The Terror (1963) - film review

Lieutenant André Duvalier is an officer in the French Foreign Legion.  Having been separated from his regiment, he finds himself alone on a deserted beach.  He is surprised by a beautiful young woman in a white dress, but she mysteriously disappears after she has shown him where to find drinking water.  Intrigued by the young woman, Duvalier explores the area and finds an ancient house standing near to the shore.  Its owner, the Baron Victor Von Leppe, claims to know nothing of the woman, but Duvalier recognises her image in a portrait of the Baron’s wife, who died twenty years previously.  The Baron reluctantly confesses to the lieutenant that he murdered his wife when he found her in bed with a lover and has lived as a recluse ever since.  When he sees the woman again, Duvalier realises that she is possessed by the spirit of the Baron’s dead wife and suspects she is in great danger.  In truth, it is the Baron whose life is in peril...

Roger Corman made a great virtue of producing films on an impossibly tight budget but here he surpasses himself.  Having completed The Raven ahead of schedule, Corman found that he had two days left to make use of his guest actor Boris Karloff.  That was enough time to shoot a few scenes with Karloff, on existing sets, for another picture.  Afterwards, the rest of the film was shot, with his assistants – Francis Ford Coppola, Monte Hellman and Jack Hill – taking over most of the directing duties.  Jack Nicholson, who starred in this film and The Raven, volunteered to direct a few shots, since he was keen to gain some directing experience. 

Given the slapdash way in which the film was put together, it is incredible that The Terror holds up as well as it does.  It certainly isn’t in the premier league of Corman’s films but it is still a chillingly atmospheric piece with some truly horrifying moments.  The sequences on the ragged coastline are particularly haunting, more so that those in the familiar Gothic horror interiors, and Ronald Stein’s creepy score adds greatly to the spine-tingling ambiance.  Admittedly, the performances let the film down a little – Karloff looks as if he badly needs a holiday and Nicholson appears painfully wooden in several scenes – but this hardly matters.  As a low budget shocker, The Terror delivers the goods and is a pretty respectable addition to the Roger Corman canon of classy schlock horror.

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