Crimson Peak (2015)

It embarrasses me to say that I've not blogged in almost a year. I've seen dozens of excellent and awful horror movies over the past few months, which I hope I can find the time to review. I just saw Crimson Peak on opening night though, and it was so good I was driven to write about it immediately.

GENERAL INFO:
Director: Guillermo del Toro
Studios: Legendary Pictures, Universal Pictures
Starring: Mia Wasikowska, Tom Hiddleston, Jessica Chastain
Tagline: Beware Crimson Peak
MPAA Rating: R
Genre: horror, terror, supernatural thriller, ghost, Gothic, romance, mystery, drama
Scare score: B-
Rating: A

Plot overview: Around the turn of the 20th century, young and driven Edith Cushing (Wasikowska) is a Buffalo socialite with no interest in parties or the petty competition between the girls of her class. Instead, she aspires to be a writer like Mary Shelley, and is currently working on her manuscript for a ghost story. With the ability to see ghosts from a young age, Edith feels most comfortable in this genre. Her life changes when a young, handsome, and wealthy baronet Sir Thomas Sharpe (Hiddleston) and his gorgeously severe sister Lady Lucille (Chastain) come to town, looking to raise funds to reopen the red clay mines underneath their ancestral home, Allerdale Hall, located in the barren countryside of Cumbria in northern England. After Edith and Sir Thomas fall in love, she moves into the Gothic English mansion with nothing to lose, finding it in a dilapidated state as the Sharpes try to regain their family fortune from the red earth, which has earned the home the nickname Crimson Peak. Her new husband and his sister, however, are not as they seem, and Crimson Peak can barely conceal its bloody past, which Edith must now bring to light.

Every once in a while, a horror movie comes along that changes the game. Crimson Peak is one of those films. Finally, del Toro has done it again, bringing to life a magnificent Gothic tale filled with equal parts romance and terror.

I've seen the trailers for this movie for months, and obviously what captured me the most was the incredible visuals. If nothing else, I knew I had to see this movie to see the house. What I didn't know until seeing the film, however, was what a central role Crimson Peak would actually play in the plot, not only as a setting, but as a living, breathing, and bleeding character.

Now I don't think I've ever properly read "The Fall of the House of Usher," but from the second the characters arrive at Allerdale Hall that's what I was forced to think of: a plot where the home itself becomes as important as any of its residents. True to the trailers, this set was incredible, truly a work of beauty. I don't know what was physical and what was CGI, but entering this house was like entering some fantastic and slightly spooky fairy tale mansion, as we've seen before in works of del Toro such as Don't Be Afraid of the Dark, only to a much bigger extent here. It was so gorgeous it makes me upset. On top of that, the props and costumes were amazing, too. For the entirety of the movie, you get sucked into this Gothic world filled with flowing gowns and overstuffed pijamas, long capes and elaborate hair. From the beauty to the blood, this movie was so pretty.

There was certainly a lot of del Toro flair to the film, starting with the storybook opening. The entire ghost plot was extremely reminiscent of The Devil's Backbone, another beautiful, beautiful ghost film. Movies like these remind me why I'm so obsessed with ghost stories: there is a sadness, a lasting sorrow, a pervading beauty behind the metaphor of ghosts and their presence between the physical and spiritual worlds. Del Toro loves working with this theme, the idea that a ghost is a spectral apparition of the past, of some emotion that was too strong to fully leave the Earth, and we love watching it.

The characters were beautifully cast and I'm happy the original choices of Emma Stone and that annoying British actor who I won't name didn't work out, although I think Emma would have done a nice job. I actually haven't seen much of Wasikowska, but the audience should fall for Edith immediately. In fact, the audience should fall for everybody; Hiddleston is dreamily charming albeit creepy as Sir Thomas (it's nice to see him not so done up as Loki) and Chastain–one of my favorite actresses of the moment–is eerily beautiful. She didn't deliver the strongest, but she kept the movie creepy. New(ish)comer who you should expect to see more of Charlie Hunnam as Edith's childhood friend Dr. Alan McMichael was also very pleasant in his very standard role, which rather reminded me of Raoul in The Phantom of the Opera.

