The Terror

1963 terrorble movie

Rating: 8/20

Plot: French officer Andre Duvalier wanders lost on a beach. He spots cleavage and tries to chase it down. "Come back here, cleavage!" he screams. Then a bird attacks him. He eventually loses the woman and finds himself in an old lady's house with (Warning: Here comes some terror!) THE SAME BIRD THAT ATTACKED HIM. She tells him of a castle with the Baron So-and-So in it, and he decides to go there to look for the woman. Then, there's all kinds of terror. And then there's even more terror!

It's really not hard to believe that this was written and shot in just four days using the same set as the just-finished The Raven. Actually, it is hard to believe that this was written at all. It's almost completely incomprehensible, almost more the story of Jack Nicholson drowning in a gigantic cauldron of plotless sludge than anything else. It's also hard to believe that it took not only Roger Corman but four other directors (including Coppola and Bogdanovich) to complete this mess. But perhaps that's why it's the mess that it is. This lacks the atmosphere of the Poe movies, and although Nicholson is pretty good (and fun to watch as he's starting to discover his voice), Karloff looks bored and confused in his scenes. The shocking finale, involving a bunch of water and a character who slowly turns into what I believe is chocolate pudding, is a laugher, but it's not worth sitting through the rest of the boring seventy-some minutes to get to it. The lesson we can take from The Terror? I think it's that you have to write the movie before you shoot it.