Free on IMDb
23 out of 23 people found the following review useful: Somewhat lacking in terror, its still a Corman original., 18 September 2003 Author: Noel Bailey (uds3@hotmail.com) from Longmont: Colorado US
Actally its none too "original" either, being little more than a variation on Edgar Allan Poe's FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER coincidentally made by Corman himself five years earlier. Contrary to popular public opinion, THE TERROR was NOT filmed in four days. The scenes with Karloff were, but the remaining 2/3 of the movie were shot sporadically over a ten week period....with a little help from Corman's inner sanctum of friends, including Francis (Ford) Coppola no less! Filmed pricipally to capitalise on sets left over from THE RAVEN (yet another Edgar Allan Poe tale - Corman had already filmed THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM as well as THE TELL TALE HEART) this hastily produced little flick was mildy interesting with not a little charisma. Nicholson's performance here gives less than no clue as to the great work that was yet to come in such as ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOOS NEST, FIVE EASY PIECES and BATMAN. One could be positively uncharitable and say his performance here amounted to little more than disinterested and amateurish acting. But still it remains today early Nicholson and by that token alone offers curiosity value.In the upshot way better than the sum of its parts...even given the garish Pathe color! The recently re-released DVD version offers surprisingly effective new 6-track surround sound.
28 out of 33 people found the following review useful: Great for insomniacs, 12 April 2002 Author: sheeshlord from Fairfax, Virginia
I bought the DVD for the Little Shop of Horrors and was pleasently surprised to find it was a double feature with The Terror. I watched it with no expectations and ended up enjoying the movie. If this were a modern day movie, all involved would be laughed out of the box office. Their attempt to throw in a few catsup filled gore scenes and several lame twists at the end made it comical enough to sit through. And how about that young and dapper Jack Nicholson?! This is one to watch in the middle of the night when you can't sleep, and it's worth watching at least once. I had to know how it would end.
18 out of 20 people found the following review useful: good, old-fashioned horror film, 3 March 2006 Author: sistershrew from United States
For a DVD that sells 3.99 at Walgreens, this movie was a lot better than I expected. Yes, seeing Jack Nicholson pre-Schmidt days is a fun concept. But that amusement was short-lived, and I eventually found myself actually intrigued with the entire plot-line going on.Jack is an officer of some sort, and he gets stranded on a seluded island of some sort with this witch of some sort, her boy of some sort and this weird girl of some sort. Turmoil unravels when he finds himself curiously (or not so curiously, considering there was the whole cleavage thing going on) attracted to the weird girl.Vague, yes. But this is kind of the type of movie whereas if I say anything more, it would be considered a spoiler. Everything/everyone will link together in the end. There is also a killer crow that is quite amusing and scary at times.Ignoring the fact I could barely hear the dialogue despite I had the volume turned up on 10, the oldness of the film was actually fitting. It adds to the whole vintage horror flick persona, supported by a young Jack Nicholson, dramatic music, and fuzzy-staticky screen. So don't be discouraged if it appears to be a little washed out. It's satisfying, and leaves you feeling disturbed. 3.99 was well spent.
19 out of 25 people found the following review useful: An old castle is host to strange deeds., 2 August 2001 Author: Michael O'Keefe from Muskogee OK
The master of the low budget movie, Roger Corman, strikes again. This flat, poorly written tale was directed by committee with Corman calling the shots on about half of it. Movie lore also has the movie being made in just under three days. The story line is faulty and slow. The special effects are pretty bad. And The Terror brings about none.A French soldier (Jack Nicholson) stumbles across an old castle on the Baltic coast owned by Boris Karloff. Things happen inside the castle that are suppose to bring about chills, but mostly it is faint laughter. This film has earned a following by being so bad it is fun to watch.Karloff is below par, half hearted and lethargic in a sad way. Nicholson is still young and is many miles from his now famous screen presence. Don't let this review keep you from viewing; just don't expect any redeeming qualities. Corman/Nicholson are the drawing card after the fact. Remember a "quickie" is just that.
14 out of 16 people found the following review useful: With this cast, how can you go wrong?, 21 May 2006 Author: Lee Eisenberg (eisenberg.lee@gmail.com) from Portland, Oregon, USA
In one of Roger Corman's many movies about dead people who don't seem to want to stay dead, Lt. Andre Duvalier (a very young Jack Nicholson) meets a young woman (Sandra Knight, Nicholson's wife at the time) along the beach and follows her to a castle inhabited by elderly Baron Von Leppe (Boris Karloff). Von Leppe's deceased wife looked exactly like the woman on the beach. Sure enough, there's a deadly secret behind all this...something that threatens to destroy everyone.Obviously, this movie's sure to be a treat for any fan of early '60s camp. But specifically, this stars Karloff and Nicholson, plus Sandra Knight and frequent Corman cast member Dick Miller* as Karloff's servant. It's sort of weird - but neat - seeing Miller's husky face and hearing his New York accent in a Gothic tale. A pretty cool movie.*More recently, Dick Miller has appeared in every one of Joe Dante's movies. No doubt Dante grew up watching Corman's movies and decided to cast Miller in his own movies.