Horror wise, the movie is spooky and at times unsettling but not terrifying. What got me the most was the surprise gore and violence that would pop its head up occasionally, causing the audience to jump back in surprise from an otherwise tranquil plot. I was so shocked, in fact, at some of the gore, which isn't nearly as bad as what we're used to, but strangely poignant and used in effectively small doses. The ghosts themselves were especially gross because aside from being mere apparitions or floating sheets, they were in fact quite corporal, hollow specters of corpses, skeletons, rotting flesh, and so much blood. They really spice up the movie.

In terms of faults, there are a handful. The pacing was a little off, some exchanges and maybe scenes felt unnecessary, and all in all, the script probably could have used one more look through and the film maybe could have been edited one more time. The biggest problem of all, however, is the lack of a motive. I thought the plot was a little unfounded, despite a brief explanation by some characters and a lovely monologue by Chastain. I don't know; I just didn't see the need for all the horror and gore taking place after we got the 'big reveal.' Fortunately, the movie is so pretty that you almost forgive any oversights.

Lastly, I need to point out the score. The music, composed by Fernando Velázquez (Devil, The Orphanage, Mama) was so entrancing and moving I couldn't stop listening to it and stayed through the final credits just to hear more. The main romantic theme throughout the movie was so beautiful, I tried looking for it online but it's not up yet. The score alone was enough to make me want to buy this movie the second it comes out; add in the sets and costumes, and I was totally sold.

Final critique: This movie was so fantastic. I think it will join the ranks of other del Toro classics like The Devil's Backbone and Pan's Labyrinth, although it may not be taken as seriously since it's so heavily horror. Crimson Peak is the perfect ghost story (with its own modern twists), the perfect Gothic romance, the perfect mystery. The most dynamic character is Crimson Peak itself, filled with secrets living and dead; a visually stunning foreground and background to the movie's events. I highly recommend this movie, especially before Halloween. Again, it's not too scary, but the scares are enjoyable. Mainly just eerie with some good scares spread throughout, and the violence/ gore that will catch you off guard. Seriously, bravo.

Gothika (2003)

GENERAL INFO:
Director: Mathieu Kassovitz
Studios: Dark Castle Entertainment, Warner Bros.
Starring: Halle Berry, Robert Downey Jr., Charles S. Dutton, John Carroll Lynch, Penelope Cruz
Tagline: Because someone is dead doesn't mean they're gone.
MPAA Rating: R
Genre: horror, terror, psychological thriller, mystery, drama, ghost, supernatural, possession
Scare score: C+
Rating: B

Plot overview: Dr. Miranda Grey (Berry) is an intelligent, driven, and happy psychiatrist that relies on fact and logic to do her job. One night while driving home from the mental hospital in a thunderstorm, Dr. Grey narrowly avoids hitting a girl who is standing in the middle of the road. When she goes out to help, however, the girl seems to burst into flames and take over Miranda's body.   After Miranda comes to a while later, she is back in the mental hospital but as a patient. To her horror, she learns that her husband has been brutally murdered and that she is the primary suspect based on overwhelming physical and forensic evidence. With some supernatural help, Miranda must not only show that she's not crazy, but she must also prove her innocence... or someone else's guilt.

This movie is funny to me because I think I first caught the beginning of it when I was about 13. It's been over a decade, but I still was never able to finish it until recently (this movie used to be impossible to find online). When it was on TV one night in December, I dropped everything to watch it, and I'm glad I did.

Gothika might have a bad reputation, but I don't think it's a bad movie. It's very 2003 in nature, but I was extremely impressed by Halle Berry's performance. Like, legitimately– she does a good job in this film. She is supported by Robert Downey, Jr. who I generally like a lot as well. Penelope Cruz is also a stunner both in physicality and as an actress. Her career is very interesting, and it's fun to see her in a supporting role 2 years after a major movie like Blow. She's so fantastic in Almodóvar films; if you haven't seen Todo sobre mi madre and Volver I highly suggest you go watch them.

Anyway, this movie is pretty much just fun, filled with plenty of chills and thrills. I'm really pretty surprised that people don't like it. It's very dark, and if you look at the poster you'll get a good vibe for what the cinematography is like, sort of a blue black tone the whole time. There are some wildly frightening scenes thanks to invisible ghost forces, so that makes for some scares as well as awesome displays of physical acting. Mainly I am thinking of the shower scene and also when Berry is being tossed around that cell.

