EDITOR’S NOTE: Dark Places was on the CBS Late Movie on December 18, 1985.

Edward Foster (Robert Hardy) has inherited a mansion that is rumored to be haunted. Instead of being scared off, he decides to renovate it. What he doesn’t know is that the doctor of the previous owner Andrew Carr, Dr. Ian Mandeville (Christopher Lee) and his sister Sarah (Joan Collins) as well as Prescott (Herbert Lom), the solicitor, know that there are two suitcases of money hidden somewhere.

They didn’t count on Edward being violently deranged, as he can see the past of the house, as he looks exactly like Carr and experiences the last days of that man’s life, in which he plans to leave his wife Victoria (Jean Marsh) for a governess named Alta (Jane Birkin). This house seems to lead to mental illness, as Victoria is impossible to be around. She knows Andrew is leaving, so she has her two children kill her rival while she’s seducing her husband. When he finds out, he strangles her and kills the little ones with a sword, bricking up all of the dead bodies — and the money — inside the house.

These flashbacks lead to him ridding his home of the others, just in time for the police to show up. Poor Joan Collins, yet another movie where she gets strangled! For her part, she said in her autobiography Past Imperfect, “I became known by the British press as Queen of the Horror Films — a title I didn’t particularly relish. But I was resilient. A survivor. I considered myself lucky to be working so much after such a long period away from the British screen, particularly since I was well into my thirties.”

Dark Places was directed by Don Sharp, who also made The Creeping Flesh, and written by Ed Brennan and Joseph Van Winkle. This was shot in an old asylum which, while run down, made it the perfect location.

You can watch this on Tubi.