House of the Living Dead

House of the Living Dead
Directed by	Ray Austin
Produced by	Matt Drucker Phillip N. Krasne Basil Rabin
Written by	Marc Marais
Starring	Mark Burns Shirley Anne Field David Oxley Margaret Inglis
Music by	Peter J. Elliott (as Peter Elliot)
Cinematography	Lionel Friedberg (lighting cameraman) ! editing = Diana Friedberg (as Diana Ginsberg)
Production company	Associated Film Productions
Release date	1974
Running time	86 min.
Country	Great Britain
Language	English

Lionel Friedberg (lighting cameraman)

House of the Living Dead, also known as Doctor Maniac, is a British/South African international co-production Gothic horror and science fiction film made in 1974 under the title Skaduwees Oor Brugplaas (Shadows over Bridge Place) by director Ray Austin. Set on a plantation in Apartheid-era South Africa, it deals heavily with the occult. Its tagline is "It drives you mad before it kills!"

The storyline follows a white family running a plantation farm on the Cape Colony in South Africa. The family consists of a mother (Margaret Inglis) and her two sons, Michael and Breck (both played by Mark Burns). Michael runs the house while Breck spends his time alone in his room, deformed and insane, conducting experiments to try to prove the soul is an organic object able to live outside the human body. Michael's fiancée Mary (Shirley Anne Field) arrives to marry him, much to the mother's dismay as she wants the family to end so the long history of madness can stop. Meanwhile, strange things begin to happen at the plantation, such as voodoo, which is assumed to be the work of the local black neighbors, and murder.

Mark Burns was recognized as Best Actor at the 1974 Sitges Film Festival.