DIE, MONSTER, DIE!!! (1965) 
Poor H.P. Lovecraft. In the past, unlike the aforementioned THE RESURRECTED, many movies supposedly based on Howie's work turned out like this. Now, the movie IS watchable, don't get me wrong. It's just not too good. And has practically nothing to do with Lovecraft. Basically, AIP and Roger Corman got a little tired of constantly making Edgar Allan Poe movies -- but they were SOOOOOOOO successful. So what they did with THE HAUNTED PALACE and this here movie was to go to the work of H.P. Lovecraft and "pretend" it was Poe. Cinematographer Daniel Haller makes his directorial debut in this instance and the movie LOOKS good. But it's something of a huge disappointment. And this is one of the major movies people point to when they say that Lovecraft can't be filmed.
Not only poor H.P. but poor Boris Karloff. The King of Horror is, of course, excellent in his role. When wasn't he? And confined to a wheelchair for most of the movie. . . Well, let us just say that the script doesn't give him much to do but what little he's given Boris makes watchable. Karloff plays patriarch Nahum Witley who presides over a dilapidated, almost empty house that features in just about every AIP/Corman/Poe movie. His maid has run off under strange circumstances suffering from some undisclosed "disease" and his butler isn't looking too hot these days either. Then there's Nahum's wife Letitia; played by Freda Jackson who made such a splash in Hammer's THE BRIDES OF DRACULA. Here she's all but invisible; crouching in her bed behind obscuring curtains. The other inmate of the old Witley house is Nahum's daughter Susan; played by Suzan Farmer in her first role. Farmer would later appear in Hammer's DRACULA - PRINCE OF DARKNESS and force me to develop a mild crush on her in my younger days. Susan has 
been away at college and just returned home. However, she's been home long enough for her panicked mother to write a school chum/boyfriend to come and take her away from this evil place. That beau is Stephen Reinhart; played by the method-acting Nick Adams. There is also a brief scene featuring the wonderful Patrick Magee as a town doctor who once went up to Witley's place on a house call and has never been the same since. As you can see, the cast is particularly fine -- and even though the movie itself is no great shakes the look of the film and the cast make it worth watching. Just.
The film is loosely based -- and I DO mean LOOSELY -- on HPL's superb short story "THE COLOUR OUT OF SPACE"; my personal favourite of the master's stories. However, there is so little of Lovecraft's story left in the movie that it practically doesn't need to be attributed to him at all. In fact, the only part of the story that appears in both versions is the fact that a strange "meteorite" falls from the sky. At first, it makes things grow to gargantuan proportion but slowly everything rots and turns a strange colour; a colour never seen before in the story and a simple glowing green in the film. The area around the Witley place is blasted and desolate. And the glowing meteor 
seems to effect human flesh as well; hence the problems experienced by Witley's wife and the servants. Other than this, the movie goes off on it's own tangent. The Witley place in the story is nothing but a shack while the movie's house is huge and Usher-like with much Poe-like underground catacombs to roams through. The film also doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense and it's never too clear what exactly is going on -- even by the end of the film. Basically, it's a movie one watches for the mood and atmosphere, for the typical nicely-done sets and the above-and-beyond acting of a great cast. Just don't expect a movie that makes much sense. And keep in mind that DIE, MONSTER, DIE is still better than THE CURSE OF THE CRIMSON CULT!
Poor H.P. Lovecraft. In the past, unlike the aforementioned THE RESURRECTED, many movies supposedly based on Howie's work turned out like this. Now, the movie IS watchable, don't get me wrong. It's just not too good. And has practically nothing to do with Lovecraft. Basically, AIP and Roger Corman got a little tired of constantly making Edgar Allan Poe movies -- but they were SOOOOOOOO successful. So what they did with THE HAUNTED PALACE and this here movie was to go to the work of H.P. Lovecraft and "pretend" it was Poe. Cinematographer Daniel Haller makes his directorial debut in this instance and the movie LOOKS good. But it's something of a huge disappointment. And this is one of the major movies people point to when they say that Lovecraft can't be filmed. 
Not only poor H.P. but poor Boris Karloff. The King of Horror is, of course, excellent in his role. When wasn't he? And confined to a wheelchair for most of the movie. . . Well, let us just say that the script doesn't give him much to do but what little he's given Boris makes watchable. Karloff plays patriarch Nahum Witley who presides over a dilapidated, almost empty house that features in just about every AIP/Corman/Poe movie. His maid has run off under strange circumstances suffering from some undisclosed "disease" and his butler isn't looking too hot these days either. Then there's Nahum's wife Letitia; played by Freda Jackson who made such a splash in Hammer's THE BRIDES OF DRACULA. Here she's all but invisible; crouching in her bed behind obscuring curtains. The other inmate of the old Witley house is Nahum's daughter Susan; played by Suzan Farmer in her first role. Farmer would later appear in Hammer's DRACULA - PRINCE OF DARKNESS and force me to develop a mild crush on her in my younger days. Susan has 
been away at college and just returned home. However, she's been home long enough for her panicked mother to write a school chum/boyfriend to come and take her away from this evil place. That beau is Stephen Reinhart; played by the method-acting Nick Adams. There is also a brief scene featuring the wonderful Patrick Magee as a town doctor who once went up to Witley's place on a house call and has never been the same since. As you can see, the cast is particularly fine -- and even though the movie itself is no great shakes the look of the film and the cast make it worth watching. Just.
The film is loosely based -- and I DO mean LOOSELY -- on HPL's superb short story "THE COLOUR OUT OF SPACE"; my personal favourite of the master's stories. However, there is so little of Lovecraft's story left in the movie that it practically doesn't need to be attributed to him at all. In fact, the only part of the story that appears in both versions is the fact that a strange "meteorite" falls from the sky. At first, it makes things grow to gargantuan proportion but slowly everything rots and turns a strange colour; a colour never seen before in the story and a simple glowing green in the film. The area around the Witley place is blasted and desolate. And the glowing meteor 
seems to effect human flesh as well; hence the problems experienced by Witley's wife and the servants. Other than this, the movie goes off on it's own tangent. The Witley place in the story is nothing but a shack while the movie's house is huge and Usher-like with much Poe-like underground catacombs to roams through. The film also doesn't make a hell of a lot of sense and it's never too clear what exactly is going on -- even by the end of the film. Basically, it's a movie one watches for the mood and atmosphere, for the typical nicely-done sets and the above-and-beyond acting of a great cast. Just don't expect a movie that makes much sense. And keep in mind that DIE, MONSTER, DIE is still better than THE CURSE OF THE CRIMSON CULT!
Didn't like this one at all. First saw it on a program with HAUNTED PALACE which only made it worse. Dan Haller went on to do the much more interesting DUNWICH HORROR. I'm pretty sure that Roger Corman had nothing to do with DIE MONSTER DIE.
ReplyDeleteI'm slightly more forgiving of the film for the reasons mentioned although I certainly could never recommend it. You're right about the much more interesting (if still flawed) Daniel Haller outing THE DUNWICH HORROR as well as the fact that Roger Corman didn't have anything to do with DIE, MONSTER, DIE. I see now that the way I wrote seems to imply that he did while what I meant to say was that it was Corman with THE HAUNTED PALACE who moved from Poe to Lovecraft. AIP took up the ball and ran with Lovecraft without Corman for DIE, MONSTER, DIE, of course. And however mediocre THE HAUNTED PALACE is, I like it more than DIE, MONSTER, DIE -- especially for the sumptuous triumph of Ronald Stein's musical score. One of the best and available in it's entirety on an indispensible CD.
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