以著名俄罗斯作家普希金所写的一鬼故事为蓝本的黑桃皇后,是传奇人物式的导演梭罗德狄金森最成功的作品之一.黑桃皇后被马丁西塞科斯誉为绝对的大片,它也是英国电影黄金时期中突破性的独特作品.作为一部煽情的和另一个毛骨悚然的贺岁片,黑桃皇后将会带来一次难忘之旅.她怪异的象征主义将使观众大饱眼福,并且产生一丝不安情绪.萦绕不去。一名军官对扑克牌上了瘾,且相信有一个年老的女伯爵掌握了纸牌游戏百战百胜的秘密.军官对纸牌的着魔使他进入了炼狱般的疯狂，伤人和谋杀.

American psychologist John Holden arrives in London to participate in a symposium aiming to expose witchcraft and devil-worship as a fraud, with attention centered on a cult run by a Julian Karswell. Debarking his plane, Holden learns that the symposium leader, Henry Harrington, has suddenly died and he is now in charge. What only the audience knows is that Harrington was clearly killed by a demon, apparently summoned by Karswell to avenge his persecution. Despite both threatening and cajoling behavior by Karswell, Holden determines to proceed, though the only cult member willing to talk about his experiences is in a prison psychiatric ward, catatonic after allegedly killing yet another cult member. However, Harrington's niece, Joanna, believes, based on her uncle's notes, that Karswell may indeed have some satanic powers derived from an ancient tome in an obscure language which he has been able to translate, and attempts to warn the skeptic Holden. Karswell's mother also attempts to warn Holden off. However, the thing which begins to most get to Holden are the occasional, but mounting, sensory and mental disturbances he begins experiencing after an encounter with Karswell, and the discovery that, during this encounter, Karswell secretly slipped a slip of parchment with a curse in runic symbols on it into Holden's belongings, a parchment identical to one Harrington recorded having had passed to him in a similar manner shortly before his death... [N.B. Holden at no point stays at the Karswell estate].