THE TERROR **** USA 1963 Dir: Roger Corman. 81 mins
Was Roger Corman a Genuis or an Exploiter of talent and people? That depends on what side of the fence you sit on regarding his body of work and his influence on filmmaking that many are not aware of. The Terror (1963) is but one example of Roger Corman’s work, bordering on style such as the Poe Cycle films mostly with Vincent Price or a hack that did anything for a buck.
Today we praise independent filmmakers thinking that they put the middle finger up at Hollywood and the lifestyle that it still projects. In Roger Corman’s day with contemporaries in the spirit of Ed Wood-like Russ Meyer, Herschell Gordon Lewis, Al Adamson, Jack Hill, Jess Franco and many others plus the more acceptable faces (no pun) in the brilliant Actor/Director John Cassavetes were considered outlaws. The process of their films is often more rewarding than the actual film.
Not to be confused with the 2018 television series of the same name, The Terror (1963) is an American independent horror film produced and directed by Roger Corman. The picture stars Boris Karloff in one of his final roles and young hard-working Jack Nicholson. The story concerns that of Lt. André Duvalier, a French officer (Nicholson) who is seduced by a woman Helene (Sandra Knight) who is also a shapeshifting devil. The ghost is linked to the Castle of the Baron Von Leppe (Karloff) and a Witch, Katrina (Dorothy Neumann) that holds the secret of identity and the haunting of the forest and shore.
The script idea that Corman (who never had downtime) came up with was the idea of shooting footage of a movie star on the sets of The Raven (1963) over two days, which could then be used as the basis of another movie. This was the same way his work on Creature From The Haunted Sea (1961) came, Corman had two days to shoot on sets before they were to be torn down from his just completed The Raven (1963) with Vincent Price and Boris Karloff.
Corman contacted Leo Gordon, a writer who had written several films, and asked him if he had a script with a castle in it. The two ‘brainstormed’ an idea into a sixty-page script written by the following weekend which could be shot over two days. Corman also said that the script finished with a flood, as several Poe pictures had finished with a fire sequence.
The picture, which looks very much like it would be a top-notch ghost story of the sixties horror cinema if given time to develop looks slapped together and aimless in moments. Vincent Price was not available. Boris Karloff was offered two days of pay that he took especially in the later part of his career and was almost killed. His Daughter Sara Karloff whom I am lucky to say I have a good personal relationship told me face to face when visiting her both in Lake Tahoe and Palm Springs, California that ‘Corman was a sadist’. When I pressed the point she told me nicely ‘Not to ask’ so I backed off. Corman worked the aged actor relentlessly walking through the still-standing sets, lifting, moving, crawling over things. Karloff, like the professional he was, did all his own stunts including getting into a water tank with streaming water and wrestling. The Raven (1963) sets were even being dismantled as the actors were working on them, so the crew and the actors had to move fast.
The young starting Francis Ford Coppola who worked with Corman extensively and would go on to do great things like The Godfather (1972), and Apocalypse Now (1979) and later an abysmal vampire film that I refuse to name moved to uncredited Director and Writer on The Terror (1963). Actor Dick Miller had to do another film and Corman could not step into the role as an actor plus pay himself because he was running out of money. Coppola rewrote the story along with later Star Wars alumni Gary Kurtz. More problems, lack of money and scheduling all made this film a nostalgic nightmare today, but a real one if you did it.
The Terror (1963) is just that, terror. Bits of the story don’t make sense; the characters don’t fit together with some of the lines they say but through it all you have Boris Karloff being the committed professional in work. The voice work and the commitment even to the strangest of moments are all there and that makes this film special. You get to see California Big Sur in the late Sixties with fresh Jack Nicholson and others moving through a story of mistaken identity death and revenge all in a few minutes. Cobbled together yes but it’s fun. Recently restored with a more complete audio track as well, The Terror (1963) film financial proceeds were later linked with helping Peter Bogdanovich’s Targets (1968) which was one of Boris Karloff’s best last roles, that is a whole other story. The Terror (1963) is an interesting curio.
Review by Terry Sherwood
THE TERROR is out now on Blu-ray and DVD from Film Masters
Also available on Amazon Prime Video in the UK and USA