Mary’s first horror feature, The Boarding School was, interestingly, made in Spain but set in France. A creepy chiller featuring Lilli Palmer and John Moulder Brown, it became somewhat notorious for its slow-motion close-up of one of its many murders.
In Crucible of Terror, Mary played opposite ex-pirate-DJ Mike Raven, who had “gone legit” with his weekly R & B show on the newly-formed Radio 1. His career move into horror movies in 1971, was not fortuitous. His distinctive deep voice was replaced by another actor’s in Hammer’s Lust for a Vampire and after making four films in the space of a year, he went off to be a sheep farmer and sculptor.
Alongside her appearances in horror films, Mary was kept busy in a host of classic British televison series, from Crossroads to Man in a Suitcase, A Traveller in Time to Bread.
However, on the horror front, Mary’s most elusive film is the 1973 Spanish picture La Muerte Incierta (Uncertain Death). Helmed by the prodigious director Jose Ramon Larraz, it seems that the film was only ever shown in Spain and Italy. Never released video or DVD, it is one of the great “lost” movies among horror fans.