There's an enduring mystery here, as in most ghost films, and who doesn't love that? In fact, the strange blend of science and supernatural is fairly unnerving; we never know quite where this film is headed. Luckily there is enough stability due to steady acting and screenplay, that even when we are drowning in unanswered questions, we're not ready to give up on the movie. Things certainly are more than a little silly, both in plot and dialogue, but we're given enough action and delivery to keep up with Dr. Grey's roller coaster ride.

I did like when the plot takes a major turn towards the end. When the truth comes out, everything is flipped on its head, and suddenly the fear becomes so much darker and more real than ghosts and possession. Everyone wants to see their protagonist vindicated, especially after things get so gritty and sexual. I was very surprised with how dark the movie gets during these moments when the truth comes out about the other characters. You'll have to watch to find out!

There was some good gore in this film, which was just sort of the icing on the cake of what is otherwise a rapidly paced and sometimes confusing wild goose chase. Most of all, I like how Gothika had moments that sort of tied everything together and brought everything back down to a playing field that as an audience we could handle.

Final critique: You may have heard bad or mediocre things about this movie, but I say give it a chance. It's a fun flick to watch with friends, and it's easy to pause and take a break from if you want to go make popcorn or something. You may not be at the edge of your seat, but I think Gothika has a lot to it. All the plot twists are very exciting, so that along with the surprising terror both in lies and in truth make for a nicely rounded out if fanciful film.

Ouija (2014)

(Preliminary note: during the previews, I saw an extended trailer for Insidious: Chapter 3, set to release in 2015. It looked pretty fun.)

GENERAL INFO:
Director: Stiles White
Studios: Universal Pictures
Starring: Olivia Cooke, Daren Kagasoff, Ana Coto, Shelley Hennig, Douglas Smith, Bianca A. Santos; ft. Lin Shaye
Tagline: Keep Telling Yourself It's Just A Game.
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Genre: horror, terror, supernatural thriller, ouija board, haunting, ghost
Scare score: B
Rating: A-

Plot overview: Following the apparent suicide of her best friend Debbie (Hennig), college student Laine (Cooke) is left with questions she thinks only a mysterious ouija board found in Debbie's attic can answer. Once she and her friends make a connection through the board, however, they realize that the game isn't so easy to end.

*Quick funny story: During a fairly scary moment of this movie, the screen at the movie theater I was at went totally dark, leaving myself and the only other two people in the theater in the pitch black beneath the sounds of screaming coming from the scene. Talk about freaky.

Following a few years of development, Ouija finally debuted just in time for the Halloween season. I went to see it tonight, and while the critics might be saying otherwise, I found it to be very enjoyable. Like most horror movies these days, Ouija relies heavily on the well-timed, dumb scares that are sure to make eager teenagers scream with delight while veteran horror-goers frown in their cynicism. I found that if I lighten up and allow myself to enjoy it, it makes the whole experience better. In doing so, you'll find a lot of reasons to walk out of Ouija with a smile on your face.

This isn't the first movie we've seen involving a ouija board (think The Exorcist, or Witchboard and the sequels it spawned). One thing I can appreciate is a horror movie that cleverly creates merchandise to go along with it (like masks or costumes). Creating a fictional horror and then manifesting said horror into something tangible—and sellable—really helps bring that horror to life. A good example would be Friday the 13th or Halloween with the old school hockey or Captain Kirk/Michael Myers masks, respectively. In this case, the inverse is true, and Hollywood has taken a century-old toy (conveniently owned by Hasbro today) and decided to revolve the horror around it.

The babysitter I went to as a kid had an old ouija board buried among the stacks of old games in the playroom, and as very small children, we tried our hands at it more than once. Someone always cheated, but it was fun to pretend that we were making some sort of contact with **the beyond**. We never did, but after seeing this movie, maybe that was for the better.

Ouija is no different than most horror movies we see these days. But the important thing to remember is that that is not a bad thing. Across all genres of film and literature, plots have held countless parallelisms since mankind first started telling stories. Most stories share similar characters and teach the same lessons. With Hollywood pounding out movie after movie after movie and with TV going through a golden age, what's important in film today are the nuances that differentiate one movie from another.