10 out of 10 people found the following review useful: Don't judge this by the available videos..., 12 August 2005 Author: horrorfilmx from United States
... which are mostly crap, copied from old nth generation prints full of dirt and splices and bad sound. I never saw THE TERROR when it was originally released but I did see TARGETS, which incorporated footage from the earlier film a few years later. The footage from TERROR was crisp, sharp, and beautifully photographed. Seeing it when it was new must have been an entirely different experience. On the other hand, audiences then didn't have the advantage of hindsight. They didn't know that the young lead would go on to become possibly the most successful actor of his time. And they certainly wouldn't have suspected it from THE TERROR. Jack Nicholson is handily out-acted by virtually everyone else on the screen, including his then buddy Dick Miller. Karloff shines, bringing the same sly relish to his wittier lines that he brought to THE BODY SNATCHER many years before. The guy was the king of horror movies, no question about it. Everyone knows the backstory: shot on leftover sets from THE RAVEN (and possibly, if I'm not mistaken, THE HAUNTED CASTLE) with plenty of stock footage from PIT AND THE PENDULUM and HOUSE OF USHER. Most amusing (to me) was the way no one could agree on how to pronounce the name Gustav, whom Nicholson at one point addresses as "Gust-off" (although he comes closer in a later scene). If you're a fan of classic horror (or B-movie lore) you should give THE TERROR a look. Its creaky atmosphere is oddly charming.
14 out of 18 people found the following review useful: Gothic tale of horror, 11 August 2001 Author: Sanatan Rai (sanatan@gmail.com) from Stanford, California, the USA
This is quite a Gothic tale of horror, including sundry gory bits. The castle is expectedly dark and brooding, and Corman creates an eerie atmosphere very well.I spotted two directional errors. The handguns are revolver like, and I do not think such guns were used in Europe in the early years of the nineteenth century. Also, the servant Stefan often stands too close to the Baron, and to Lieutenant Duvalier. For reasons that become clear later, he could assume such familiarity with the Baron. However no nineteenth century officer of the French army, especially one of aristocratic lineage, would tolerate such behaviour from a minion.Jack Nicholson said of the film, 'This is the only Hollywood film with a complete script that has absolutely no story.' This about sums it up. It should be watched for the camera-work and the ambiance.
9 out of 9 people found the following review useful: Cheese... but decent for six (or seven) directors, 26 May 2000 Author: Prospero (shakespeares_critic) from Superior, WI
*** This review may contain spoilers ***
Nowhere but Corman's book ("How I Made Five Hundred Movies...") and the IMDb does it tell you that, but half of Corman's folks pieced this together, each with a few revisions and changes. Corman started this as a way to use sets from THE RAVEN (a master of this he was), but unlike when BUCKET OF BLOOD sets were used for the two day shoot of LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS, the two day shoot for Karloff's scenes never made a whole movie. Seven months and seven directors then worked on the rest. Jack Nicholson directed a day, Dennis Jakob did second unit work shooting water at Hoover Dam for the flood sequence at the end... Nicholson's daughter Jennifer (by then-wife/co-star Sandra Knight) was conceived during the filming and you can see him hiding her seven months pregnant condition when he carries her up the stairs. And unlike Corman's other (better) pics of the era, no Poe story holds it together. The movie isn't half bad considering it had to mesh all that together. Some nice bits of comedy between Karloff and Nicholson (inspired by THE RAVEN no doubt) and Coppola's footage on the beach is not bad at all. But for high quality stick to the actual Poe adaptations, which Corman did better than anyone.
8 out of 8 people found the following review useful: Okay Gothic horror film., 16 November 2005 Author: HumanoidOfFlesh from Chyby, Poland
Andre Duvalier,a young officer in Napoleon's army played by a young Jack Nicholson pursues a mysterious woman to the castle of an elderly Baron where he discovers that she is the pawn of an old witch bent on driving the Baron to suicide.At the ancient castle of Baron von Lepp,he notices the picture of the Baron's deceased wife looks a lot like the woman he keeps seeing.If only Andre could get the old woman to tell him the dark secrets of the Baron and his beloved Helene.Roger Corman's "The Terror" features a very old Boris Karloff,it also maintains a wonderfully gloomy atmosphere throughout,boasts some pretty decent special effects,and it actually contains a good story with some surprising twists and turns at the end.The soundtrack is quite eerie,unfortunately the pace is really slow.The film is not scary,but if you enjoy watching early 60's horror films you can give it a try.7 out of 10.
12 out of 16 people found the following review useful: Rubbish is rarely this good, 2 March 2005 Author: The_Void from Beverley Hills, England
For a film calling itself 'The Terror', Roger Corman's unpolished and critically hounded horror film isn't very terrifying. In fact, by the time the credits role there's a good chance that you'll sit there bewildered asking yourself what, exactly, you've just spent the last eighty minutes of your life on. There's a good reason for this, as The Terror is an almost complete waste of time; it offers nothing in the way of intrigue, invention or influence on the genre, nor does the plot have any kind of point and, to be honest, it's not all that interesting anyway. However, The Terror gains points for protruding that lovely Roger Corman style quickie sort of atmosphere, and for excellent performances from classic horror icon, Boris Karloff, and a man that would go on to set the acting world on fire a decade later; the inescapably excellent, Jack Nicholson. The film has an awesome amount of camp and cult value for these two performances, Nicholson especially as it's always fun to see a highly rated actor in an early, and much less highly rated role.The point of The Terror would appear to be the classic Roger Corman 'point' – "let's make some money!" and the penny-pinching style that Corman perfected over the years is evident in just about every cheap looking scene. The plot follows a French solider (Jack Nicholson) who travels to the castle of the resident baron in search of a girl he met while stranded in the local village. While there he discovers a lot of terror (or not) as we find out that the baron is harbouring a secret. The secret can be guessed within the first half of the film, and that's another area where the film fails, but it's kept alive by a constant stream of ridiculous goings on, and as the film moves closer to it's climax and the lines get more terrible and the plot becomes more ridiculous, you cant help but treat yourself to a good laugh. People that rate films objectively will hate the Terror, but for the cult fans and Roger Corman fanatics; this will fill a gap, and although it's instantly forgettable; there's worse ways to waste your time.
Add another review
