The Terror

A soldier is separated from his regiment, finally falls from his horse in a weakened condition, and meets, while face down on a beach near a rushing-waves sea, a mysterious beauty who leads him to clear drinkable water pouring adamantly from a mountain. Of few words and seemingly vacant a personality, she seems “off”, a bit distant, as if her mind were far away. There are times, however, where she seems to awaken from a type of catatonia only to drift away into that nothingness, eventually breaking away from him, disappearing, leaving him bewildered as to where she went and, more importantly, curious of who she really is. The Terror has one of those library scores for poverty row Gothic horror melodramas, creating a dream-like aura that seems to indicate that all is not well in the setting where the lead character finds himself. Typically, a horror movie set in a castle far removed from the current active state of war or civilization, located near a beach with sea and mountains, has some sort of history regarding the owner, especially if he seems to be hiding something or just not particularly inviting to the outsider who rides in, whether intentionally or unintentionally.

The Terror is the movie that would often (and maybe still does..) appear on those shows advertising aluminum siding and feature that smiling host who’d interrupt the movie right when it would get interesting. It is definitely one of the darlings of those public domain packages, the kind that would often hang in the check out aisle next to the little flashlights, faux leather wallets, and cigarette lighters. You’d see on the cover STARRING BORIS KARLOFF & JACK NICHOLSON, and companies like Mill Creek would exploit the leads for all their worth, pricing the dvds for about $2.00. I’m pretty sure The Terror has made the rounds on every kind of public access channel or midnight chiller theatre. It is about 70 minutes long and the perfect kind of low budget Gothic horror oddity with the star power needed to help it remain an item of interest.

I have to say, though, that when I watch it I can see how little it cost Corman. He wasn’t about to miss another opportunity to use under-contract Karloff, who is stuck with one of those long-ass aristocratic names, Baron Victor Frederick Von Leppe…it is definitely a mouth full. Nicholson is bland but his name recognition value has continued to help sell The Terror to curious viewers, in this film as a French soldier, Lt. Andre Duvalier, who encounters Victor’s twenty-year dead wife, Ilsa Von Leppe, a restless spirit who haunts the grounds and castle of Von Leppe, forced to do the bidding of a vengeance-seeking witch who lives in a *cottage* (more like a shack, but I’m being kind..) nearby. Ilsa was in bed with some local named Erik and Baron was pissed and killed her while Victor’s manservant, Stefan (Dick Miller, playing his part deadly serious; this is one of Dick’s most intense characters) took out the lover, but this history could or could not be accurate.

So the witch—with reasons explained later—wants Baron to suffer and Stefan isn’t about to escape unscathed, either. Anyone that stands in the witch’s way (like a rough-voiced peasant who gets his eyes gouged out by the witch’s pet terror bird because he tries to get Andre to help the ghost be free from her servitude) is in danger. This film has the Von Leppe crypt (including an underground chamber housing the caskets holding the corpse of the Baroness and the Baron’s empty one) and fog-consumed graveyard (with the customary tilting tombstones). Victor is constantly told by the spirit of Ilsa to take his own life in penance for hers by flooding the crypt and submerging them with water.  Of course the Baron is chicken shit and not so willing to just drown himself so the witch’s mission will be challenged by his not-so-keen desire to perish through suicide. Oh, but this is a Corman production so you know one way or another not only will the crypt be flooded but the castle itself will also fall—no, it will crumble. It certainly does collapse, let me tell you.

This movie continues to get weirder and weirder. First off, it has a twist that is quite the head-scratcher as it turns the plot on its head in regards to who murdered who and the witch’s mission of revenge. Karloff provides the guilt and sorrow, the weariness and decades-long anguish his character suffers. You never see him where that fateful night twenty years in his past doesn’t weigh on his conscience, on his soul. The witch was so yearning for revenge she gave her soul to the dark lord and her death at the consuming fire of angry bolts of lightning is only defeated in strangeness by the *dissolving* corpse of Ilsa once she’s “freed” from her master’s command. I love Jack’s reaction after kissing her, the way her face eventually melts to mush.

The Terror was recently the topic of conversation as it was a surprise new gem for a user on the imdb horror board who wasn’t expecting anything from it at all during October 2012. Since it was on my mind, I thought I’d give it another viewing. It was fitting for a late Friday night. It is still rather a mess to me, and looks thrown together with an end that kind of happens in a flurry, but seeing Karloff and Sandra Knight (Ilsa) in a scuffle as water and toppling stone threaten to engulf them is rather bizarre..even better, Miller joins in the fray and Nicholson must come to rescue Knight, only to watch her beauty fade into a melted skull.

This movie came towards the end of Karloff’s career and at the beginning of Nicholson’s. It came after Little Shop of Horrors, so I think audiences knew he could leave an impression, but this film doesn’t have anything that challenged him. Those kinds of parts came later. This was ’63 so old fashioned haunted castle period Gothic was still in style, in vogue, but starting to fade as Vietnam and sexual liberation changed cinema. Nicholson would become a part of the changing culture where film reflected what was going on in the current world. Karloff, by that time, would pass away before his kinds of films were considered passé and out of date. I think, though, that Targets, a modern film that commented on Karloff’s legacy but actually allowed him to portray a realistic character in a realistic time and changing world, was a refreshing change for the icon. It served as a homage to Karloff but also speaks about how his past films were nothing compared to the evil and violence pervading the world in '68. Its use of The Terror is significant in that it works as an example of Karloff’s waning days before death while the modern time of Targets comments on a career that remains popular to the public but shows an actor tired and burned out from the types of roles such as his Baron Victor Von Leppe. I’m personally happy he made both in the same decade, and that Corman gave filmmakers a certain amount of freedom, letting them cut their teeth under little money, restraining them and forcing them to cut corners and learn to do a lot with very little…hence, The Terror.