Horror Classic 12 of 50: THE TERROR

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I'm now 12 movies into watching a DVD set that includes 50 movies. When I started this crazy venture, I wondered how long it would take me to get sick of bad old public domain terror movies, and the answer is: now.

This week I felt my first pangs of Horror Classic fatigue as I faced 1963's The Terror, a film directed by the prolific Roger Corman (see also Creature From the Haunted Sea) and starring Boris Karloff and a very young Jack Nicholson. I had seen this film once before and I remembered that it wasn't great. Ah, but there was one aspect of The Terror that excited me: It's the first movie in the Horror Classics set to be filmed in color! Would this make it more watchable? Hmm...

Synopsis
It's 1806, and Jack Nicholson plays Andre, a French soldier who's wandering the along coast when he discovers a mysterious and alluring woman. She says her name is Elaine... and then she walks right into the pounding surf. Andre jumps in after her, only to be attacked by a bird, then he blacks out. Friggin' bird.

When he comes to, he's in a cottage with an old lady who insists there's no such thing as a girl named Elaine. But that night when Andre is out in the forest, he sees Elaine again, follows her around for a while, and smooches her. Because what else do you do with a crazy, spacey woman you just met? The old lady's servant, Gustav, shows up and tells Andre that Elaine is possessed, and he must go to the castle of Baron Victor von Leppe to save her.

When Andre arrives at the castle, he sees Elaine in a window. Peekaboo! But when Baron von Leppe (Boris Karloff!) welcomes him in, he claims that what Andre saw was a painting of his wife Ilsa, who has been dead for 20 years. Andre hangs out in the castle for several days, and he sees Elaine/Ilsa several times. He's determined to get to the bottom of things, but it clearly won't be easy. All the while, Baron von Leppe is haunted by the disembodied voice of Ilsa, and the old lady lurks around in the shadows.

In the end, it turns out that Ilsa was cheating on Victor with a guy named Eric, and Victor and his servant killed them, and the old lady has vowed revenge on Victor for reasons of her own and blah blah blah, and everybody dies. Well, not everybody. But some of them.

Is It Scary?
Um... no. No, it's not.

Lessons I Learned

  • Witches get struck by lightning when they enter a chapel.
  • Women are much less attractive when they're melting.
My Favorite Line
ANDRE: "You seem to have things confused in your mind. You're the servant... I'll ask the questions."

Body Count
I'm not certain about this, but I think it was four.

Comments
According to Wikipedia's page on this movie, the film was actually directed by five people, including Nicholson and a young Francis Ford Coppola. Considering this, the movie could have been a lot more disjointed, but it still wasn't very interesting.

Jack Nicholson's performance in this is pretty terrible, reminiscent of a little kid in a school play: He knows the words, but he makes no attempt at convincing us that he's actually saying them and not just reading them.
Boris Karloff is pretty good. He's not as spooky as Bela Lugosi, but he probably had more acting range. I'd like to see one of the films they made together... maybe if I'm lucky, one of them will show up here. Baron von Leppe's servant Stefan is played by veteran actor Dick Miller. He appeared in many Roger Corman films over the years, and he's been in just about every movie directed by Joe Dante (Gremlins, Small Soldiers, Innerspace).

I'm still not quite sure what the titular Terror was, but I suppose The Terror makes for a better and more specific title than A Terror or Some Terror or One of Those Terrors.

Letter grade for The Terror: C-

Next movie in the DVD set: Revolt of the Zombies



[Note: My initial attempts to find an image of the poster for this movie proved unsuccessful, so I whipped up this image. I ended up finding the poster, but I wanted to toss this in anyway.]

Comments

Anonymous said…
Just watched this film on Joost. Pretty good review, but you make one mistake: (spoiler) the "Baron" is dead, and the old fellow being the Baron is really Eric, Ilsa's lover, and the son of the old witch. Ironically, she has unwittingly been trying to have her own commit suicide.
January 24, 2009 at 8:03 PM
Ryan Roe said…
Thanks for the clarification. I wasn't really going for accuracy in that paragraph... I was just trying to give an impression of all the craziness of those "shocking" twists.
January 26, 2009 at 1:15 PM
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