The Dungeon of Harrow (1964)

Wonderful character development!

Admirable film.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

The Dungeon of Harrow (1962) BOMB (out of 4)Aaron Fallon (Russ Harvey) survives a shipwreck and washes up on an island. He wonders around before reaching a castle owned by Count Lorente de Sade (William McNulty) who is hiding some dark secrets about his family.THE DUNGEON OF HARROW is a really awful movie that has somewhat gained a cult following over the years. This was apparently a very popular film on television back in the 1970s, which means that a lot of kids would watch it and keep its memory alive through the years. Today the film is basically remembered for how bad it is and it really does deserve that reputation because there's really not too many good things you can say about it.The biggest issue with the film is that it's deadly dull to the point where most people aren't going to be able to stay with it. The film basically has the Aaron character narrating the whole thing so we have to hear his non-stop thoughts and there's no question that the screenwriter got a major workout because there's pretty much nothing but dialogue here. It's poorly written and the narration of it is so dull that it just kills the film even more.Another problem is that it's clear the director didn't know how to make a movie as scenes drag on for no reason, often times you feel as if you're watching an outtake and just take a look at the opening shipwreck! This here has to be one of the worst looking special effects ever used for a film. The performances are also just as bad but for some strange reason I think they're the best thing in the movie. Yes, they are quite awful but at the same time they're so numbing that you almost can deal with them.I will say that there are some "so bad they're good" looking make-up effects at the end but by the time they show up most people will be bored to the point where they've turned the film off. THE DUNGEON OF HARROW is a really cheap attempt at trying to make a Corman-Poe picture but it pretty much fails on every level.

I agree with some comments made previously and I also disagree with a few comments. I concur that this movie has the feel of something from the 1930's that somehow got filmed in color. In my opinion that's not a bad thing cause I love the old suspense films from that era. Make no mistake, this is a C film working with very few resources. Its not a huge stretch to compare this movie with The Terror, the Corman/Karloff/Nicholson epic. There are similarities. The action takes place near the ocean in a creepy old castle with a creepy old man, there is a mysterious and very lovely girl, there is a mystery about the old man's wife, etc. etc. Dungeon of Harrow is sorta and even lower budget version of that low budget classic which I actually loved. There are some very cheesy moments which would have best been left out. The shipwreck is lame, the skimpy Santa Claus outfit Mantis wears is kinda really dumb, and the painting of the Manor is pretty weak.It doesn't help much that the leading man has zero acting ability. He does kinda look the part which helps. Also, the film moves very slowly at times. However, the overall effect is sorta like watching some surreal play while doing acid. Not a bad thing!The big payoff for me were the scenes when the leading man is tossed into the dungeon which was more like a massive tomb. What he encounters there actually manages to bring the audience a few moments of rather stark anxiety. The scenes in the "tomb" were awfully effective, I was creeped out. I am familiar with some of the Director, Pat Boyette's, comic book illustrations. The man had an imagination and the ability to create weird visual images. At the end of the day this movie is one of those "what might have been with more money, real actors, real special effects, and a more experienced director." However, it still manages to be rather watchable for its bizarro value and some out of the box experimentation. I gave it a five because I did enjoy it reasonably well. Its quite a trip if you're into stuff that is sorta "out there." Check it out, its still showing somewhere out there on Planet Weird.

This weird movie from Texas is about Fallon, a dilettante rich boy in the late 1800s (although he looks like a 60s C&W singer with greasy hair and sideburns) whose ship wrecks on an island owned by Count DeSade (pronounced de-sayd) with his captain. The count is afraid of pirates and tortures a young girl who was once a pirate hostage and also tortures the captain. Meanwhile, creepy former nurse Cassandra tells Fallon the secrets of the castle. The Countess has leprosy and went mad! Fallon is trapped but brings supplies. The captain is killed by a racist-caricature slave. Fallon is thrown in the dungeon with the leper, who always thinks it's her wedding day. The leper bride is horny, bu Cassandra kills her. Fallon and Cassandra escape the castle, but the Count and his slave chase them with dogs. DeSade kills the slave and Fallon kills DeSade. Fallon and Cassandra fall in love over the course of the next year, but when the supply ship comes, the crew refuses to take our lovers because they're both lepers now. They live for years in the castle...Fallon's hair turns gray and Cassandra goes bonkers. Fallon puts her in the dungeon. Our tale of love and leprosy ends.So bizarre it's watchable, and you can smell the drive-in popcorn.

