Lightning strikes, and before you can say, "It's alive! It's alive!", Boris Karloff is stomping down a flight of a Gothic castle staircase. Cartoonish credits come out of nowhere which look like Charles Addams drawings, and indeed, it is the animated look of the film that is the star here, not its too big names, Karloff and Jack Nicholson. Big Jack is a French lieutenant who spots a beautiful woman on a cove on the beach and before you know it, he is questioning the spooky looking witch nearby of who she is and where he can find Karloff's castle. Once he arrives at Che Karloff, he's greeted somberly by the brooding widower, and the audience is greeted by an overabundance of sincerity as Karloff fights off memories of the past which threaten to destroy his soul should they be revealed.
While considered the worst of the American International series of horror films which were mostly take-offs on Edgar Allan Poe sonnets, "The Terror" is pretty enjoyable for the clap-trap that it turns out to be. There certainly were worse horror films during this time, and Karloff himself would end his career with some perfectly dreadful cheap horror films made in Mexico. Dorothy Neumann totally overacts as the witch Nicholson encounters, while Sandra Knight barely acts at all as the supposedly 20 year old girl Nicholson falls in love with and practically goes AWOL over. The first 3/4 of the film is predictable, but entertaining. However, when the truth of what's been going is revealed, all logic (what there is of it) flies out the window and by that time, you just wanted everybody to get what's coming to them and for the film to just end. Karloff's desperate attempt to overkill on the sympathy and sincerity makes you cringe after a while. Nicholson comes off pretty unscathed, forgiven because this was long before his many years of stardom, and some great films were coming his way.
Filmed over a long weekend on the still-standing set of "The Raven", this was put into production extremely quickly, and the lack of a well thought out script shows. American International films were intended for mostly drive-in audiences or teens looking for a quick thrill through the gore factor. They get plenty of that here, with a nasty bird that may or may not be the spirit of the heroine that pecks human eyes out, as well as a water-logged finale that is simply a metaphor for how wet the screenplay is.
While considered the worst of the American International series of horror films which were mostly take-offs on Edgar Allan Poe sonnets, "The Terror" is pretty enjoyable for the clap-trap that it turns out to be. There certainly were worse horror films during this time, and Karloff himself would end his career with some perfectly dreadful cheap horror films made in Mexico. Dorothy Neumann totally overacts as the witch Nicholson encounters, while Sandra Knight barely acts at all as the supposedly 20 year old girl Nicholson falls in love with and practically goes AWOL over. The first 3/4 of the film is predictable, but entertaining. However, when the truth of what's been going is revealed, all logic (what there is of it) flies out the window and by that time, you just wanted everybody to get what's coming to them and for the film to just end. Karloff's desperate attempt to overkill on the sympathy and sincerity makes you cringe after a while. Nicholson comes off pretty unscathed, forgiven because this was long before his many years of stardom, and some great films were coming his way.
Filmed over a long weekend on the still-standing set of "The Raven", this was put into production extremely quickly, and the lack of a well thought out script shows. American International films were intended for mostly drive-in audiences or teens looking for a quick thrill through the gore factor. They get plenty of that here, with a nasty bird that may or may not be the spirit of the heroine that pecks human eyes out, as well as a water-logged finale that is simply a metaphor for how wet the screenplay is.