The Ultimate In Diabolism

‘Die, Monster, Die!’ is terribly slow for an hour, before bursting into life with a bizarre and over the top finale. Loosely based on the H.P Lovecraft story ‘The Colour Out Of Space’ , it begins with an American scientist arriving in Arkham, here transplanted from the original New England to the shires in England. He gets the usual sub-zero welcome from a series of suspicious locals who shudder when he mentions that he is on his way to the old Whitley place, and refuse to give him directions.  He makes his own way there, finding a large stately home set on a ‘blasted heath’, i.e. an eerie burned wood with a huge crater. Clearly, something interesting has happened here – shame no-one wants to talk about it.

The scientist, Reinhart (played by unhappy Hollywood hanger on Nick Adams) is visiting his fiancée, Susan, but, as usual, the in-laws are a bit odd.  Dad is Boris Karloff, hostile, angry, secretive and prone to zooming around in his wheelchair after midnight. Mum is slowly dying of some disfiguring disease, and spends her days hidden behind a curtain. On meeting her prospective son in law she gives him such useful some advice – to get out, now, and take Susan with him – naturally, he decides to stick around for a bit.

What follows is a mix of haunted house film and weird sci fi, i.e. there are rubber bats on string and skeletons on gibbets but there is also a big chunk of radioactive meteorite that is making everyone mental and ill, as well as a greenhouse full of massive tomatoes, killer plants and a horrible menagerie of mutated animals (‘it's like a zoo – in hell’).

In an unexpectedly energetic finale, Karloff falls across the meteorite and turns into a silver foil covered radioactive killing machine. It’s pretty cool, especially when Reinhart starts throwing axes at him. The meteorite is smashed, the house burns down, the in-laws die and the young lovers escape to start what will almost certainly be a married life lived in the shadow of the horribly tragic and fucked up way they got together. H.P Lovecraft would have liked that.  

Die, Monster, Die!

Turned On

‘The Sorcerers’ was Michael Reeves second film, and the first to have any kind of budget and distribution. Starring Boris Karloff and Reeves’ alter ego / fantasy figure Ian Olgilvy it tells of an elderly man who, aided and abetted by his even more cracked wife, invents a new form of hypnosis which allows the ageing and infirm couple to experience excitement and emotion through a much younger and more active subject (Olgilvy) who they manipulate like a lanky puppet. This being 1967, of course, there are many vicarious thrills to be had, including groovy dancing, making it with dolly birds, fast driving, drinking, drug taking, pushing girls off diving boards and, as kicks get harder to come by, violence and murder.  

It all ends badly, and Professor Marcus Montserrat (fantastic name) and his Missus soon learn that evil acts have consequences, even if you get a tall posh bloke to do them for you.

The Sorcerers

High Priestess Of Evil

‘Curse Of The Crimson Altar’ makes very little sense, but the occasionally amateurish production is punctuated by interesting scenes of pagan ritual and partial nudity imbued with a sickly green hue and the blurred, disjointed feel of a particularly vivid nightmare.

The cast, which includes Boris Karloff, Barbara Steele, Michael Gough, Christopher Lee and Alan Bradley from ‘Coronation Street’ is pretty impressive on paper, but they seem under-rehearsed and disengaged. Karloff is obviously in poor health (he was 80, with a year to live) and Lee is, as usual, awful.

I do like this film, of course (I like everything I feature on the blog, god help me), but it’s a little too contrived and arch to be loveable. The ingredients are there, but the finished dish is strangely unsatisfying. Anyway, here’s an interesting scene of pagan ritual and partial nudity imbued with a sickly green hue and the blurred, disjointed feel of a particularly vivid nightmare

Curse of the Crimson Altar