In 1910 Scotland, the ailing Doctor Hichcock, bound to his wheelchair, presides over seances in which his housekeeper, Catherine, acts as the medium. According to Hichcock's theory, shots of lethal poison shortly after followed by an antidote could cure his physical disability. The younger Doctor Livingstone stays with him in the house to regularly administer this dangerous treatment. Hichcock's wife Margaret finds living with her husband increasingly unbearable. Not unbeknown to him, she is having an affair with Livingstone. She implores him to murder Hichcock, which he does by not administering the antidote. During the distribution of Hichcock's estate, Margaret and Livingstone learn Hichcock only recently changed his last will and testament. Margaret only gets the house. Upon Catherine telling them that the key to the doctor's safe containing the jewels and other valuables was in the jacket buried with him, they secretly open his grave and retrieve it. Livingstone opens the safe. It is empty. Later, they hear Hichcock's voice calling to them and experience other poltergeist phenomena, including the appearance of the ghost-like Hichcock himself. One night, Catherine, apparently possessed by Hichcock, speaks in his voice and tells Margaret that his fortune is buried beneath his coffin. She returns to the grave to find a golden box. Upon opening it, she cuts herself. The box contains nothing but a skull. Catherine then insinuates that Livingstone took the jewels for himself when he opened the safe in Margaret's absence. Indeed, Margaret finds them in his bag, much to Livingstone's surprise. Margaret slashes him to death with a razor and drags him into the cellar where she uses kerosene from a lamp to burn his body. Margaret is drawn to Hichcock's study by the ringing of his carillon, where she contemplates suicide by poison, pouring it in a glass of gin, but does not drink it. She starts feeling ill and sits down when Hichcock appears, alive and no longer disabled. He tells her that he poisoned the box with a non-lethal dose of curare, which is now quickly paralyzing her. Hichcock then shoots Catherine, his accomplice, in the back and makes Margaret touch the gun to incriminate her. Finally, the glass of gin Margaret poured for herself, he makes a toast to her ill health and drinks it. When he realizes it is poisoned, he begs Margaret for the antidote. She laughs and destroys the vial. Hichcock seals himself inside a secret room behind the bookshelf, locking himself in. The police arrive and arrest the laughing and paralyzed Margaret for Catherine's murder, carrying her out of the room. When Canon Owens, the parish priest, arrives and hears muffled noises from behind the library bookshelf, he addresses Hichcock's portrait with the words, "I told you, Doctor Hichcock, the devil is a very real person." He then leaves the room.
Production
The Ghost was shot in Rome. It is a Gothic re-imagining of the film Les Diaboliques. The Italian production crew are credited by aliases. The music score is credited to "Franck Wallace", whom Italian magazine Bianco e Nero and the Monthly Film Bulletin claim is a pseudonym for Franco Mannino. When Beat Records re-released the score, they found the tapes credited to Francesco De Masi who is not credited in the film.
In a contemporary review, The Monthly Film Bulletin stated that "Pictorially the film is a knock-out" while the dubbed dialogue is "more inept than ever". The review concluded that The Ghost was "a splendid exercise in Grand Guignol" Leonard Maltin awarded the film two and a half out of a possible four stars complimenting the film's atmosphere, calling it a "Measured, moody horror, let down by routine plot".