Sure, Ouija presents us with another group of good looking, "college-aged" kids (even misfit kid sister Sarah (Coto) is always perfectly coiffed) who meddle into something bigger and badder than them, and it's only a matter of time until they get knocked off one by one. Okay, so we've seen it. So what? Horror films are becoming less and less about the what, but instead about the when and how. How is this board game going to kill these 20-somethings and when? For better or for worse, creative deaths are what keep so many horror films going these days.

It's for this very reason that I am a staunch supporter of predictable and corny scares. We all live for those *boom* moments that turn out to be nothing. Ouija is filed with them. Chock-full. I don't care if these are "cheap scares" or not— at the end of the day, a scare is a scare, and not every film is going to be a new masterpiece anyway. More power to the movie that can create new, truly terrifying scares (there's plenty of them all the time, and plenty more to be done), but if audiences are going to see horror movies to get some kicks, then I think there should be plenty of "cheap scares" that will at least ensure these people have a good time.

While Ouija perhaps does the boyfriend-lurking-around-the-corner-whoops-didn't-think-it-would-scare-you-sorry-babe-lol one too many times, all of these small scares are fine details that maintain a sense of thrill and terror throughout the film. Ouija not only gives us these, but it gives us plenty of teases, too. From pretty early on, there is some major foreshadowing that might get us anxious in the moment, but ultimately ruins the surprise.

Okay, so I've defended the heavy usage of flashlights rolling off and illuminating things we'd rather not see, or creepy reflections or shadows cast against the wall— so what else is there to this film?

I mean, the plot is fun. We have a pretty decent mystery here with an expected, whoops I mean unexpected twist that keeps the evil board in our lives just so much longer. While I wasn't surprised by some red herrings in the plot, I thought it was really fun, and who doesn't love a fun appearance by Lin Shaye (Insidious, Insidious: Chapter 2)?

If you were to ask me about acting in this film, I would probably smile and shrug. It's exactly what you expect. I like Olivia Cooke in Bates Motel, and I liked her in this. She has a certain collected coolness about her —along with an undeniable macabre—that I think will keep her popular in horror as time goes on. Our other characters were fine, paper thin, and trying desperately hard to be realistic. Hey, Hollywood— you want realistic? Try casting less hot people all the time. In a horror movie, girls' hair should not always be perfect. People should not always be beautiful and muscular and perfectly dressed. This needs to stop. We want more realistic films and we want them now!

There is legitimately zero diversity in this film. Aside from a weak attempt of the casting of Vivis Colombetti in the role of "Nana," thus leading us to believe that Laine and Sarah are perhaps Latina, there is just nothing. Even Bianca A. Santos as capricious friend Isabelle seems pretty whitewashed. I don't know what's worse: Forcing one unimportant minority friend into a white-horror plot, or just leaving them out completely. Do better, casting team. Not too great for 2014.

The settings, however, were very cool. While the scariest thing about Debbie's house is the overpowering wallpaper that changes in every room, I thought it was an equally pretty and eerie home in which this movie could take place. But I digress.

Somewhat surprisingly (?) this movie ends up being largely about sisterhood and the bond shared between females. We've been seeing a lot of this lately, and the more I see it, the more important I think it is. Females in horror have long been pretty limited to their roles. On one hand, we've always had the scream queen star or kickass final girl. On the other hand—and perhaps the dominant one that most people focus on—we have the sexploited, dumber girl that gets murdered while in a bra and panties (or less). And more often than not, even the nerdy girls are usually very attractive underneath their deceptive outfits or bad glasses, and they get exploited as well. Lately, however, horror movies have started focusing on female characters in the roles of mothers, sisters, and daughters, stressing the importance that family has in overcoming horrifying or even supernatural circumstances. I'm talking about taking a step further than letting a teenage girl fight back against her victimization (Halloween, Friday the 13th, or A Nightmare on Elm Street) and entering the realm of Ripley, or Clarice Starling, or especially a character like Carrie White who takes the horror into her own hands. Why is it that horror movies, perhaps even more so than any other genre, are constantly coming out with new blockbusters with a woman in the lead role(s)? Sure, there's a sense of empowerment behind it, but I honestly think it makes the story more relatable to the audience. We can sympathize more easily with female characters because often they are acting out of love, especially when playing familial roles. It is this love, furthermore, that usually combats the evil at hand most efficiently. Let me work more on my feminist theories. In the meantime, let me say that what we need more of is female antagonists. Bring 'em on!

