The Dunwich Horror (1970)

DUNWICH HORROR, THE (director: Daniel Haller; screenwriters: from a story by H.P. Lovecraft/Curtis Hanson/Henry Rosenbaum/Ronald Silkosky; cinematographer: Richard C. Glouner; editors: Fred R. Feitshans, Jr./Christopher Holmes; cast: Sandra Dee (Nancy Walker), Dean Stockwell (Wilbur Whateley), Ed Begley, Sr. (Dr. Henry Armitage), Sam Jaffe (Old Whateley), Donna Baccala (Elizabeth Hamilton), Joanne Moore Jordan (Lavinia Whateley), Lloyd Bochner (Dr. Cory), Talia Shire (Cora); Runtime: 90; American International Pictures; 1970)

Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz 

A Roger Corman produced film that is a bookish adaptation from an H. P. Lovecraft antiquarian occult work. It maintains the eerie atmosphere by getting into the strange rituals and manifestations required from such a look at the dark side, but fails to prove enlightening and is uneven in its presentation as the ending allows the film to go up in a puff of hokey smoke (Stockwell and Begley oppose each other offering up their curses in an undeciferable language, until the evil Stockwell gets struck by lightning). But this version attempted by director Daniel Haller (Monster of Terror), is much better at getting at the freakish meaning of Lovecraft than his previous film. That doesn't mean this film is good, just that it's better than the other version.

Sandra Dee was ineffective in her role as the victim of a fertility sacrifice, as she brought no depth or spark to a role she was miscast for. While the brooding Dean Stockwell seemed right at home with all the weirdness his role called for as a warlock, yet he gave a boring performance as if he was drugged and reduced to speak in a monotone voice throughout. The strength of the film, is that it brings in the so-called normal people in the sleepy country town as a contrast to Stockwell's creepy family and their strange lifestyle, allowing the film to build on its tension before Begley saves the world.

A young man, Wilbur Whateley (Dean Stockwell), enters the university library and requests reading the rare and valuable occult book, Necronomicon (Book of the Dead), just placed under a locked case and not allowed to be removed by the public. One of the student librarians, Elizabeth Hamilton (Baccala), refuses his request, but the other librarian, Nancy Walker (Sandra Dee), allows him to read the book. Liz calls up a philosophy professor and an expert on the occult, an opposer of the warlock Whateley family, Dr. Henry Armitage (Ed Begley Sr., his final role), to come and retrieve the tome. He wrote a treatise exposing the dark aims of Wilbur's great-grandfather Oliver.

Oliver was lynched by the New England town because of his strange beliefs that an earlier race of man, the "Old Ones," were superior beings from a different dimension and by using the right chants and going through a fertility rite, he hopes to conjure up that race to return and destroy present mankind. In his attempt to do that he picked the wrong woman, Lavinia (Wilbur's mom), as she resisted and ended up in a mental ward.

Armitage meets with Wilbur and refuses to allow him to borrow the book, but Nancy is attracted to him and gives him a ride back to the small-town of Dunwich that is hostile to his eccentric family. Here she meets his strange looking grandfather (Jaffe), who wants her to leave because there have never been guests in the house before. He carries around with him a staff with magical symbols on it. There's also a secret room kept locked where Wilbur's twin brother, who was supposed to be dead, is kept as an evil spirit since he is caught in the world between the living and the dead. The father of the twins was never listed, but is supposed to be not of this earth, with Wilbur's twin resembling the father.

When Nancy arrives at his creepy home, he disables her car so she can't leave and spikes her tea with a drug so she has psychedelic dreams. The next day he talks to her about sex. He plans to use her in an occult fertility rite at a nearby hill called the Devil's Hopyard, as he believes he can accomplish what Oliver couldn't because he has chosen the right woman. But the evil twin gets out of his locked room when a visitor looking for Nancy makes the deadly mistake of opening it and gets eaten by the hungry spirit, who escapes to chow down on some of the other locals who were hostile to the Whateleys.

All the chills come from the sounds of an evil wind, the curdling sound of birds eerily singing at the sign of death, the sounds of water splashing, heart's thumping, and of the earth darkening as a shadow covers it. What failed to work, was when Haller tried to reduce the visions to some chaotically contrived psychedelic effects. The film should be more interesting for Lovecraft fans than to the general audience. I found it, for the most part, to be dull and uninspiring.

REVIEWED ON 9/19/2001     GRADE: C 

Dennis Schwartz: "Ozus' World Movie Reviews"

http://www.sover.net/~ozus 

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