A young man goes out on a painting trip, but takes a wrong turn. Rather conveniently, a lovely young lady by the roadside explains to his amazement that he's fifty miles out of his way, but directs him to a nearby inn.
Approaching the inn, he hears the sound of a wild party inside, but when the door opens, there is nothing to be heard. A lady fiction-writer is staying here looking for ghosts, and won't leave until she meets one. Next day, he is chatting to her in the hotel garden, when the young lady joins them, but denies that she has ever met him. She is particularly friendly, however, and allows him to paint her portrait. Things get even more puzzling through the night, for reasons we can't reveal...
The film is an indigestible mix of Old Dark House clichés: the regulation spooky butler, the sinister candle-shadows, the secret room that's been locked for thirty years. Plus those party-sounds coming back and back. (One of the scenes looks like Dracula without the teeth!)
This is the revived One Step Beyond series, almost twenty years on, re-titled The Next Step Beyond, hosted by the same John Newland, only with somewhat greying hair. As in the previous series, he can't actually claim it's a true story. Where he previously used the masterly disclaimer "drawn from human record", he now goes a little stronger with "based on an actual investigated and documented case-history of psychic phenomena". I only wish the story carried more credibility to match, but it doesn't.
The most notable feature is the unusually high glamour-rating of the two ladies, especially Patricia Joyce as the young ghost, looking half her true age of forty-four.
