The Terror (1963)

The Terror (1963)

Dir by (deep breath) Roger Corman (only credited director), Francis Ford Coppola (!), Jack Hale, Monte Hellman, Jack Hill, Dennis Jakob, Jack Nicholson

Written by Leo Gordon, Jack Hill

Starring Jack Nicholson, Boris Karloff, Sandra Knight, Dick Miller, Sandra Neumann

First off --and as near as I can tell I am the first living person with the particular cross-section of personality flaws that would allow for the discovery of this fact-- the establishing shots of the imposing castle punctuated by lightning that begin THE TERROR are clearly the inspiration for the animated establishing shot of a isolated castle which was first used in Johnny Quest (which began production the next year), but subsequently became better known as the Laboratory of Dr. Weird, South Jersey Shore, in Aqua Teen Hunger Force, the show so powerful it once shut down the city of Boston.

Behold!

That might seem like an odd detail to begin on, but it’s actually the most appropriate starting point imaginable, because THE TERROR is all about Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. In fact, that’s how it came to exist in the first place. Having just completed THE RAVEN, Roger Corman decided to take advantage of the fact that the sets had not yet been torn down and he still had Boris Karloff’s phone number, to shoot two days of Karloff basically just doing stuff in an impressive (but increasingly sparsely decorated) castle set, figuring they’d fill in the rest of the plot later. Karloff was understandably reluctant, but was somehow convinced it would be an easy payday when he was promised $15,000 once the film had grossed $150,000. Apparently more of an optimist than his long history in the industry would lead one to imagine, Karloff somehow thought this was possible (it didn’t even come close). When three years passed and it became clear Karloff was never going to see that money, Corman then dangled the offer of finally collecting on that elusive $15,000 bonus… if Karloff would star in one more movie for him (which turned out to be 1968’s Peter Bogdanovich-directed TARGETS). And that’s how Roger Corman turned one castle set into two no-budget horror thrillers and three Boris Karloff projects (or at least, three films with Boris Karloff’s name on the poster). Don’t feel bad, Boris, there’s no shame in losing to the best.

Amazingly, despite all that, the movie isn’t a total disaster. It’s pretty narratively unfocused, of course, but it does have a story that, while a bit haphazardly plotted, is at least vaguely identifiable. Like some of the Italian movies of its era, it gets by on a kind of hazy dream logic, where nothing exactly makes complete sense in any kind of concrete, rational way, but the broad strokes of the drama are clear enough. It even builds to a kind of legitimately crazy twist which I gotta admit, I never saw coming (because it comes out of fucking nowhere and they apparently made it up in editing when they realized that the movie they had shot made no sense, but still).

So what is the story? Uh, that’s a little hard to pin down, exactly. But basically, it involves a Napoleonic soldier (Jack Nicholson! LITTLE SHOP OF HORROR) who nearly drowns in the ocean like a damned idiot while pursuing the silent ghostly apparition of a woman named Helene (Sandra Knight, BLOOD BATH, and newly married to Nicholson [they would divorce in 1968, the same year Karloff finally got paid]). It’s immediately obvious to everyone except Nicholson that Helene is a ghost, but this fucking moron cannot get that fact through his skull no matter how many times she disappears impossibly right in front of him or people tell him no, Helene’s been dead for years. So he goes to a nearby castle occupied by Baron Von Leppe (Boris Karloff, THE RAVEN, THE TERROR, TARGETS) and demands that he be allowed to stay there until he can find this mystery girl, despite the fact that the Baron and everybody else tell him directly that there is no girl there, and this is a private residence and not a fucking boarding house for horny soldiers trying to bang the local ghostly co-eds. (Incidentally, this is exactly why we have a Third Amendment in the US Constitution, so Jack Nicholson can’t just show up at your house and say he’s gonna hang out there while he tries to seal the deal with the ghost of a dead queen or whatever). Of course, this inevitably leads to a convoluted mystery about who Helene is and why she is haunting the place, and I mean really convoluted, because it involves witchcraft, hypnotism, possession, spousal infidelity, Dick Miller, murder, mistaken identity, and dissociative identity disorder (all that was a spoiler, I guess, but good luck trying to figure out how it all fits together. Heck, I just saw the movie, and even I could barely offer a theory about how exactly it's all supposed to work).

