Themes: Dangerous Attraction, Haunted By the Past, Ghosts
Main Cast: Boris Karloff, Jack Nicholson, Sandra Knight, Dick Miller, Dorothy Neumann
Release Year: 1963
Country: US
Run Time: 81 minutes
Plot
In this horror chiller, an intriguing, beautiful woman (Sandra Knight) keeps re-appearing to early 19th-century Lt. Duvalier (Jack Nicholson), and he is led to a castle where he finds an imposter of Baron Von Leppe (Boris Karloff). He becomes trapped in the ancient castle and tries to make sense of the eerie situation. Director Roger Corman (with the help of a few other directors, including Francis Ford Coppola) shot most of this within a few days after finishing The Raven--utilizing the same set. ~ Kristie Hassen, All Movie Guide
Review
As a cinematic experience, The Terror is third-rate at best, a long-winded fable that limps in circles, too haphazard to be great art and not outrageous enough to be great trash. Still, the true student of B-movie mythology may want to spend an hour with it anyway, notorious as the film is for being one of low-budget director Roger Corman's classic rush jobs. After wrapping up his humorous horror free-for-all The Raven early, Corman had two extra days left of Boris Karloff's contract that he was loathe to waste. So, instead of tearing down the sets, Karloff was walked through a series of hastily prepared scenes with co-stars Jack Nicholson and Richard Miller. Corman then subcontracted the direction of remaining exteriors and connecting sequences to various assistants, including Francis Ford Coppola and future cult filmmakers Jack Hill and Monte Hellman, with even Nicholson helming a few shots. With more directors than some omnibus films and no time for a proper script, The Terror was bound to baffle, and its slippery story eventually becomes too sluggish to bother deciphering. While the film is worth little more than an amusing anecdote in Corman's colorful legend, he got lots of mileage out of this patchwork monster. Five years later, Corman again found himself owed two days' work by Karloff, so neophyte director Peter Bogdanovich was offered 20 minutes worth of footage from The Terror to use if he could incorporate it into a new feature for the horror icon. The result was the taut, fascinating Targets, which cast Karloff as an aging horror star whose personal appearance at a drive-in is interrupted by a deranged sniper; of course, The Terror is the program onscreen during the mayhem. Corman productions continued to cannibalize chunks of The Terror in years to come, usually in self-referential spoofs like the silly but enjoyable 1976 comedy Hollywood Boulevard, which featured Richard Miller relaxing at a drive-in and enjoying his own performance from 13 years earlier. ~ Fred Beldin, All Movie Guide
Although credited to Corman, parts of the film were shot by Francis Ford Coppola, Monte Hellman, Jack Hill, and Jack Nicholson. Corman shot footage of Karloff and other actors walking across the sets and downstairs with the belief that he would be able to make sense of them later. In the next three days Coppola, Helman and Hill all tried to do something. Nicholson, who was keen to get directing experience himself, also took a turn behind the camera.
In the early 1990s, actor Dick Miller, who plays Karloff's major domo, was hired to shoot new scenes to use as a framing sequence for an oversea's version of The Terror. Under this scheme, the main action of the film is presented in flashback. Today, the film is in the public domain because of missing copyright indication.
Leftover sets from other AIP films were used when shooting the film, notably those from The Haunted Palace, a Vincent Price horror film made the same year. The tree against which Sandra Knight expires was the same one Price was tied to and burned in Palace.
Clips from the film were used years later in the 1968 Karloff movie Targets.
Plot
Set in 1806, the film tells the story of a lost French soldier named Andre Duvalier (Jack Nicholson) saved by a strange young woman named Helene (Sandra Knight). She looks like Ilsa, the baron's (Boris Karloff) wife, who died 20 years before.
Andre begins an investigation to uncover who the woman really is, and stumbles upon a hidden secret of the Baron: he had found Ilsa sleeping with another man named Eric, and in his rage the Baron killed the two of them. Or so he explained.
All the while, the phantom of Ilsa remained under the control of a peasant witch (Dorothy Neumann), who has commanded the ghost to torment the Baron for the previous two years. Over the course of the film, Ilsa's ghost beseeches the Baron to kill himself, so they could be together. After much hesitation, the Baron decides to do so, perhaps to atone for his crimes.
During the climactic scenes, Andre and the Baron's butler Stefan (Dick Miller) try to stop him, eventually forcing the witch into compliance. Here it is revealed that the witch Katrina is in fact the mother of Eric, who was allegedly killed by the baron twenty years before, and that is why she has tried to make him commit suicide and damn his soul to hell in the process. In a stunning revelation, Stefan reveals that Eric never died, that it was the Baron who was killed. Eric then took the Baron's place, living his life until he deluded himself into thinking he was the Baron.
Katrina, realizing her folly only too late, goes with the two men to stop Eric from flooding the castle crypt and killing himself. However, she is unable to go into the maseleum, being a witch and therefore of evil association, and ends up being struck by lightning and burning to death outside the gate.
In the climax of the film, Ilsa's ghost attempts to kill Eric while the crypt floods, and Stefan joins the struggle. However, by the time Andre gains access to the crypt, it is already flooding and crumbling, and is only able to carry Helene's body away. The two share a touching moment together outside, only to have Helene begin to rapidly decompose and melt. Katrina's familiar hawk flies away as Helene turns to nothing, and there the film ends.
