The Terror (1963)
There's No Rest For The Wicked...
Although the reviews won’t directly show it since they haven’t been around since the beginning, tonight marked the ten year anniversary of me watching (at least) one movie a week - the act that would eventually lead to what you are reading now, and the other reviews on here to go along with it. Given this is the case, I wanted to do something special, so I found a movie that was in the public domain - free to use as one would please without the knob-headed constrictions of copyright. In the ultimate throwback of celebration, I decided I’d even stream it (since it was Public Domain). I then thirty minutes in discovered that YouTube - genius retards that they are - took it down, also restricting my streaming for a good 90 days because of it. All hail our pant-hat overlords and the cocaine they are snorting, at least I own the disc so I could keep watching (despite it being easily available to find on said platform, because it is public stinking domain. You wonder if the movie was scary, but on tonights episode we learned that YouTube is in fact, The Terror.
This movie is an old one - like, older than me old. In turn, this means that some things might crop up that the casual modern movie goer who doesn’t hop into the older movies might not be aware of. Color is here, so black and white isn’t one of those things - however those old film defects are throwing a rave party the entire movie. You’ll see dancing lights and black splotches across the spread of the movie - never so bad that you can’t see the images, but at least frequent enough in the copy I own that it’s pretty obvious this is an older movie filmed on actual film whose age is certainly showing. That combined with the fact that it’s a DvD copy, meaning overall lower resolution than what a lot of people might be accustomed to now that most everything is either a HD Bluray or digital equivalent. This isn’t going to even really factor if people are using the equipment of the time to watch it - but when you start scaling it up to things like a large HD television, or something like a 4K capable projector, that lower resolution disc is going to start showing some fuzz and clarity degradation from the up-scaling. It’s something to be aware of with older movies - not everything get’s the Alien treatment where it gets to be re-scanned from an original print to a higher resolution to keep it crisp, or passes to help make blacks more black without destroying the visibility levels of dark scenes.
Still, one of the fun things an older film offers is seeing classic actors - sometimes before they even hit their prime. Jack Nicholson shows up here, looking as rugged baby-face as I don’t remember even seeing him in recent times, staring alongside a name well known to most old-hat monster enthusiasts and horror genre fans - Boris Karloff. Part of what I find the most fun about a situation such as this is you get to see different types of acting, but also the difference in acting levels. Watching the far more theatrical Karloff deliver lines with a lot of expression both facially and through other body movements (such as hand motions) in the same shot as a much more static and perhaps a bit less experienced Nicholson gives a great sense of perspective. Both of them do a great job, don’t get me wrong, but there is less variety and emotion carried across in the general body movements of Nicholson here than Karloff, whose character bears the weight of an aging Karloff well within the context of the character. That said, I could see plenty of folks fancying that young Jack quite the looker, and his role does feel reminiscent or perhaps predictive of a lot of modern films where the lead might be getting upstaged by side characters in levels of acting, but still end up being quite charismatic on screen. Other characters do a great job here as well, even if other parts of the movie might intrude upon things - and honestly if I had to qualify the acting somewhere, it would be a slight step more into stage play than full on movie-acting, with a slight tinge of over-emotion or dramatic hanging for emphasis.
You might be asking yourself what the movie is even about. It’s funny, I saw a lot of low reviews when glancing over the 50-pack of movies to determine what I was going to watch for tonight, and a lot of the low ones (even some of the high ones) reflected on either a lack of or overly confusing level of plot. Now, mind you I got distracted due to the preamble mentioned technical difficulties a ways in, but even then this plot wasn’t hard to follow at all for me. Yes, it will still leave some questions and mysteries in there for you to wonder about, but one could argue that the only real hard to follow part is a thrown in “twist” (that was totally unnecessary if you ask me) towards the final act, which isn’t so much hard to follow in as much as it felt like it came out of nowhere - but I also admit it might have been the part I was distracted for where the big hints came up. Still, it’s a nice tale summed up as “French man gets separated from his unit and ends up stumbling love-struck into a mystery of ghosts and intrigue.” Where the fun comes in is largely the mystery as it unfolds, with plenty of elements of supernatural or possibly feigned supernatural to keep you wondering as you go, even if you don’t end up being particularly invested into said mystery and elements. It can feel a bit bare-bones at times, particularly the love-at-first site driving force of the main character and the mysterious girl whom all characters like to say doesn’t exist. Largely, I’d chalk it up to the time period, and that’s fine for me.
Sun, human kinds greatest foe.
