It might be too easy just to call The Terror terrible or to go into the various puns one could make with “terrible” and the title. It’s not a surprisingly bad film at all. It’s an expectedly bad film, given it opens with a pointless scare attempt. Boris Karloff shows up in the first scene-walking through his spooky castle-and then disappears for about twenty minutes. Corman apparently just wanted to get the horror “name” in the first scene.
After the opening titles, which are deceptively classy-Ronald Stein’s music starts off strong before going bad as Corman uses it all the time-Jack Nicholson takes over as protagonist. Nicholson’s a French soldier in Germany or someplace, trying to get back to the rest of his regiment. Oh, I forgot, it’s a period piece-mid-1790s, I think. A period piece set in Germany, filmed on the California coast, starring Nicholson who doesn’t even try to hide his disinterest.
The Terror is a great example of when low budget filmmaking doesn’t have any inventiveness. The script is unnecessarily talky. Leo Gordon and Jack Hill’s dialogue goes on and on, probably to pad things out. Then there’s all the excess scenes. The Terror, at seventy minutes, should be lean. Instead, it’s bulky.
Karloff can do this kind of garbage with his eyes closed, but Nicholson isn’t able to fake it. Without a compelling lead, there’s just nothing to this one. It’s a dreadful film.
Very pretty scenery at times though.
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