[E.F. Benson]

Originally Posted by fortunato

It's a kaleidoscopic, grand spectacle; horror as goofy, gorgeous, gory high art.
Sure the plot is thin, unevenly paced, and has a fairly anti-climactic ending, but those (for me, at least) are lost in the film as a whole. It more than makes up for its shortcomings with style, composition, color; really everything else. It has some of the strangest, wildest, most entertaining (often murder) scenes in the genre. And of course one of the strangest, wildest, most entertaining scores in the genre as well.

In short, I strongly urge you to give it a shot. It has its reputation for a reason.
And I really hope you enjoy it, too.

I agree about it mostly being visual, but it was so well done, for me it still gets elevated to a classic.