My bad film guru (and the president of the Exposed Film Society) sprang this one on us last week. There was no denying the demented gleam in his eye as he pulled it out of its brown paper bag and announced what he had in store for us: "The Most Dangerous Game", filmed on a budget of about $2.95.Of course, $2.95 went a lot further back in 1962, but still...Anyway, there is certainly a lot to dislike about this film. It abounds with serious technical gaffes (my favorite was the 'repeating musket' that fired twice in two minutes without benefit of a reload). The hero is a wuss who stands by while his wounded friend fights the henchman and gets killed. More? OK -The plot is a shambles with no continuity to speak of. The movie wastes five minutes with a 'special guest star' who serves as the physical embodiment of the villain's madness and paranoia, but never shows him again. The hero is choked unconscious by the henchman but makes no mention of it when he wakes up and first meets his host. The mute servant girl is captured, put on the rack...and then the movie (and the hero, who put her in this predicament) just sort of "forgets" about her. More? Well, the sets are cheap, and the special effects are cheaper (the makeup is an exception to this). Much of the plot is carried by the narrator's droning, monotonic voice-over, which carries less dramatic impact than the menu recital at Denny's. Most of the dialog is simply ridiculous and stilted , as if it was translated from Japanese. ("I demand that our conversation be pleasant!!!") And the color values tended to shift violently from shot to shot, as if cheap film stock and problematic lighting equipment were the order of the day. (Note - this last may have been the fault of a bad print, rather than the camera crew). But there were a couple of nice moments here and there. The makeup effects were startlingly good in contrast to the rest of the film, the actors were LOOKED interesting, especially the mute servant girl and the Countess. And in spite of everything, there was a definite creepy atmosphere to be found, very nasty and disturbing.So what was the deal with this movie? I thought about it a bit, and realized that director/writer Pat Boyette basically tried to put a story from of the old "EC" horror comics on film. That would account for the stilted dialog, the sketchy character development (in a comic, physiognomy = character even more than in film), the loopy interior logic of the story ("EC" horror stories went out of their way to include a nasty "shock" ending and weren't big on psychological realism), the over reliance on the narrative voice (which belongs in captions over the panels), and the interesting makeup effects that mimicked the grisly pictures that the old EC artists did so well.In fact, I'd be willing to bet that when Boyette saw his leading man during casting, he instantly saw that the fellow was as close to being the equivalent of the lanky, shambling figures and caved in faces that artists like Johnny Craig and Jack Davis drew as an actual human could be and still exist in the real world.. He used costumes and lighting to emphasize the cartoony aspect of the visuals and turned everyone into living EC comics characters. (See: the leading lady's blank beauty, the Count's strong bony features, oddly bronze skin and sharp chin, the platinum 'do on the tall, bony black henchman, etc.) This would explain the movie's failings. Boyette knew how to 'frame' things, but he didn't know how to deal with three dimensions and moving bodies. Boyette knew how to tell a creepy story within the confines of a comics page, but the nuances of film and live actors escaped him. He wouldn't be the first person with this problem of course - look at what Joel Schumacher did to "Batman". But he didn't have a big budget to hide behind.In any case, I'm imagine that Boyette walked away from this train wreck and probably spent less time thinking about "Dungeon of Harrow"than the folks who post on this film's message boards. He did, within certainly vague boundaries, what he set out to do, and you have to respect him for it...even if you don't care for "Harrow".