‘Just sit back and howl at the chill of it all!’
An American has an automobile accident on the way to see his English girlfriend’s family to seek their permission to marry. Stopping for help at a sinister manor house, he finds he has unexpectedly reached his destination; only his true love’s relatives are a distinctly odd bunch…
Rather bland horror comedy that takes its lead from ‘The Old Dark House’ (1932) and many a creepy ‘supernatural’ comedy made in the intervening years. Actually, it was filmed at the same time as William Castle’s remake of that 1930s classic, and it may have originally been intended as a rival production. As it turned out, the Castle film sat on the shelf for 3 years and this one crept out on the bottom half of a double bill with the Lon Chaney vehicle ‘Witchcraft’ (1964). It was panned by critics and rejected by an indifferent public. The same fate befell Castle’s film a couple of years later.
The main problem with this effort is that it aims for black humour but has a sensibility that is simply not twisted or dark enough to achieve it. The screenplay delivers a series of stereotypical situations and scares, and the oddball characters are formulaic and one-dimensional. Our American abroad is played by crooner Pat Boone, and lots of the criticism of the film has been directed his way, but that’s not really fair. His performance is acceptable enough, although he does break into song at one point, which is regrettable.
‘It’s such an honour to meet you, Mr Boone, I’ve got all of your albums…
The British cast provides what little enjoyment there is to be had, in particular a smarmy Dennis Price at the beginning his on-off flirtation with the horror genre. Stage actor Valentine Dyall lends his impressive vowels to the part of the family patriarch, stopping short of the ham he brought to his role as a recurring villain on the ‘Dr Who’ TV series in the 1980s. The striking and kooky Andrée Melly channels the spirit of Vampira as cousin Natalia, which is appropriate enough as she was also one of Hammer’s original ‘Brides of Dracula’ (1960).
What is probably most surprising is that this film was directed by Terence Fisher; the man behind the megaphone for all those early Hammer hits which made stars of Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, including ‘Dracula’ (1958) and ‘The Curse of Frankenstein’ (1956), Apparently, Fisher had fallen out with the studio at this point in his career, and was taking gigs like this for low budget producer Robert L. Lippert. He was an American whose resume included everything from the woeful ‘Lost Continent’ (1950) to the troubled, but surprisingly good, apocalyptic horror ‘The Last Man On Earth’ (1964) starring Vincent Price.
The film also has some potential because of the involvement of scriptwriter Ray Russell, who was not prolific but was responsible for three good horrors of the time; ‘Mr Sardonicus’ (1961), ‘Premature Burial’ (1962) and ‘X: The Man With The X-Ray Eyes’ (1963). Given that the second of these has precious little to do with Edgar Allan Poe, he can also be credited as coming up with the original stories of all three. However, comedy was obviously not his forte, and cliches abound here, whereas laughs do not.
This is a lame effort, acceptable enough for a dull, rainy afternoon in front of the TV, but likely to be forgotten as soon as the credits have rolled.
Mark David Welsh 