Halloween Diary - The Horror of It All (1963) 🎃

Terence Fisher has his own share of memorable horror classics, but I don't think The Horror of It All (1963) is particularly that known. Pat Boone is an American working in England selling encyclopedias, looking to marry a local from London whose family is rich, clumsily pushing his car past a pothole in the road and off a cliff! The kooky, quirky family with one among them looking to bump off the rest for their entire fortune is quite a shopworn story, but I never personally tire of it. There is always some variation on the theme. Some retooling or tinkering involved to add personality to the story. There isn't a whole lot here not done better elsewhere, but Boone being chased by a lunatic who barely flinches when bottles break across his head has its charm. Boone barely escapes being crushed in one of those trap rooms with a mechanized enclosing lift, drops down trapdoor floors, and narrowly avoids a planted tarantula in a bed. So despite the fortune being important to the family, Boone is the one always in danger. And Price is the master of disguise, faking his own death. I just recently watched Price as a heel in another film for Fisher: The Earth Dies Screaming.

Valentine Dyall is among the family with that distinctive voice and features used to great effect in The Haunting (1963) and City of the Dead (1960). Here he has a scene very similar to Vincent Price in House of Usher (1960), Dyall giving Boone a history lesson about his accursed family.

For my 2017 blog review click Here