Director: Daniel Haller
Screenplay: Curtis Hanson & Henry Rosenbaum, from the story by H.P. Lovecraft
Starring: Dean Stockwell, Sandra Dee, Ed Begley, Lloyd Bochner
Release Date: January 14th, 1970
THE DUNWICH HORROR is a very loose adaptation of the H.P. Lovecraft story of the same name, detailing how creepily mustachioed Wilbur Whateley (Stockwell) travels to Miskatonic University in Arkham, Massachusetts looking for the Necronomicon. Unable to convince Dr. Armitage (Begley) to allow him to borrow it for research, Whateley then convinces Armitage’s student Nancy (Dee) to drive him back to the house in the town of Dunwich that he shares with his aging grandfather. The Whateley family are pariahs to the local townsfolk, who relate rumors of strange cult rituals and unnatural childbirths dating back generations. And as Nancy gives in to Wilbur’s hypnotic gaze, thanks to a healthy dose of druggings, it becomes clear to Armitage that she is in danger of becoming the subject of another Whateley ritual, an attempt to resurrect the elder god Yog Sothoth, who will wreak havoc upon our earthly realm. Bad 70’s hair, infra-red acid-inspired dream sequences, and implied tentacle rape ensue.
Wow, this flick was terrible. The opening credits start off promisingly, with an animated sequence showing black figures against a blue background climbing Cyclopean peaks in order to perform some hideous pagan rite. But right off the bat, the filmmakers display a total misconception of tone, as the theme music, which plays pretty much consistently throughout the body of the picture, is a snazzy little jazz riff that is completely out of place, providing the meandering mess that ensues with as much atmosphere and scares as an episode of THE ODD COUPLE.
I began to sense I was in trouble when, thirty seconds into the film proper, Dr. Armitage is standing with a group of chuckling students and casually tells Nancy “Would you be a dear and take the Necronomicon back to the library?” Yeah, just take this eons old text written by a raving mad lunatic that is rumored to summon infinitesimal horrors down the hallway, sweetheart, no big deal! And then Dean Stockwell shows up brandishing an impressive Jew-fro and a wisp of a mustache, and everything turns to shit in the blink of an eye. Stockwell has been in his fair share of stinkers over the years, but the man is usually reliably decent in his roles. Here he spends the entirety of his screen time mumbling all of his lines while staring blankly into space as if he just doesn’t give a fuck, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if that was the case. He is sooooooo boring, and unfortunately that makes him the best actor in the movie, as Sandra Dee’s Nancy is a useless caricature of a human being, and that’s giving caricatures a bad name. She exists to look pretty and say things, occasionally getting sorta naked. She is the epitome of bland, reacting blandly against the bland blandness of Senor Blandington.
I was incredibly disappointed to see that this was directed by the same Daniel Haller who made DIE, MONSTER, DIE!, which I enjoyed the hell out of. While he does bring his eye for interesting production design to this flick, particularly in the brightly-colored interior of the Whateley house and the ancient ruins at which the film’s climax occurs, for the most part this flick carries with it all of the style of an ABC After School Special. The only scenes that are semi-cool involve the demonic tentacle-monster that dwells in a locked upstairs bedroom of the Whateley manor. This creatures presence causes everything to take on an infrared tint, and for some reason it likes to tear women’s clothes off before it eats them, which is always a plus. But the infrared shit gets overused to the point of annoyance, as do the abundance of psychedelic dream sequences that go on forever and ever, and were obviously only included to appeal to the audience of LSD-fueled hippies who might have gone to see this on it’s original release.
My expectations going into this flick were quite low, but somehow THE DUNWICH HORROR managed to sink below those expectations. This flick is pedestrian to the extreme, made with a total lack of imagination or passion from anybody involved.
My Rating: 4/10
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