The Terror (1963)
One of Napoleon's soldiers becomes entranced by a spectral woman. He follows her to the looming castle of a crumbling baron. There he uncovers a mystery containing an old romance, murder, revenge, witchcraft, madness, and shifting identity. It sounds like a perfect vehicle for a young Jack Nicholson. Or at least that's what director Roger Corman thought.
Nicholson is spectacularly miscast as Lieutenant Andre Duvalier. With his smooth shiny hair and giant epaulets he looks a bit like Potsie Weber dressed as Captain Crunch. "In the name of the government of France, I order you to open this door!" the future star of The Shining whines, with all the authority of a teenager asking his gym teacher for permission to date his daughter.
The awkwardness of Nicholson as the protagonist is predictable, but even more entertaining is the casting of supporting player Dick Miller (best remembered as the pawn shop clerk who wouldn't sell Arnold a phased plasma rifle) as the dutiful manservant. This is one of over thirty roles Miller had in Corman flicks, and here as "Stefan," the French butler, he utters his lines with his Bronx accent intact.
The Baron of the Castle is played with bored gravity by Boris Karloff, three years before he narrated "How the Grinch stole Christmas" and six years before he died. He seems rightfully irritated by the pubescent officer who keeps barging into various cryptlike rooms in the castle. One expects a scene with the jowly Karloff glowering up from his seat on the castle toilet as Nicholson bursts in looking for his possibly imaginary girlfriend.
The film has fairly good old fashioned horror atmosphere, though in one scene Corman appears to have borrowed a painted graveyard set from Ed Wood. The director, sensing a bored audience or perhaps becoming bored himself, punches things up with some gore, in the form of a killer bird attack. Perhaps not coincidentally, Hitchcock's The Birds came out the same year. Was Hitchcock influenced by Corman, or the other way around? The ages are silent on this great question. In any case, a man inexplicably appears on a cliff in order to have his eyes pecked out by a bird of prey. The bird in question changes species a couple times before settling on becoming a red-tailed hawk.
Eventually the secrets are revealed! They are shocking to the point of causing madness, and perhaps suicide. As Roger Corman/Jack Nicholson movies go, it's no Little Shop of Horrors, but lovers of low budget horror may find something to enjoy.
Nicholson is spectacularly miscast as Lieutenant Andre Duvalier. With his smooth shiny hair and giant epaulets he looks a bit like Potsie Weber dressed as Captain Crunch. "In the name of the government of France, I order you to open this door!" the future star of The Shining whines, with all the authority of a teenager asking his gym teacher for permission to date his daughter.
The awkwardness of Nicholson as the protagonist is predictable, but even more entertaining is the casting of supporting player Dick Miller (best remembered as the pawn shop clerk who wouldn't sell Arnold a phased plasma rifle) as the dutiful manservant. This is one of over thirty roles Miller had in Corman flicks, and here as "Stefan," the French butler, he utters his lines with his Bronx accent intact.
The Baron of the Castle is played with bored gravity by Boris Karloff, three years before he narrated "How the Grinch stole Christmas" and six years before he died. He seems rightfully irritated by the pubescent officer who keeps barging into various cryptlike rooms in the castle. One expects a scene with the jowly Karloff glowering up from his seat on the castle toilet as Nicholson bursts in looking for his possibly imaginary girlfriend.
The film has fairly good old fashioned horror atmosphere, though in one scene Corman appears to have borrowed a painted graveyard set from Ed Wood. The director, sensing a bored audience or perhaps becoming bored himself, punches things up with some gore, in the form of a killer bird attack. Perhaps not coincidentally, Hitchcock's The Birds came out the same year. Was Hitchcock influenced by Corman, or the other way around? The ages are silent on this great question. In any case, a man inexplicably appears on a cliff in order to have his eyes pecked out by a bird of prey. The bird in question changes species a couple times before settling on becoming a red-tailed hawk.
Eventually the secrets are revealed! They are shocking to the point of causing madness, and perhaps suicide. As Roger Corman/Jack Nicholson movies go, it's no Little Shop of Horrors, but lovers of low budget horror may find something to enjoy.