Lovecraft's "Great Old One" has nothing better to do than build up a body count in CTHULHU MANSION, on Blu-ray from Vinegar Syndrome.

After punk Hawk (Brad Fisher) stabs drug dealer Eddie (Emilio Linder, SLUGS) in a carnival ride and steals his stash, he and his gang attempt to hotwire a getaway car only for young Chris (Luis Fernando Alvés) to be shot in the leg by the cop Hawk and hulking Billy (Paul Birchard, 1408) have nearly beaten to death. Fleeing the cops and Eddie's partner Fatman (Ronald Faval), the gang – including Billy's frizzy-haired girlfriend Candy (Kaethe Cherney), and Hawk's girlfriend and Chris' older sister Eva (Melanie Shatner, BLOODSTONE: SUBSPECIES II) – force stage magician Chandu (Frank Finlay, LIFEFORCE), his daughter Lisa (Marcia Layton), and their mute assistant Felix (Frank Braña, GRAVEYARD OF HORROR) to get them off the carnival property. Discovering that the police have set up roadblocks at the town borders, Hawk decides the gang should hide out at Chandu's isolated mansion despite the older man warning them that it is a bad idea. In between brutalizing their hostages, the gang split up to have sex, vandalize antiques, and replace fuses; whereupon Billy and Lisa stumble upon a locked basement room and unleash a force of evil conjured up by Chandu in his experiments to test the reality of the occult.

Opening with an appropriately "theatrical" stage act – scored by Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor – that turns tragic and followed by a title sequence featuring some atmospheric scenes of Chandu and his late Leonora (also Layton) coming across a Lovecraftian tome (not the Necronomicon) that looks more like a fanmade comic book, Juan Piquer Simon's CTHULHU MANSION soon becomes an eighties body count horror film that has less to do with Lovecraft than THE UNNAMABLE and more with MONSTER DOG (minus Alice Cooper) or even Larraz's more atmospheric DEADLY MANOR. There is a modicum of atmosphere thanks to the camerawork of Julio Bragado (HOWL OF THE DEVIL) and the usage of the same country house seen in Naschy films like VENGEANCE OF THE ZOMBIES and HOUSE OF PSYCHOTIC WOMEN (as well as Carlos Puerto's SATAN'S BLOOD which Simon produced), but the score of composer Tim Souster sounds about a decade older than the film (although perhaps more appropriate than his London Symphony Orchestra-performed score for SLUGS) but the creature and gore effects of Colin Arthur (VAMPYRES) – along with some mostly invisible matte and miniature work by Emilio Ruiz (DUNE) – take a back seat to much inanity that is not even silly enough to entertain. One cannot help but think that Empire Pictures or Full Moon might have fared better with the material. CTHULHU MANSION was the last of Simon's films to secure a wide release, his final two films MANOA, THE CITY OF GOLD and DEVIL'S ISLAND returning to the fantasy roots of his earlier FANTASTIC JOURNEY TO THE CENTRE OF THE EARTH/WHERE TIME BEGAN and MYSTERY ON MONSTER ISLAND.

Although sales agent/uncredited producer Overseas Film Group marketed the film as BLACK MAGIC MANSION, it was back to CTHULHU MANSION when Republic Picture released the film on VHS. Current rights owner Filmrise has had a PAL-mastered widescreen 1.78:1 version streaming on their YouTube page, but Vinegar Syndrome's 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC widescreen Blu-ray comes from a 2K restoration of 35mm archival elements and is framed at 1.66:1, possibly revealing a bit too much headroom to the few soundstage sets but restoring a certain cinematic luster to a film that looked murky and smeary on home video. While the prosthetics work does not always fare well in HD, the quaint in-camera effects like some reverse motion shots are entertaining in their artifice. The DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 mono track boasts clear dialogue, music, and effects but the mix is like the rest of the film in pretty much going by the numbers. Optional English SDH subtitles are included in which Chandu's wife is referred to as Lenore even though he calls her Leonora several times.

Extras kick off with "The Simon's Jigsaw: A Trip to the Universe of Juan Piquer Simón" (101:20), a 2015 documentary by Luis Esquinas hosted by Lone Fleming (TOMBS OF THE BLIND DEAD) in which Simon's surviving collaborators – among them actors Linder, Antonio Mayans (OASIS OF THE ZOMBIES), Hilda Fuchs (PIECES), and Jack Taylor (FEMALE VAMPIRE), cinematographer Juan Marine (THE RIFT), effects artists Arthur, Basilio Cortijo (MOON CHILD), Domingo Lizcano (MUCHA SANGRE), and María Luisa Pino (RED SONJA), director Carlos Puerto (SATAN'S BLOOD), and editor Pedro del Ray (NIGHT OF THE WEREWOLF) – as well as contemporary filmmakers like Victor Matellano (the VAMPYRES remake) note Simon's mainstream and literary influences, but makes the case for Simon as an innovator in Spanish cinema which had special effects technicians but not the kind of Hollywood-type effects houses and specializers until required for Simon's effects-heavy films. The film follows a loose chronology from FANTASTIC JOURNEY TO THE CENTRE OF THE EARTH and SATAN'S BLOOD – with Puerto crediting Simon on letting him come up with a concept within a set of budgetary limitations – through his "bigger" films like SUPERSONIC MAN for which the crew had to consult with the effects artists of SUPERMAN for the flying rig and front projection system, PIECES, and THE RIFT.