Dunwich Horror

The horror genre took a dramatic turn after the success of Rosemary's Baby (1968). Suddenly, castles, cobwebs and fangs were about as popular as three-day-old donuts. Which meant that adaptations of reliable literary authors like Edgar Allan Poe and H.P. Lovecraft needed a fast facelift before hitting theaters. And that's exactly what this pair of AIP produced chillers got, putting a rather desperate psychedelic spin on The Dunwich Horror (1970) and turning Murders in the Rue Morgue (1971) into a Gran Guignol greatest hits.

Director Daniel Haller had already taken a semi-successful crack at Lovecraft once with 1965's Die Monster Die, so he probably seemed as good a choice as any to steer the story of yet another interdimensional incursion by the "Old Ones," this time invited into our world by one Wilbur Whateley (Dean Stockwell) who plans to supernaturally impregnate a naive college girl (Sandra Dee) with the help of the infamous Necronomicon. After stealing a copy from Miskatonic University, Wilbur heads back to the family farm; but his supernatural antics have attracted the attention of the suspicious townsfolk who suspect the Whateley's are up to no good again.

The Dunwich Horror faces the same challenge all Lovecraft adaptations come up against at some point: how does one create "indescribable evil" on a movie screen? In this case, Haller catches a break since the monster in question is invisible a great deal of the time, accomplished cinematically with a roving camera, wind machines and some solarized screen effects. But the film's suspense is based mostly on anticipation, which hits a wall when push comes to shove during the Raven-esque battle of wills finale.

Dean Stockwell (Quantum Leap) is genuinely unnerving as "weird" Wilbur - a role intended for Peter Fonda - but his hand-jive histrionics and slow motion groping of Sandra Dee's body-double are lame substitutes for actual thrills. Same goes for the film's body-paint orgy hallucinations, shot with a kooky wide angle lens covered in Vaseline, inserted for obvious counter-culture appeal. Haller's film feels more comfortable inside the Whateley's farm, which looks conspicuously like one of his old Corman-Poe sets. Ultimately, for all the movie gets right from a literary perspective, it gets just as much wrong by pandering to an audience that had probably already tuned out.

Murders in the Rue Morgue actuallykeeps the Victorian setting, but swaps out plot points from several of Poe's stories, adding a clever play-within-a-play gimmick and a healthy dose of The Phantom of the Opera for good measure. Cesar (Jason Robards) and his theatrical company come under suspicion after the death of one of their performers in Poe's classic detective tale. The killer, who snuck into the actor's gorilla suit costume, just might be "formerly deceased" actor Rene Marot (Herbert Lom) out for revenge from beyond the grave. Meanwhile, Cesar's young wife suffers from recurring nightmares about the events she witnessed backstage as a child...events that just might be the key to the true killer's identity.

Director Gordon Hessler's career is a relatively undistinguished one, but he makes the most of Christopher Wicking's kitchen-sink script, enjoyably toying with audience expectations from the get-go with a false opening during the play's performance and continuing with flashbacks and flashforwards that pay off in the end. The film itself has more in common with the burgeoning giallo genre in that respect than any of the earlier AIP Poe films; although Hessler's visual techniques come nowhere near style of Bava or Argento.

This take on Rue Morgue owes most of its success to Herbert Lom, who'd already played a disfigured maniac seeking revenge in Hammer's adaptation of Phantom in 1962. Here he goes through the same paces, cunningly arranging for those who wronged him to meet a poetic fate, their faces scarred by the same acid that cost him his career. The film is an interesting snapshot of a genre in transition, with all the growing pains and awkwardness that entails.

Part of a Blu-ray double-feature from Scream Factory, both films come from new HD transfers and it really shows. These look better than most of the company's Vincent Price Collection and make for revelatory viewing experiences from old DVDs. Extras include trailers, featurettes and spot-on commentaries from film historian Steve Haberman who, while guilty of overpraising from time to time, does an awesome job of identifying every bit player and every scrap of behind-the-scenes gossip. The films might be only so-so, but the overall all package is way too good to pass up.