‘There’s no rest for the wicked…’
The Terror is a 1963 horror film about a young officer in Napoleon’s Army who pursues a strange woman to a castle inhabited by an elderly Baron.
Produced and directed by Roger Corman – plus others discussed below – from a screenplay written by Leo Gordon and Jack Hill (Spider Baby) the movie stars Boris Karloff, Jack Nicholson, Sandra Knight and Dick Miller.
Review:
The plot follows a young soldier in the Napoleonic Wars who lost, pursues visions of an alluring phantom woman and stumbles across a castle inhabited by a menacing baron (working title Lady of the Shadows was a more apt and evocative choice).
The story of the making of The Terror has become a B-movie legend (well, one of many B-movie legends), testifying to the brilliant/dreaded low-budget opportunism of producer-director Roger Corman, here in the glory of his financially lucrative 1960s Edgar Allen Poe cycle. Corman had just wrapped photography on a (by his scale) physically lavish comedy-fantasy takeoff on Poe’s solemn poem The Raven, ahead of schedule. American International Productions (AIP) still had about five days’ worth of contractual obligation for Harry Reif’s grandiose castle set, and key actors Boris Karloff and young Jack Nicholson were still available.
Instead of giving everyone a rest, Corman plunged right ahead into another Gothic chiller project without a script and just a vague idea of what the plot was to be about. He filmed Karloff meandering about corridors and dungeons, confronting Jack about buried family skeletons in hastily-written dialogue by Leo Gordon (“What is the meaning of this intrusion?”), and hoped to patch it together into something coherent in post-production, with extra expository footage.
What resulted: Nicholson as French lieutenant Andre Duvalier, gone astray from the wars in 1806, repeatedly sees a bewitching but furtive young lady, Elaine (sensuous Sandra Knight was Mrs Jack Nicholson at the time, and pregnant). Advised by a villager that the girl is “possessed,” Andre heads to a forbidding seacoast castle where answers supposedly await.
Within is a mysterious Baron Victor Von Leppe (Karloff) who assures the soldier that there was no live woman; Elaine was Baroness Ilsa, dead now (murdered by the Baron himself for her infidelity) twenty years ago. Lovestruck Andre doesn’t buy it, and horror movie rules require the small cast to stay around, opening doors on mouldering ghosts and uncovering local dark secrets and revenge until the whole thing literally goes to pieces.
Among novice filmmakers on Corman’s payroll to whom the auteur delegated chores of reshoots to shape The Terror into coherence were Jack Hill, associate producer Francis Ford Coppola, Monte Hellman, Jack Hale, Dennis Jakob and even Jack Nicholson himself. Months later, supposedly, Corman had to do still more reshoots to make it releasable.
Results are patchy indeed, and fairly stodgy, and if one sits through to the “surprise” ending and tries to suss out the plot in reverse, it makes no sense. Yet…it could have been worse. As with much of Corman’s early material, one must apply a degree of artistic relativism; if you think getting results, even this watchable on such a cheapjack level, is easy, you give it a try. On real film, with SAG actors watching the clock, and clattering Moviola flatbeds, not with digital video and your pub buddies and a Macintosh laptop as dilettantes of the 48 Hour Film Project do nowadays.
True, as anything beyond drive-in/late show filler, The Terror lacks the quality of the canonical Corman/Poe cycle, and Jack Nicholson would go on to better roles (and further offscreen love affairs that would make all of us put Rod Stewart’s “Some Guys Have All the Luck” on vinyl and vow to be bitter, hateful movie critics). But it has some jolts (a bird gouging a character’s eyes out is still a brutal piece of business), and maybe fulfils what Jean-Luc Godard almost but didn’t quite say, that all you need for a movie is a guy, a girl and a castle with Boris Karloff in it.
Speaking of, when Corman associate Peter Bogdanovich made his remarkable post-modern shocker Targets in 1968, clips from The Terror were repurposed in it as a film-within-the-film.
In the 1989 Corman-produced horror-comedy Transylvania Twist, Karloff’s footage reappears again, giving the grand old trouper a supporting cameo. The footage does not seem happy about it.
Buy Blu-ray: Amazon.com
The Terror, like many vintage AIP features, has fallen into the public domain and is available as a “free movie”, on a variety of labels. Beware inferior picture quality and washed-out or muddy hues that do not do justice to the original Pathé colour. A few Blu-ray-oriented enterprises, notably Film Chest and The Film Detective, appear to have gone to the trouble of putting the picture on disc with far better colour and sound, plus the 1.85:1 widescreen aspect ratio of Corman’s original release.
Charles Cassady Jr, MOVIES & MANIA
Blu-ray re-release:
The Terror was re-released with The Little Shop of Horrors (1960) in a double-feature, special edition, two-disc, collector’s set, on Blu-ray and DVD by Film Masters on December 12, 2023.
Film Masters President Phil Hopkins enthused, “The Terror has languished in the public domain for decades. We’re delighted to have assembled a celebratory and thought-provoking version with an award-winning team of contributors. Fans of the film will appreciate the editorial bonus features, which take a much-needed deep dive into this infamous Corman classic.”
Special features:
C. Courtney Joyner and Dr Steve Haberman join us for a commentary track on The Terror and author Justin Humphreys with the film’s star, Jonathan Haze, provide commentary for The Little Shop of Horrors; Joyner provides an essay on the Karloff/Poe connection; Mark McGee pens liner notes for The Little Shop of Horrors; Ballyhoo Motion Pictures continues Hollywood Intruders: The Filmgroup Story with part two of the featurette; a featurette by Howard S. Berger, “Ghosts in the Machine: Art & Artifice in Roger Corman’s Celluloid Castle” provides a fresh look at The Terror; and recut trailers, based on the original theatrical trailers.
Both films are presented in an aspect ratio of 1.85:1. The discs are region-free and include English SDH. The audio is DTS-HD/Dolby AC3s.
Buy Blu-ray from Amazon.com
Film facts:
In 1990, Roger Corman prepared a new version with about ten minutes of additional footage to copyright the film for his Concorde-New Horizon Corp. Mark Griffiths was the director of this new footage (added at the beginning and the end of the film). It was filmed on video and featured Rick Dean, Wayne Grace and Dick Miller (the only actor from the original cast but twenty-seven years older).
Full film – free to watch online [1080p HD]:
Cast and characters:
Boris Karloff … Baron Victor Frederick Von Leppe/Eric; Jack Nicholson … Lieutenant Andre Duvalier; Sandra Knight … Helene/Ghost of Ilsa, Baroness Von Leppe; Dick Miller … Stefan; Dorothy Neumann … Katrina, Witch/Eric’s Mother; Jonathan Haze … Gustaf
Technical specs:
1 hour 21 minutes
Aspect ratio: 1.85: 1 Spherical (as Vistascope)
Audio: Mono
