Die Monster Die! is a singularly daffy horror flick. It's chock full of classic horror cliches and despite purporting to be an adaptation of Lovecraft's The Colour Out of Space bares little resemblance to that moody atmospheric horror classic. Truth told Die Monster Die! is a jarringly bad movie, so much so that watching can be a hoot as you watch the characters do impossible or blatantly stupid things over and over again.
The movie seems to want to get by on its casting of horror icon Boris Karloff as the main "villain" of the piece and does little originally to support that choice. The original story was about a remote family of farmers who slowly and painfully descend into illness, madness and ultimately death along with the land around them. This story has the "blasted heath" but the family is a wealthy one and the trappings of their demise are a parade of horror cliches. There's a mysterious figure lurking on the grounds, a weird mystery sits in the basement of a house with beaucoup floors. The family does mutate and change but that seems not really to be at the center of things, Karloff's characters desire to pursue his goals which are ill defined.
Nick Adams is the hero and I don't think his expression changes throughout the movie -- it's always a pensive grimace even when he's smooching his gal Susan Farmer. He's an American come to remote village to see his girl friend (they met in school ones supposes) and finds that the villagers aren't just afraid of the family but actively angry. The family is named "Witley", an attempt to evoke the "Whateleys" The Dunwich Horror I suppose and not "Gardner" as in the actual story. There's a wacky old butler who drops dead, a skull and a bat that fling out for cheap scares, and a series of actions which I guess are the plot of the story though almost no one seems properly motivated for more than a few moments at a time if then.
There is lots and lots of running up and down steps with Karloff's wheel-chair character making excellent speed, time and time and time again. The ending is dumb with an action movie breaking out at the climax of a wannabe horror movie. It's just a mess, a fun mess to watch and chuckle at, but a total miss when adapting a horror story by Lovecraft. This is maybe a rare, possibly unique instance when the comic book adaptation by Dell is more exciting than the movie itself. Check it out here.
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The movie seems to want to get by on its casting of horror icon Boris Karloff as the main "villain" of the piece and does little originally to support that choice. The original story was about a remote family of farmers who slowly and painfully descend into illness, madness and ultimately death along with the land around them. This story has the "blasted heath" but the family is a wealthy one and the trappings of their demise are a parade of horror cliches. There's a mysterious figure lurking on the grounds, a weird mystery sits in the basement of a house with beaucoup floors. The family does mutate and change but that seems not really to be at the center of things, Karloff's characters desire to pursue his goals which are ill defined.
Nick Adams is the hero and I don't think his expression changes throughout the movie -- it's always a pensive grimace even when he's smooching his gal Susan Farmer. He's an American come to remote village to see his girl friend (they met in school ones supposes) and finds that the villagers aren't just afraid of the family but actively angry. The family is named "Witley", an attempt to evoke the "Whateleys" The Dunwich Horror I suppose and not "Gardner" as in the actual story. There's a wacky old butler who drops dead, a skull and a bat that fling out for cheap scares, and a series of actions which I guess are the plot of the story though almost no one seems properly motivated for more than a few moments at a time if then.
There is lots and lots of running up and down steps with Karloff's wheel-chair character making excellent speed, time and time and time again. The ending is dumb with an action movie breaking out at the climax of a wannabe horror movie. It's just a mess, a fun mess to watch and chuckle at, but a total miss when adapting a horror story by Lovecraft. This is maybe a rare, possibly unique instance when the comic book adaptation by Dell is more exciting than the movie itself. Check it out here.
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A wealthy family hated by the local villagers sounds similar to Shirley Jackson's novel "We Have Always Lived In The Castle" which came out in 1962. A film version was recently made but for some reason it wasn't given a cinema release.
ReplyDeleteI'll have to check that one out. It's a pretty generic haunted house plot though and I think sadly that's what the producers here were making.
DeleteOne of the better examples for the use of the phrase, "Lovecraft the Unfilmable".
ReplyDeleteThere is much evidence to support that. The 2010 movie though shows it can be done.
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