Ouija's other strengths lie in the beautiful cinematography by David Emmerichs and what I thought was a quaintly powerful score by Anton Sanko. Even if the acting is only so-so, at least we get to see and hear some pretty—and creepy—stuff.

My biggest problem with this movie is that everybody and their (grand)mother knew the word "planchette," referring to the sort of iron-shaped, mystic tool that moves on the ouija board. I understand that this is what the ouija accessory is called in real life, but why in the world would every character in the movie know that, too? Have you ever heard someone use that term in casual conversation? When we first hear 8-year-old Debbie (Claire Beale) so keenly pronounce the word "plan-chette" my skin crawled. We heard it at least four of five more times in the movie, and each time I wanted to throw my small popcorn at the screen. I speak Spanish, I know "plancha" for iron, I get that we use a lot of French in English— but planchette?? Spare me. This is a smaller detail within a larger problem— the script. For once in my life, I just wish horror movie writers would run the script by a group of 20-somethings to approve of the script before filming. (And maybe, just maybe that 20-something could be me). More than a few lines and scenes of this movie cause a younger audience to raise an eyebrow. It's a fine line between saying "my folks will be home any minute" and saying "hey you wanna' come over for a game night? hashtag ouija hashtag planchette." At least these characters seemed modern; I thought the heavy use of Macs and iPhones—especially the flashlight—was very good and relatable.

Final critique: Don't let the critics dissuade you from seeing Ouija. Or, if you feel like waiting, definitely rent this movie once it comes out, and have yourself a merry little scary movie night at home with friends— I know I will. This movie is filled with plenty of *boom* moments and playful "cheap" scares that will make it worthwhile for the thrill seekers amongst you, but even the scariest moments shouldn't be too much for the scaredy cats out there. If anything lasting will haunt you after this movie, it'll probably be that you'll never want to floss ever again. Not that you do already. Besides, if Ouija proves to be too scary for you, just remind yourself it's only a game. Or is it?

The Pact (2012)

GENERAL INFO:
Director: Nicholas McCarthy
Studios: Entertainment One, IFC Midnight
Starring: Caity Lotz, Casper Van Dien; ft. Agnes Bruckner, Kathleen Rose Perkins, Haley Hudson
Tagline: Some doors should never be opened.
MPAA Rating: R
Genre: horror, terror, thriller, drama, mystery, haunted house, ghost, serial killer
Scare score: B+
Rating: A-

Plot overview: After the death of her mother, ex-drug addict Nicole (Bruckner) returns to her childhood home, which is filled with bad memories and other presences. Shortly after, she goes missing and her estranged sister Annie (Lotz) is forced to come home to confront all of the negativity that lingers in her mother's house.

I was very surprised by this movie. The movie poster (which bears a close resemblance to that of The Frighteners) has stood out to me on Netflix for a while, but I didn't watch it until the other night, after I heard that it has a sequel coming out this fall. Though it started out as your typical dark, slow, dramatic horror movie (I was reminded of Absentia in that sort of dreary aspect), I found myself more and more impressed by the film's creativity and surprising twists and turns.

The first thing that struck me was the very artistic way this movie is filmed and edited. I loved the realism and attention to detail; I loved the shots and cinematography: There was something oddly beautiful about this movie and I appreciated that. Special effects were good and constantly took us by surprise, adding points to the scare score.

Acting was pretty decent. Sometimes things felt forced, but I guess you can't help that. I was relieved that the characters felt somewhat real to me, and that helped balance out any faults in acting or in the script. We should be especially pleased with Lotz, who takes us through the entire film. A super special shout out goes to Haley Hudson who legitimately had the perfect look for her creepy role. That was fantastic casting. Same goes for Mark Steger, who shows up towards the end of the film keeping us fairly terrified all the way through.

The plot really kept me interested, even when the film felt like it was dragging along. I was not expecting this cool mix of reality and the supernatural. There is a fusion of genres here that piques our interest and takes us places we are not expecting to go. Half of the fright/ excitement of the movie comes from the surprising plot twists that go so far as to shock us as they unfold.

