dealer's wife naked. This scene has no purpose other than to show two girls in bikinis.

The artist's son is prowling around the very same beach, and a mystery person beats him to death with a large rock.

The artist slow-chases the dealer's wife deep into some caverns. She's terrified of him because she heard him call her attractive? The artist's wife, who we haven't seen in quite some time, is prowling around the very same caverns.

They all return to the house, oddly, and then wander around bickering and insulting each other for the rest of the day. Everybody gets strange and forgets how to communicate.

The dealer's wife agrees to model for the artist, and they all bicker some more. Way, way too much. Somebody throws acid in the artist's girlfriend's face.

They go running around in the caverns, and the dealer's girlfriend ends up kidnapped and prepped for being converted to a statue. But she suddenly wakes up as a droopy-faced zombie of the previously killed model. They battle with a welding torch, and then they both leap into the furnace.