die monster die

Throughout the 1960s, American International Pictures dug up a public domain goldmine adapting the works of Edgar Allen Poe. Beginning with The Fall of the House of Usher starring Vincent Price, the company cranked out one Poe tale after another, often basing their scripts on nothing but a title associated with the author’s name. Like Stephen King movies in the ‘80s, there was money to be had milking every scrap no matter how cinematically inadequate the material.

H.P. Lovecraft just never commanded the same respect. A pulp writer who carried Poe’s gothic torch, but took it into much darker places, his work rarely made it to the screen in anything remotely approaching a faithful version. Likely because Lovecraft’s monsters tended to be on the “indescribable” side; interdimensional Elder Gods whose influence over mankind was far less adaptable to the screen than Poe’s low budget visions of the macabre.

But AIP had some success with The Haunted Palace (1963), another Vincent Price picture titled after a Poe poem but actually adapted from Lovecraft’s The Case of Charles Dexter Ward. So, substituting one horror icon for another, Die, Monster, Die! (1965) was given the green light with former art director Daniel Haller behind the camera. In front of it, Boris Karloff played Nahum Witley, the potentially insane family patriarch shunned by the village of Arkham and carrying out mysterious experiments on the desolate estate.

Working from Lovecraft’s The Colour Out of Space, Haller doesn’t stray far from the AIP formula for success. In fact, the film is a replica of previous Poe films (creepy portraits, innocent daughter, suspicious American suitor) with only a few minor sci-fi elements added into the mix. One nice addition is Nick Adams, a tough-talking B-movie actor who turned up in several Japanese monster movies around the same time. AIP heroes tended to disappear into the woodwork – always playing second fiddle to the top-billed villain - but Adams gives the role of Stephen Reinhart an invigorating kick in the pants.

And the movie gets one too, for a while at least. Nahum’s wife (Freda Jackson) is kept hidden behind a curtained bed, a victim of whatever poison is infecting the household. Her maid wanders the grounds shrouded under a black veil. And don’t even ask what’s lurking in the greenhouse. Die, Monster, Die! gets some mileage out of stringing the audience along. But eventually it has to lay its cards on the table, and it turns out there’s quite a few missing from the deck. That said, the film fits nicely with AIP’s other ‘60s era gothics and delivers some Lovecraftian chills that were all too rare at the time…and still are today.

Scream Factory’s blu-ray is a great companion to their earlier Vincent Price Collection. There are no extras besides a trailer, but the hi-def transfer is a big improvement over the previous MGM Midnite Movies DVD.