*SPOILER ALERT*

Who doesn't get creeped out when they're home alone, or when they hear noises and bumps in the night? Once the scares start in this movie, they don't stop coming. I wasn't sure what to expect when the movie began and we had Bruckner alone in the house and when that closet door was ominously open. As the supernatural forces began to become apparent, I figured we were in for some sort of ghost movie, but then things got more interesting.

The mystery is great. Better yet, while Annie makes her way around Cali looking for more clues and leads, the horror continues inside of that house. The first time we see the silhouette of a man (a la White Noise) standing inside of the bedroom, I think I suffered a mini heart attack. Otherwise, we put up with a lot of invisible forces throwing people around, doors being left open, a pretty cool Ouija scene, and headless corpses randomly appearing in the night. The twist this movie takes towards the end was what really took me by surprise and is sure to shock all audiences. The second that Judas (Steger) crawled out of the floor—following a pretty riveting Ouija scene (isn't there a Ouija-themed horror movie coming out soon?)—my jaw practically dropped and I was just so pleased with the turn the movie had taken. This was another great casting choice, and the way he moved his body around was simply eerie, adding yet another dimension of horror to this film.

Final critique: I would recommend this movie to anybody as a surprising horror film that really delivers. My favorite thing about this was the blend of the supernatural with an otherwise realistic plot, great casting decisions, and wonderful attention to detail and cinematography. Nicholas McCarthy is a director we should certainly be keeping our eye on.

The Terror (1963)

GENERAL INFO:
Director: Roger Corman (collaborated with Francis Ford Coppola, among others)
Studio: Filmgroup
Starring: Jack Nicholson, Boris Karloff
Tagline: "DRACULA"... "FRANKENSTEIN"... "HOUSE of WAX"... "PIT and the PENDULUM"... and now The TERROR
MPAA Rating: unrated
Genre: suspense, mystery, ghost, haunting, witchcraft
Scare score: C-
Rating: C-

Late on a Sunday night after an exhausting weekend was the perfect time to watch this horror 'classic', a hefty title for a film that doesn't quite stand out in memory as much as, say, Dracula or Frankenstein.  It was difficult rating this film given its production in 1963 and one's automatic expectations of modern horror films, so I tried to take a step back, put myself in my 1960's horror shoes, and enjoy the ride.

Plot overview: Set in an undetermined European coastal country (French Empire? Modern-day Bulgaria? Romania?) in 1806, French lieutenant Andre Duvalier (Nicholson) has been separated from his regiment and is found "weary and disillusioned" on the beach.  Here he first meets mysterious beauty Helene (Sandra Knight) and becomes enraptured by her looks.  After she inexplicably disappears (she does this a lot throughout the film) into the water, Andre is attacked by a very angry hawk (a la The Birds) and passes out for the second time in the first 10 minutes of the movie.  When he comes to, he is in the care of an old woman (Dorothy Neumann) who nurses him back to health with a homemade potion from her sketchy lab-setup.  She is also mysterious (as is every single character in the movie, except for the flat, 1-dimensional Andre), leaving our protagonist with more questions than answers, specifically centered around the whereabouts and disputed existence of Helene, and a now mild-mannered hawk under the witch's, er, old woman's care.  At this point the plot takes a turn down the road of The Wicker Man as Andre searches the area, following clues to discover the truth about Helene, who he has now seen [mysteriously] on several occasions.  His search leads him to the spooky, run-down castle of the elderly Baron von Leppe (Karloff), who lives in a self-sentenced solitude with his hot tempered servant, Stefan (Dick Miller).  Andre quickly learns that the visions of Helene he has been seeing is the ghost of the Baron's wife Ilsa, who has been dead for 20 years.  Her brutal murder took place at the hands of her own husband, who returned from war to find her with another man, Eric, who we are told was killed by Stefan alongside the unfaithful Baroness.  The Baron admits that Ilsa's ghost has been haunting him for two years, urging him to commit suicide and join her eternally.

*SPOILER ALERT* 

Little by little, with Andre's meddling and all of the other creepy characters' mysterious revealings, we learn that Ilsa's spirit has been brought back (questionably in Helene's body) by the local witch (Eric's mom!) to lure the guilty and self-loathing Baron into death and avenge Eric's murder as well.  Drama, confusion, and scares wait around every corner.


