Helene: I am possessed of the dead.
Andre: You're a warm living woman. Who has told you these things?
Helene: The dead.

A ridiculous film that manages to somehow end up with a coherent plot despite everything working against it. The story goes that Roger Corman decided to make another film as soon as he finished The Raven with it's left over sets and two of it's stars, being Boris Karloff and Jack Nicholson. He filmed everything he needed with Karloff in three or four days while the rest of the film was finished over a period of nine months... by four or five other directors!

The other directors included Francis Ford Coppola, Jack Nicholson, Monte Hellman, Jack Hill and,…

Action!-The March of the (3) Rogers: B Is For Corman

Corman reunites Jack Nicholson and Boris Karloff for another movie in his Poe cycle, albeit it is not based on any of the author's works. The film rose to prominence as a result of its troubled production, which included multiple reshoots by filmmakers who would go on to become greats and legends in their own right, including Coppola, Dennis Jakob, Monte Hellman, and Jack Hill. The film also aided other directors, such as Peter Bogdanovich in his film Targets.

Unfortunately, many of these flaws are readily apparent on screen in a production that lacks much of the director's magic. The plot is a little intriguing, albeit somewhat derivative. The film's…

The Terror is an offshoot of Roger Corman's Poe Cycle. It's not based on any Poe story, but features numerous elements in common with those films, though without any kind of coherant plot - probably because of the troubled production. It's effectively the ugly twin sister of The Raven, featuring Boris Karloff and a young Jack Nicholson, with second unit footage shot by directors including Francis Ford Coppola and Jack Hill. The plot (if you can call it that) focuses on a French army officer with an American accent who is bewitched by a wayward woman after becoming seperated from his unit. His plight leads him to a grand castle presided over by an aging Baron, who tells the officer…

The Terror is better as seen in clips during the final act of Targets. The circumstances of its production and how it played into Karloff starring in Targets are best encapsulated in the picture's Wiki page. The movie was watched on YouTube as an account created a faux drive-in experience where it played before Corman's version of The Masque of the Red Death-a movie I know is better from a YouTube viewing last September. More than one Roger Corman picture will be seen between now and Halloween as it seems a fitting tribute.

As Corman pinched pennies so hard that Abraham Lincoln would squeal, of course he would have the idea to use the sets of a movie just-finished (The…

This film apparently has some background to it. From what I've read (mostly here pieced together in other reviews) this one seems to be a kind of twin movie of The Raven that was the product of the other film's phenomenal set and horror star icon access for a fixed time period as well as a budget surplus. Excess footage from The Raven was pieced together briefly in a second hastily written script when The Raven wrapped while Karloff and Nicholson were still available. There's scenes in this one that drag on as characters wander around the huge castle set piece where you can tell they were burning the runtime clock. Regardless there are a couple of very solid performances…