Radiance has dug up some stylish films from the underappreciated Belgian director Harry Kümel, including 1973’s Malpertuis, which has been released in a beautiful new 4K restoration overseen by the filmmaker. While it doesn’t hold a candle to Radiance’s big horror release of October 2025, Daiei Gothic Vol. 2, it is still a worthy addition to their catalogue and more than merely an odd curio.
It’s also a must-watch for Orson Welles completists. While the master hadn’t yet reached the “beached whale” phase of his career, he gives audiences a preview in Malpertuis, with Welles performing entirely from bed. Portraying Cassavius, the inordinately wealthy owner of the titular Brabantine Gothic castle, the great director gives a memorably cantankerous performance as a dying man bequeathing his estate to a group of people who fill him with contempt. The eloquence of his acidic barbs is a delight.
Welles must have been in a gothic mood at the time, as Malpertuis and 1971’s Necromancy, from classic schlock horror director Bert I. Gordon, are his only two outright horror movies. However, anyone expecting the genre’s traditional chills and thrills will be sorely disappointed by Malpertuis. Like many 1970s “horror” movies from Europe, it’s more of an art film, something readers of the original 1943 novel will be prepared for.
Jean Ray’s surrealist text has been considered unfilmable, and, to its credit, Kümel and his trusted writing partner, Jean Ferry, don’t compromise much in adapting it. As a result, Malpertuis is disorienting and dreamlike, willfully failing the rules of narrative logic. There’s intentionality to that, though; after all, the film’s opening line is, “It’s pretty, but it’s a bit difficult to understand.”
The fact that Kümel and editor Richard Marden were rushed to create a cut of the film for the Cannes Film Festival only made Malpertuis more incoherent. While distributors attempted some profit-driven butchering across different releases (retitling it The Legend of Doom House), this Radiance release presents Kümel’s longer, original vision (and also includes the Cannes cut, one of many great special features).
The enigmatic film follows Jan (an extremely Aryan Mathieu Carrière), a young, blonde sailor who docks in his Flemish hometown and follows someone who resembles his sister to his uncle’s estate. The empty, ghostly streets of the port town contrast with the comically villainous men trying to steer Jan to the titular castle, prefiguring the film’s many tonal disparities.
Kümel (whose 1971 film Daughters of Darkness is also being reissued by Radiance) establishes the inscrutable atmosphere immediately, a bizarre and decidedly European combination of 19th-century gothic, 1970s erotic arthouse à la Jean Rollin, 1940s surrealism, and sex comedy farces. The strange ambience is heightened by the excellent production design of the castle’s interior, where Jan reunites with his sister, one of many people waiting for Cassavius’ riches when he finally dies.
Cassavius wants Jan to continue in his footsteps as well, and we don’t find out until the end of Malpertuis, a spoiler that contextualizes many of the seemingly non-sequitur moments that have come before. If you want the film to make more sense while you’re watching it, look up the plot of Ray’s 1943 book. Otherwise, there are plenty of hints throughout that make the mystery solvable while retaining the film’s oneiric qualities.
To inherit Cassavius’ will, his employees and family members must never leave the estate, which immediately presents some logical fallacies. Again, though, Malpertuis is woven from symbolist dreams and the deconstructed threads of mythopoetics. Ultimately, it’s arguably about how capitalism has overtaken spirituality as the West’s new religion. In many ways, Ray’s book applied Feuerbach’s The Essence of Christianity (1841)—man–made God—to Homeric stories and the rest of humanity’s myths, and the film does the same.
You need not dig deep to enjoy Malpertuis, though. It’s pleasantly goofy at times, rounded out by a scheming cast of wicked or strange characters, and has enough ghoulish moments to be technically branded a horror film. The score from the legendary Georges Delerue is sumptuous, romantic, and mysterious, perfectly complementing the gothic aesthetic. The color palette, especially the greens and reds, is gorgeous, and especially pops in Radiance’s 4K release.
Unfortunately, the distributors were right about one thing: at a full two hours, the director’s cut of Malpertuis is long, compromising good pacing for exposition. It also doesn’t know how to end, with multiple fake-outs that are less dreamlike than frustrating. This was perhaps an attempt to mimic the novel’s Matryoshka doll narrative, but it doesn’t work so well by stacking endings on top of one another.
Radiance, which usually includes a few good special features, outdoes itself with the supplements for Malpertuis. In addition to commentary by Harry Kümel and assistant director Françoise Levie, there are multiple interviews (both new and archival), a short film by Kümel, a featurette on Welles, a featurette on Ray, the Cannes cut of the film, and, apparently, an 80-page booklet if you get the limited edition. Knowing the quality of Radiance releases, it’s worth it.
Matt Mahler
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