Again, the quality of this un-remastered movie made it a bit difficult for me to get into, so I had to keep reminding myself to float back to 1963.  While the plot itself is pretty understandable with lots of little twists, I found the movie to be generally confusing, filled with too many scenes of characters running around in the dark, in the woods, in the castle, in the crypt, on the beach, and too many mysterious characters popping in and out, leaving us with more questions than answers until the very end.  The effects are not great (1963, Horror Buff, 1963!), including some presumably animated background drops that took me straight back to the good old days of Scooby Doo.  I did rather enjoy the make up of the corpse we see in the middle of the film, the bloody-and-blinded-by-the-hawk minor character shortly before his convincing fall off a cliff, and the gruesomely decaying face at the end of the film.  These provided some small scares that were certainly entertaining, and I can only imagine were very frightful for audiences at its debut.

I can't say I was a fan of Jack Nicholson in this movie.  Everybody else in the film is a convincing actor and an interesting character, except for our boring and even annoying protagonist, Andre.  Nicholson takes on one mode the entire time as a rather angry and unfazed military officer trying to get to the bottom of the mystery surrounding the mysterious beauty he has his eyes on.  His lines are delivered poorly, his acting is unconvincing, and his reactions to the twists and turns of the plot are non-existent.

From the moment Stefan, devoted servant to the Baron, begins to have long lines, I immediately found myself guessing what borough of New York City the actor Dick Miller was from.  Not to my surprise in the least, this Bronx native brings his very Bronx-y persona to this character, again, a peasant in Europe in 1806.  Hmm.  I wonder, however, if this was on purpose because Dick Miller was such a personality at the time.  Other than his quick-talking, short-tempered Bronx flare, Miller did a great job, and any viewer can relate to his character, who would do anything to protect his old master...including dying for him.

Karloff is excellent in his role, as we are led to believe, of the Baron Victor Frederick von Leppe, an old man of questionable mental fortitude, haunted by his personal ghosts and a very real one as well.  An absolute icon to the classic horror film industry, Karloff's Baron is both a character we can sympathize with and suspect of any and all wrong-doing that surrounds the plot of this film until we learn more about his true identity towards the end, and by that point, salvation from damnation is just too late.

Final critique: To appreciate this film, you need to be okay with the poor quality and sometimes kitschy set, plot, and overall feel of the production.  In the movie's defense, I will beat the dead horse and mention again that some 60's films tend to have a cheesy feeling about them anyway.  A modern remake, even one retaining the time period of Napoleon's Europe, of this movie could be really frightening.  I can't get over my disappointment with Nicholson's acting or lack thereof, but luckily he is more so a tool that helps unravel the plot for us to enjoy.  The ghost aspect of the film: a will-less, vengeful spirit under the control of an even more vengeful witch, was pretty cool since I wasn't even expecting the ghost to turn out to be real in the end.  Some of the confusion could have been easily eliminated via clearer scenes and small changes to simplify the plot.  The period was fun and different as far as most horror films go, sets were impressive overall, and all the characters (besides Lieutenant Devalier) were interesting and tragic in their own ways, adding depth and credit to the film.  To bring up the movie poster (seen above) for a second, I really have no idea how all those people in a web apply to this movie at all... very random.  The tagline, as well, isn't very creative, and in fact I'm not reminded of Dracula et all after having watched this film.  But that type of tagline does evoke thoughts of cinema in the 50's, and we must remember that this was advertisement in the 60's (Don Draper, even).  Lastly, the title of the film kind of sucks.  When I hear 'the terror' I imagine some devilish force, not just an attractive ghost commanded by a witch who in reality is pretty friendly, and in that case I'm still assuming that the 'terror' refers to Ilsa/ Helene.  Why not "The Baroness' Ghost" or "The Haunting of Castle von Leppe: Eternal Love, Eternal Damnation" (by now you've guessed I'm not in Hollywood writing movie scripts), or anything that gives us some preview as to what the film is actually about?  Anywho, I appreciated the small scares throughout the movie, although they were certainly not too scary for me watching this alone late at night in a dark house.  That being said, I'd recommend this movie to anybody, especially to those who scare easily, if they find the time to sit back and watch this somewhat suspenseful, somewhat grainy horror classic.