The joys of country living..?
I recently watched The Shuttered Room (1967), an adaptation of the eponymous short story by H.P. Lovecraft and August Derleth (I believe it was a posthumous collaboration); also on the DVD was the 1966 misfire It!, a shoulda-been-better movie about the Golem. (It! should've been better because it was produced, written and directed by the guy who wrote the a-MAZE-ing -- and amazingly gory -- 1958 movie Fiend Without a Face, Herbert J. Leder.)
The Shuttered Room was, mehh, okay; I'm not a huge fan of Lovecraft, but if I were, I'd probably dislike the movie more: I strongly suspect that all of the references (or hints; it was a collaboration with Derleth, after all) to the Cthulhu mythos were excised for the movie in favor of more conventional, uh, "thrills."
What surprised me about it, though, was how much Oliver Reed (who is pretty much the only reason to watch this thing) reminded me of Vincent D'Onofrio, particularly in the latter's role on the TV series Law & Order: Criminal Intent.
Watching The Shuttered Room, I could see where D'Onofrio cribbed a lot of his facial expressions and physical tics; granted, D'Onofrio doesn't tumble and caper about as much as Reed does here (at least, not that I remember; I tend to fall asleep during L&O: CI), but the way he's always bending over at a 45 degree angle suggests Reed in this picture. Below are photos for comparison: the first one is of Reed, the second is of D'Onofrio:
I was also surprised at how much of The Shuttered Room reminded me in parts of an early dress rehearsal of Straw Dogs: young cosmopolitan couple go to the sticks for an intended vacation-cum-sabbatical and run afoul of the local (possibly inbred....) yokels, who take an uncomfortably keen interest in the young wife. That The Shuttered Room doesn't content itself with the menace of its hicks -- or go quite as far as it could've to suggest just how nasty they are or how dire the couple's (Gig Young and Carol Lynley) predicament is -- is the main reason why it never rises above being a relatively painless, occasionally engaging, time-killer.
The Shuttered Room was, mehh, okay; I'm not a huge fan of Lovecraft, but if I were, I'd probably dislike the movie more: I strongly suspect that all of the references (or hints; it was a collaboration with Derleth, after all) to the Cthulhu mythos were excised for the movie in favor of more conventional, uh, "thrills."
What surprised me about it, though, was how much Oliver Reed (who is pretty much the only reason to watch this thing) reminded me of Vincent D'Onofrio, particularly in the latter's role on the TV series Law & Order: Criminal Intent.
Watching The Shuttered Room, I could see where D'Onofrio cribbed a lot of his facial expressions and physical tics; granted, D'Onofrio doesn't tumble and caper about as much as Reed does here (at least, not that I remember; I tend to fall asleep during L&O: CI), but the way he's always bending over at a 45 degree angle suggests Reed in this picture. Below are photos for comparison: the first one is of Reed, the second is of D'Onofrio:
I was also surprised at how much of The Shuttered Room reminded me in parts of an early dress rehearsal of Straw Dogs: young cosmopolitan couple go to the sticks for an intended vacation-cum-sabbatical and run afoul of the local (possibly inbred....) yokels, who take an uncomfortably keen interest in the young wife. That The Shuttered Room doesn't content itself with the menace of its hicks -- or go quite as far as it could've to suggest just how nasty they are or how dire the couple's (Gig Young and Carol Lynley) predicament is -- is the main reason why it never rises above being a relatively painless, occasionally engaging, time-killer.