Nicholson is a complete, unmitigated disaster with the stilted old-fashioned dialogue, which handily defuses every single one of his strengths as an actor (and has there ever been a more thoroughly modern actor, less suited to antiquarian affectations, than Jack Nicholson?) but Karloff, even on set for a scant few days, acting with only the vaguest hint of a script while the sets were being dismantled around him, still puts in the effort. He has this little thing he does, where he mischievously arches one eyebrow, which I am just incapable of not falling for. It exemplifies exactly why he works here and Nicholson doesn’t; Nicholson is trying to play a character here, and there’s just nothing for him to work with. Karloff, on the other hand, is just trying to entertain. “Me, act? I just make faces,” said his THE RAVEN co-star Peter Lorre,* a cheeky but somewhat revealing insight into the style of acting employed by much of the generation which preceded Nicholson. Karloff, for his part, makes great faces, big and broad and theatrical but (mostly) without irony. He’s not mugging or indulging in any kind of arch camp (like his other RAVEN co-star, Vincent Price), he just figures that hey, the kids paid good money** to see this turkey, might as well give them the maximum possible acting by volume. Hell, they even managed to drag the 76-year-old actor (he was born in 1887) into a fight scene in chest-deep water, which honestly seems like it would qualify as elder abuse. I guarantee he had no idea what the hell he was doing, but he always knows to be entertaining, which is every bit what a movie like this requires.  

The movie itself is a little less lively than Karloff; there’s a little bit of action, a couple minor setpiece sequences, but mostly it finds a nice groove of spooky, dreamy ghost story, and parts of it actually look quite nice. There’s a sequence with a rotating multi-colored lantern that casts different colors on Dick Miller’s face which would be recycled for Karloff’s CURSE OF THE CRIMSON ALTAR and probably looks even better here. It’s uneventful and the acting is sometimes a little dodgy, but it looks suitably stately, and certainly not like a movie which was thrown together haphazardly in a matter of days just to get some extra value out of a corny castle set. Hell, there are a dozen major-budget movies which came out this year which don’t look half as good. It’s twice as coherent and five times prettier than SUICIDE SQUAD, for example. Not that it’s a visual feast or anything, it just makes the most of some nice-looking sets and locations, in classic Corman style doing as much as possible with as few resources as possible. The huge entrance hall he purloined from THE RAVEN has been stripped to almost nothing compared with its imposing opulence in that movie (you really miss the fire-breathing statues, which really tied the place together in my opinion) but just to make sure the space doesn’t look entirely drab, Corman or one of his dozen uncredited directors*** sprinkle the background liberally with brightly colored candlesticks arranged in geometric formations. It couldn’t have cost more than ten bucks, but exactly the sort of thing that separates a lazy, monotonous cheap movie from a watchable one.

            I’m not saying it’s a classic or anything, but if you’re a fan of this era of Corman schlock (it is often grouped with his Poe movies, even though it’s an outlier which, unlike THE RAVEN or THE HAUNTED PALACE doesn’t even pretend to be based on Poe) it’s got the vibe you want. And hey, that set from THE RAVEN does look fly as hell. There are certainly worse reasons to make a movie.

            * See Stephen Youngkin’s biography of Lorre, The Lost One: A Life of Peter Lorre

            ** Although you don’t have to, as in their haste to crank THE TERROR out they neglected to add copyright information to the credits. I highly recommend that you avail yourself of this very nice-looking youtube version instead of the VHS-quality one that Amazon Prime, with their usual shamelessness, is trying to hustle as content for their paid service, the charlatans.

*** The minute budget precluded Corman himself from directing certain segments as per union rules, requiring a rotating cast of novices he was mentoring including a very young Francis Coppola, Monte Hellman, and Jack Hill.

CHAINSAWNUKAH 2017 CHECKLIST!

The Discreet Charm of the Killing Spree

TAGLINE	DRACULA…. FRANKENSTEIN… HOUSE OF WAX… PIT AND THE PENDULUM… and Now A New Classic Of Horror Comes To The Screen. If you’re gonna lie, lie big.
TITLE ACCURACY	Given its historical French setting, I genuinely thought this was going to be about either the Reign of Terror or the Great Fear. But it turns out to be about neither, and no one is ever terrified at any point (there is a ghost, but Nicholson is horny for her instead of terrified).
LITERARY ADAPTATION?	No, which is impressive given that they could have passed it off as Poe without really losing any more credibility than they had already lost when they made THE RAVEN about dueling wizards.
SEQUEL?	Arguably part of Corman’s loose “Poe Cycle” of 1960-1965, though also arguably not.
REMAKE?	None
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN	USA
HORROR SUB-GENRE	Ghost/ Haunting
SLUMMING A-LISTER?	Nicholson and Francis Coppola, very early in his career
BELOVED HORROR ICON?	Karloff, Corman, Dick Miller.
NUDITY?	No
SEXUAL ASSAULT?	None
WHEN ANIMALS ATTACK!	Hawk attack!
GHOST/ ZOMBIE / HAUNTED BUILDING?	Yes
POSSESSION?	Some old lady, like, hypnotizes the ghost, I think?
CREEPY DOLLS?	None
EVIL CULT?	None, though the implication of witchcraft.
MADNESS?	Certainly!
TRANSMOGRIFICATION?	No
VOYEURISM?	Dick Miller watches some villainous hypnotism through a window
MORAL OF THE STORY	It’s not necrophilia if she’s a ghost