Halloween Review – “The Terror”

Another Jack Nicholson movie fits the Halloween mood.

Cast, Crew, and Other Info

Jack Nicholson as Andre

Boris Karloff as the Baron

Dick Miller as Stephan

Sandra Knight (an ex-Mrs. Jack Nicholson) as
Helene

Written by Leo Gordon and Jack Hill

Produced and directed by Roger Corman

The associate producer was Francis Ford Coppola.

Complete information is available from the
IMDB
.

Buy from: Amazon.com
or Amazon.ca.
(Note that those links are to the edition I have.
There are numerous
editions available, most of which are cheaper, and
just as shoddily
made. Just to give you a rough idea of the effort
that went into
this, I’ll note that the cover of the DVD has a
picture of Jack
Nicholson’s perfectly human character on it, with
some perfectly green
skin. At no point in the movie is Nicholson’s skin
green.)

Past movie reviews can be found here.

Premise

A soldier in Napoleon’s army follows a haunting young
woman to a
Baron’s castle.

High Point

The lightning strike.

Low Point

Freedom.

The Scores

This isn’t original. Well, the first 80
minutes (of an 81
minute runtime) are not original anyway. (The
original bit was just
nonsensical.) We’ve seen these cliches before, and
they were more
interesting the first dozen times. I give it 2 out
of 6.

The effects were bad. There were about
three special effects
in the entire film, and they were lousy. Jump cuts
masked prop
replacements, bird attacks were remarkably
pedestrian, and make-up
effects looked like the cheap costume makeup you’ll
find in grocery
stores near Halloween. I give it 2 out of 6.

The story is horribly done. I don’t want to
spoil too much,
so I’ll just give one example. About half way
through, the Baron
explains how his wife died, why her death torments
him so, and who
Eric is all in a single speech that Andre takes in
and considers.
About ten (screen) minutes later, Andre asks Stephan
who Eric is, gets
exactly the same answer he got before, and looks
shocked by the
revelation, with the “big revelation!” music blast to
back it up.
This kind of sloppiness is rampant throughout the
movie. Even if they
had paid attention to the details, it would have been
mediocre at
best. I give it 2 out of 6.

The acting is on par with the rest of the
film:
directionless, confused, and passionless. I give it
2 out of 6.

The emotional response is boredom in the
first half, as
things are spelled out in great detail, and then
mounting confusion in
the second half as it seemed the writers kept
changing their minds
about how to wrap things up. I give it 3 out of 6,
for the amusement
the confusion created.

The production was some of the best work
Roger Corman has
ever produced. I give it 3 out of 6.

Overall, it’s a bad movie, but not
outrageously so. If you
want to watch something bad because it’s bad, watch
just about any
other Corman film. Many are much worse. I give it 2
out of 6.

In total, The Terror recieves 16 out of 42.

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