The Dunwich Horror (1970)

Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Did you people see the same film I saw?

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

This is not a bad adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft's story. The movie has it's flaws but it's an overall decent film on the occult (specifically the Necronomicon).Wilbur Whateley is not quite human - his heritage is part human and part otherworldly. He is after a rare copy of the Necronomicon to help the old ones break through and rule planet Earth. Armitage finds out what Wilbur has planned and gathers help to put an end to it.This is not a bad late night film - it is worth watching for those interested in occult topics or for those who simply like classic horror films.7/10

but you'll love it; it's got it all: sex, multi-form monsters...for a low budget rendition of a Lovecraft story it's not bad. Almost up to par with Dagon. I only regret not getting to see Wilbur Whateley's guts ripped out by a German Shepherd dog in the library. I live in a state (CT) that actually has a Devil's Hopyard, so I can relate, and the only problem I had with the movie was the music soundtrack, which was so 70's. Big surprise. Probably some of the most erotic Lovecraft filmage ever done, I have to hand it to R. Corman this time. You've paid good money to see much much worse. The Necronomicon scenes are pretty spot-on. The vernacular is there. One might hope for a third treatment (forget the J. Coombs version) that could implement some CGI, but they canned At the Mountains of Madness too. When is Hollywood gonna wake up and see the potential in HP Lovecraft? A lot of raw material is going to waste and we don't need a Spiderman 5.

The Necronomican (a mythical book said to be a tool to open a gateway to an alternate universe) becomes the prized exhibit of Dr Armitage (Ed Begley) at the local library, and gets interest from the eccentric, and locally feared Wilbur Whateley (Dean Stockwell), who was born of a deformed mother who is now held in an institution. An encounter at the library leads him to Nancy (Sandra Dee), a pretty young blond girl; he seduces her and takes her back to his mansion - a local 'old dark house' shrouded in local fear and loathing to the population of the fictional town of Dunwich, Massachusetts. Nancy becomes embroiled in a necro- nightmare, where she has visions of strange ritualistic, tribal torture and sacrifice, and Wilbur manipulates her to become a vehicle to open the gateway open to let the "old ones" through to our world.Based on the short story, published in 1929, by H. P. Lovecraft, the story is grounded in two of his most famous creations. One being the Necronomicon (a creation that has been used several times in popular culture - including Sam Raimi's Evil Dead Trilogy (1981 - 1992)), and the tentacled beasts of the other world, epitomised by Cthulhu (yeah, no one knows how exactly it is pronounced). Whilst much of his writings have now been adapted into films (most famously Re-Animator (1985) and From Beyond (1986)), his adjective-heavy prose is regarded less than the work of that other American horror writer, Edgar Allen Poe; perhaps symptomatic of his anti-Semitic attitudes in life.Like the films pop art stylings of the Sandy Dvore title sequence, with it's bold colours and silhouetted figures, the films "horrific" action is marked with various coloured filters, giving a very '60's charm to it. Oranges, reds and blue filters flash on screen, the editing at times too quick to register, as the screams of victims, and the flight of a beast are signified simply, for budgetary purposes no doubt. Stockwell gives a fantastically hammy, yet suave performance as the tortured, yet controlling man, who's past is shrouded in mystery. The climax reveals a potent edge of cerebral, nightmarish horror, a conclusion of twisted, monstrous proportions. Produced by Samual Z. Arkoff's AIP, it sometimes feels like a very East-coast American Hammer film, but the tentacled monstrosity (which we don't really see exactly) is absolutely from the imagination of Lovecraft. It's preposterous, but a hell of a lot of fun - helped by Stockwell's furry eyebrows and moustache.www.the-wrath-of-blog.blogspot.com

To be honest I really didn't hate watching this movie for its first half. Yes, it all was kind of slow but I thought that this was merely a build up to something great, exciting, mysterious, tense. But none of that was the case. The movie gets progressively worse and even reaches a point that it becomes almost a totally unwatchable one.This is a movie that just never takes off. Its story just goes nowhere and it is simply a ridicules one. The concept is just too dull for an horror. The only way this type of story could possible work out is if it has a good dark, mysterious atmosphere. Something that this movie just doesn't have. It's not the type of story that provides the movie with lots of blood, monsters or scary moments. It's more about its haunting atmosphere and mysterious story and characters, which this movie just doesn't know how to handle well. There is just nothing happening and when there is it's just too ridicules and far from interesting. You also often have no idea what is happening because of the messy, offbeat way the movie gets told.It's an early '70's movie but it already has a typical sort of experimental '70's style over it. This style already sort of started off in the late '60's, so it's not really a great surprise or something renewing or original for its time. But it was this style that still made the movie a good and interesting one to watch at times. It's about one of the only positive things I can say about this movie really.I just really started to loose interest in this movie as it progressed. Instead of developing, the story becomes only more and more simplistic, dull and just plain ridicules. It was written by the then still young Curtis Hanson, who would much later go on to win an Oscar for "L.A. Confidential". I also really feel that it was more the director's fault than the writer's that this movie turned out so bad and messy. After the halve way point it seems like they had no idea anymore what they were doing or what they were trying to create at all. The story itself got based on a short H.P. Lovecraft story but the fact that there still never have been made a good movie based on the story should already also tell enough. It's a story that might work on paper but just doesn't translate very well to the silver screen and doesn't make a good horror movie, or just movie in general, at all.The movie has Dean Stockwell, Sandra Dee and Ed Begley in it but still I can't say I was too happy about the casting. Perhaps the way Dean Stockwell was sexy back in the early '70's, though I highly doubt it. And he was supposed to be a very charming and seductive character, who completely got a girl like Sandra Dee in his grip. He just looked like an '70's porn actor, without any charm or charisma. He was absolutely boring and miscast in his role. It's even more sad that Sam Jaffe is also in this, who I like very much as an actor. But due to the story, dialog and directing, all of the actors come across as '50's B-monster movie actors, that often act against nothing. They must have thought they would fix things in post-production but they just messed up big time with it.A boring, slow mess, that is lacking as an horror movie and just as a movie in general as well, at basically every department.3/10http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/