In 1795, Catherine Fengriffen relocates to Fengriffen House with her fiancé, Charles Fengriffen, and very quickly begins to glimpse a shadowy history that lingers in the estate. Her visions center on an undead corpse with a heavily birthmarked face, empty eye sockets, and a severed right hand, a sight that unsettles her on more than one occasion. On the couple’s wedding night, this malevolent presence invades the couple’s private space, haunting Catherine in her chamber and leaving her shaken by what she has witnessed.
Soon, Catherine encounters Silas [Geoffrey Whitehead], a woodsman who lives in a nearby lodge and bears the same birthmark as the corpse. The family and those closest to Catherine struggle to offer any explanation about Silas, and every attempt to explain the mystery seems to backfire in terrifying ways: Maitland [Guy Rolfe], Charles’ solicitor, is hacked to death with an axe; Mrs Luke [Rosalie Crutchley], the housemaid, is thrown down the stairs; and Aunt Edith [Gillian Lind], Catherine’s chaperone, is strangled by the severed hand, which then vanishes from sight. The atmosphere thickens with dread as Catherine’s pregnancy becomes public knowledge, and the estate’s dark past is pressed into the foreground.
Dr Whittle [Patrick Magee] announces the troubling possibility that Catherine’s visions might reflect mental strain or other psychological causes, urging Charles to reveal the estate’s buried history. Charles resists, and instead calls for psychiatrist Dr Pope [Peter Cushing], hoping a clinical approach might quiet the fear. Pope works with an open mind, pressing Whittle for details, yet the moment he is about to learn more, the severed hand reappears, strangling Whittle and disappearing once more.
The heart of the mystery unfolds as Pope confronts Charles with a family saga stretching back five decades. Charles recounts the infamous crimes of his grandfather, Sir Henry Fengriffen [Herbert Lom]. Half a century earlier, Henry raped the bride of his servant Silas, whose son would grow up to be the woodsman Catherine has seen. When Silas tried to strike back, Henry cut off Silas’ right hand as punishment. Silas’s curse was born: the Fengriffens would never escape the debt he cursed them with — the next virgin bride to enter Fengriffen House would be raped and her child would be tainted, and anyone attempting to warn her would die. In time, Henry’s remorse led him to leave Silas land to the family, where the woodsman’s son remains as a living reminder of the threat.
Catherine becomes the focus of the curse simply by being the first virgin bride to arrive at the estate in generations. To protect her and the unborn child, Pope agrees to stay with the family until the birth. As labor begins, Pope sedates Catherine and oversees the delivery. The newborn’s appearance horrifies Charles: a face marked like Silas’s and a missing right hand. Gripped by fear and rage, Charles heads to Silas’s lodge and shoots the woodsman in the face with pistols. Pope follows to discover Silas dead on the floor, two shots through each eye—a grim echo of the corpse Catherine has seen.
In a final, wrenching act, Charles smashes open Henry’s grave and dismantles the legacy that chained his family to violence, pushing Pope aside as the old abuse is confronted. Pope returns to Catherine and presents the baby—the same cursed sign that marked Silas—bearing a birthmark on its face and, hauntingly, a missing right hand. The revelation seals the fate of the newborn and confirms that the cycle of vengeance and doom tied to Fengriffen House has not ended; it has merely taken a new form to endure.
