BORDER OF DARKNESS

Gothic saturnalia, you might say, in which a young English girl Joanna is hired to instruct a motherless boy in the Harz mountains -- apparently the natural habitat of witches as well as canaries. Stefan, the youngster, seems frightened by forces difficult to identify; his father becomes increasingly subject to seizures; one servant is killed and the others finally defect while Joanna, in order to save the boy, makes her fleshly pact with the devil. Mr Latimer has worked this up from what seems like old-time residuals of both genres which might suggest it's for the hindmost.