My biggest complaint about the movie was the audio - also largely a show of its age. The movie is rarely quiet, usually on account of the score playing at nearly all times of the movie. It feels reminiscent of an old “silent” film, in which a small group or perhaps an organ player would be tooling along some music to go along with a screening to make up for the complete lack of audio of the movie. The amount of times the background audio overpowers the actors or other elements is thankfully not very high, but given the balancing of the audio levels expect to be hearing music for the majority of the movie, not all of which really adds a lot to the scenes. The other part that feels like age showing is the collections of pops from the recording of the actor lines, frequently just little flickers of noise throughout. Some might find it endearing, like sitting next to and old 35 mil as it spins the projected motion on that silver screen - others might have the unfortunate luck to zero in on it and find it quite annoying and detrimental to their overall experience. Again, I can’t fault a movie older than I for having such difficulties - even if it might not be so prevalent in other movies around that time. Actor deliveries are a bit mixed, most the time being entertaining if nothing else, but sometimes characters can be a bit stale with their deliveries. The actual lines they say can be a bit oddly phrased for a modern watcher as well - although I could say that it makes it feel more timely or perhaps even a little foreign (considering the movie is supposed to be set across the sea from watchers here in the States), which can add to some of the immersion of things. At times, either what’s said or the actual delivery of how it’s being said can both feel appropriate despite being lackluster - such as the man who only speaks in harsh whispers. It makes sense as far as what’s on screen, and thankfully they boosted it up in volume so you don’t struggle to hear it, but hearing a loud whisper still feels a bit funny regardless.
Sets here bear that distinct feeling of studio sets common to older movies. This isn’t a bad thing if you ask me, as between the interior castle, the crypt, the woods and the run-down house we have plenty of variety in what we see to keep it interesting. Quality is generally quite nice as well, with plenty enough detail when it’s wanted without being too overbearing. Fun factoid: this film actually uses the same sets as in his previous flick The Raven, because it was shot in the midst of Edgar Allan Poe adaptations, and the director Roger Corman was a man who knew how to get bang for his buck. That said, if you watch those movies back to back, you might be less impressed with the sets than I am. Sometimes set’s can be a bit off in lighting quality - something I largely chalk up to the dated movie and probably a less-than-stellar transfer to the print of DvDs. It’s watchable, but plenty of scenes will experience a bit of blown out lighting washing out some details or inversely in the night scenes the overall darkness making it hard to really see anything in the scene with any form of details due to the loss of details in the shadows abundant. Costumes work well for what’s going on and fit the actors and proposed setting well. At the tail end of it all, the effects - of which their isn’t arguable too many - also are done quite well. Yes, sometimes things can look a bit like melting peanut butter, but it’s nice to see that extra level of shock-horror added into something that is largely more of a spooky mystery movie than a true terror as the name would imply.
Back to the plot and characters, I have to say that the movie does play it a bit fast and loose with what’s supernatural and whats not. It’s not that it’s flipping a switch and one minute yelling ghosts and the next pointing out a man in a mask, which I recognize is what my statement kind of made it sound like. The lack of direct explanation, I mean to say, leads to a feeling of something could be either direction. A ghost could actually just be a bewitched person - or it could actually be a ghost. A witch may be a devil-powered black practitioner, or she might just be a skilled hypnotist. A man may be haunted by the (perhaps literal) ghost of his actions, or he might just be getting old and senile. It leaves so many of these things feeling quite loose while pointing the finger towards how mystical and mysterious they are, that when you finally get to the final act it can feel a bit like things go off the rail and that Harry Potter meme pops up with “And rocks fall from the ceiling, everyone’s dead.” It works, and afterwards it points the compass in a pretty definitive direction, but some of that loose interpretation fun gets lost because of it. It’s also arguably the only time that Nicholson’s character reacts in a legit way to just how spooky some of this stuff would be to experience, despite not really doing a terrible job elsewhere. I guess you could say that the progression doesn’t entirely feel natural, despite the pacing being decent if not slightly rushed at times.
Couple of vintage actors looking cozy.
In the end, deciding to watch a more than 50 year old movie could have gone much worse. Yeah, the celebration got off to a rough start when the neighbors phoned the police about the music being to loud (so to speak), but at least the entertainment was there. Acting plays one of the highlights, with sets rolling up behind it and a somewhat intriguing plot dragging a little behind that. The movie hasn’t aged entirely well, particularly in the audio department and visual quality areas, and I can see that being perhaps a bit of a turn off to some. The plot wasn’t hard for me to follow, but a large number of people seem to loose focus and find themselves oblivious to what’s going on or why - so that’s something out to look for. When it really comes down to it though, this movie is in the public domain, and even on YouTube, the very place that slapped my wrist and said “No!” you can find countless uploads of the movie in full (as embed below) and failing that you can find it bundled cheap with tons of other older P.D. films, so it’s not a terrible thing to throw on sometime over October month, for that slight bit of chill to whisper in through the window and down your spine.