Runtime: 81 minutes
Directed by: A number of people, as explained below
Starring: Boris Karloff, Jack Nicholson, Dick Miller, Sandra Knight, Dorothy Neumann, Jonathan Haze
From: AIP
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 Raven) and two of its stars to create a whole new movie. Boris Karloff returned as did Jack Nicholson. Corman shot four days of random footage as there was only the bare outlines of the story, leaving it to others to piece something together via second-unit footage. Well, that took nine months and a number of directors. I've heard differing amounts but going by Wiki, there was:
Francis Ford Coppola
Dennis Jakob
Monte Hellman
Jack Hill
Nicholson himself, although that's been called into dispute by Hill
Karloff was supposed to receive $15,000 if this made $150,000. It didn't so he was miffed but he got paid the dough for starring in Targets. The film's Wiki page explains it all and to be frank, it is more interesting than the movie itself, pieced together like Frankenstein's Monster. It should be a compliment that The Terror is not completely disjointed, although the ideas presented in the plot aren't fully realized, the plot spins its wheels at time to make it feature-length & two characters had to literally explain the full story to the audience.
Nicholson-who did not show the prodigious talent he would later in his career-was a French soldier who encounters a mysterious woman (Sandra Knight, Jack's wife at the time. Yes, he actually was married once) tied to a castle owned by Karloff, who has Dick Miller as his majordomo. The film only has two other characters. The Terror had nice sets, a nice cast and sometimes a nice atmosphere; a shame that the meandering story understandably has its issues. Corman alone has done far worse than this motion picture. At the same time, curiosity over the production history & what it produced is really the only reason you need to check the film out, unless you want to see its M. Night-level plot twists.
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