The Terror (1963)

Directed by Roger Corman
Written by Leo Gordon and Jack Hill

Rated PG for frightening imagery and situations.

"The Terror" is one of many old films that are now public domain. This means that anyone with a copy of this film can reproduce and even sell it with no copyright penalties. So go burn a copy today! "The Terror" has also been made available to watch or download for free here.

In addition to being free, "The Terror" also boasts the unlikely pairing of Boris Karloff and Jack Nicholson in the lead roles. For fans of Karloff's later work and Nicholson's earlier work, "The Terror" should be a special treat!

The film opens with a really neat animation sequence featuring ghostly images flying around cartoonish Gothic architecture to intense instrumental music as the opening credits play. This animation reminded me of the credit sequences of old Warner Brothers' cartoons. At it's heart, "The Terror" is a Gothic fairy tale, and I feel the opening animation does an excellent job of setting the mood.

Jack Nicholson stars as Andre Duvalier, a lieutenant in Napoleon's army who has been separated from his regiment and wanders along an anonymous beach, close to exhaustion. Just as he's near losing consciousness from heat-stroke, he meets Helene (Sandra Knight), a beautiful young woman who helps him find fresh water and flirts with him mercilessly. Suddenly, Helene starts walking straight into the ocean. Andre tries to rescue her, but nearly drowns himself, and is attacked by a malicious falcon as he struggles against the strong current. Apparently Jack Nicholson's performance here wasn't all acting. The actor later revealed that he almost drown himself when this scene was being filmed.

Duvalier awakens in the cottage of Katrina (Dorothy Neumann), an old woman so ugly she can only be a witch. Katrina claims to have rescued Andre from the ocean, and that she knows nothing about a girl in the area. When Andre is well enough, he sets out to explore the area. He quickly encounters Helene (Sandra Knight) and follows her into the forest. As he chases after Helene, Duvalier is grabbed by a young local named Gustaf. Gustaf explains that the ground Duvalier was headed towards is deadly quicksand. Andre remarks "She tried to kill me". Gustaf cryptically responds "It's not her fault. Her will is not her own". Gustaf reveals that the girl lives at the castle of the reclusive and long-named Baron Victor Frederick von Leppe (Boris Karloff).

Baron von Leppe, like every truly nefarious Gothic noble, lives in a beautiful Gothic castle perched on a cliff. Upon his arrival, Andre sees Helene looking out of one of the castle's windows. Andre knocks on the large front door and is greeted by Baron von Leppe himself, who assures him that there is no woman in the castle. Andre demands (quite rudely, I might add) to stay the night at the castle instead of one of the village inns. The Baron grudgingly obliges. Once inside the lush castle, von Leppe shows Duvalier an old painting of a beautiful woman who bears a striking resemblance to Helene. The Baron suggests that perhaps Andre saw the painting through the window and mistook it for a living girl. The woman in the painting is the Baron's late wife, the Baroness Ilsa von Leppe. Uncertain how to proceed, Duvalier settles in for the night, making himself at home in the Baron's creepy castle.

Andre awakes during the night to find Helene walking through the moonlit graveyard under the window to his room. He follows her. She leads him to the entrance to the tomb of the Baroness von Leppe in the crypt under the castle and then disappears. [An interesting historical goof: Nicholson carries a snub-nosed revolver with him as he creeps around the castle. Revolvers weren't invented until several decades after the film is set, and the snub-nosed version wasn't really seen in Europe at all, but in the American West.] Again confounded by the hot but elusive Helene, Andre has every intention of taking his horse and leaving the area, but is told that his horse has escaped during the night and is missing. Enraged, he takes his anger out on the Baron's butler, Stefan. Stefan assures Duvalier that he will get him a new horse as soon as possible ("Believe me, Lieutenant, I have no desire to interfere with your departure from this castle."), but for the time being, Andre is stuck in the decrepit mansion.

One of the highlights of this film is watching Jack Nicholson be incredibly rude to people. Long before Jack Nicholson was the great actor we now know him to be, he had a great talent for being arrogant and abrasive on film. In "The Terror", Nicholson is almost a one-note pony. He goes from horny to insensibly angry and back to horny again with little provocation.

Unable to find Helene or any explanation for the mystery surrounding her and the castle, Duvalier confronts Baron von Leppe, demanding answers. After a bit of resistance, von Leppe tells the story of his meeting with his wife, Ilsa. She was a peasant girl. By all rights, in those times, a Baron could have "claimed" her as his own without any problems, but he chose to court her and woo her instead. He went off to fight in a war, and when he returned, he found a man named Erik with Ilsa in her bed. Baron Victor tells Duvalier how he murdered Ilsa in a rage, and how Stefan "took care of" Erik. Haunted by his past and miserable, the Baron reveals that he's seen Ilsa several times since he killed her, and that he looks forward to her occasional hauntings because he gets to see her again.

Things become further confused when Duvalier discovers that Katrina the witch is using Helene to channel the spirit of the dead Baroness in order to push the Baron to suicide. Why would she go to such lengths to punish the Baron? What is Katrina's connection to Erik, the dead Baroness' lover? In a thrilling twist-ending, Roger Corman turns our expectations on their heads to unveil the shocking truth about the von Leppes.

"The Terror" is not driven by excellent writing, acting or plot. It is more of an atmospheric horror piece, akin to "Night of the Living Dead" or "Carnival of Souls". That is not to say that acting, writing and plot aren't there, they just take a back seat to the slow-burn terror of "The Terror". Karloff (who at this point in his career was declining in popularity) gives a good performance as Baron von Leppe, and Nicholson is adequate as Andre Duvalier, but neither of them are at their peak.

The locations used in the film are almost surreal. All of the sets were left-overs from "The Raven", another Corman production. "The Terror" is rumored to have been shot mostly in the four days following the completion of filming on "The Raven". Corman used the sets as much as possible before they were torn down. The rest of the film was pieced together patch-work by several other filmmakers who collaborated to complete Corman's vision. These included a young Francis Ford Coppola and Jack Nicholson himself. What results is a varied tapestry of plot threads that actually go together quite nicely.

I give "The Terror" an 8/10. It's haunting, beautifully-shot, and genuinely entertaining. I got a 1$ copy of this DVD at the Dollar Tree and it was well worth it. The low-quality video and audio added to the film's nostalgic fairy-tale creepiness. The story is engaging and intelligent (though the plot falls apart a little under scrutiny), and the visuals are breath-taking. So if you're a fan of Gothic horror, fairy tales or ghost stories, stop what you're doing right now and watch "The Terror" for free online:


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