Los endemoniados

I liked this one, but it was not without its faults. One of these is clearly the monster. It does not look to good, but on the bright side they try to cover up its appearance with weird flashing lights and they usually only show it by showing its point of view. Another problem is I found myself pulling for Wilbur to succeed in his rituals. I am sure that is not the makers of this movies intent. This one has a man wanting to see a book at a library that contains many rituals for bringing those called the "old ones" to the earth. He can't convince the man in charge of the book to loan it to him, but he does get a gal to drive him home and stay the weekend. His house is rather drab, but she seems okay with it. She soon becomes part of his plans to bring the "old ones" to earth. Meanwhile, her friend and the guy with the book investigate the guy. Overall I liked it, but I wasn't thrilled with the ending as it did not seem right to me. The old guy was about three or four steps behind in everything to me, so it didn't seem right that it should end that way. Some nudity in this one, but not all that much. Could have used a bit of gore too, but the story is interesting enough to keep my attention anyway. Based on a Lovecraft story that probably explains the monster. He always describes such horrors in his story that they are nearly impossible to duplicate by building them or using computer graphics.

Sandra Dee (the original GIDGET to you beach bunny fans) is Nancy Wagner, a virginal blonde student at Miskatonic University who meets Wilbur (Dean Stockwell), the grandson of a warlock who was lynched years earlier.

Wilbur shows interest in the Necronomicon and in Nancy, because he needs both to open a gateway for demons called "The Old Ones" to enter our world. He invites her back to his secluded home in Dunwich, where he keeps her drugged, plots to sacrifice her on a seaside altar and fights with his senile, ranting grandfather (Sam Jaffe). A strange-looking, barely-seen, multi-headed flying monster that sees things in negative (and looks kind of like GHIDRAH!), is kept locked in the attic, but escapes for the silly finale.

It's amusing to see the once-wholesome Sandra Dee saying sex is "great" and simulating orgasm while being groped on an altar, but she should also get credit for delivering a decent performance. Ditto Ed Begley in his last role as a heroic professor. Stockwell is so soft-spoken and weird it's hard to gouge just how good (or bad) his performance really is.

Compared to most recent H.P. Lovecraft adaptations, this isn't half bad and it all looks very cool and colorful. Roger Corman was the executive producer. Director Haller also made DIE, MONSTER, DIE, which was based on Lovecraft's "The Colour Out of Space."

The writings of the great H.P. Lovecraft have lead to some truly great films, but unfortunately his stories aren't always enough to carry a film through, and despite the fact that this film features all the elements of a successful Lovecraft adaptation - The Dunwich Horror is a sadly lacklustre movie. It has to be said that the film does look very nice - for a low rent early seventies production, the cinematography is surprisingly crisp and the locations look good - but this isn't matched by the story, which is always intriguing but director Daniel Haller lets the suspense build and build and then makes the cardinal blunder of not giving his audience a worthwhile payoff at the end. The plot revolves around one of Lovecraft's most famous creations - the Necronomicon, a book which can supposedly summon alien Gods to Earth. Wilbur Whateley wants this book so that he can complete some ancient rite, and in order to do so he needs the services of Nancy Wagner - a young University student that offered him a lift home when he unfortunately missed his bus.

The film is packed with provocative imagery (for the time), and includes a nude scene for Sandra Dee and a whole host of trippy psychedelic scenes. However, while he was doing all this stuff, the director forgot that he was actually filming a horror film - and because of that, there's barely any horror on display at all and the closest we really get to anything horrifying is a vibrating door with a bolt on it. Naturally, it's not long before all this starts to get more than a little bit boring as you can only watch a bunch of meaningless characters swan around for so long. However, the way that the director builds suspense is sometimes intriguing, and I have to admit that I did want to know what was going on - the fact that the ending is so pithy pretty much cancels that out, however. There is a good sequence mid-way through in which we find about the birth of the main character and some other scenes are interesting (like the fight between our warlock and a library security guard...), but overall there really isn't much to recommend this film for and I don't doubt that my fellow Lovecraft aficionados will be disappointed.

Dean Stockwell (sporting a 'fro and looking like a sinister disco king) visits Miskatonic University in hopes of "borrowing" the original Necronomicon. It seems that Dean is the grandson of a powerful wizard, and the illegitimate son of a woman who is finishing her days in the padded room of an insane asylum. Sandra Dee and her huge helmet of blond hair accompany Dean back to his isolated farmhouse where she is quickly drugged, talking about sex, having orgasms on altars and dreaming about strange beings (who rather resemble Manson Family members) who chase her along the misty sea cliffs. Suspicious friends arrive to help the stoned Miss Dee, who has no desire to be rescued from her creepy new boyfriend or his awful perm. But the well meaning friends learn some shocking truths about Dean anyway: he has a twin brother, and if looks are anything to go by, then their Daddy was a mutant sushi dinner.

There's some pretty decent creepy moments to be found in this film. The mood is nice and eerie, the atmosphere as thick and creepy as the fog that lies thick along the coastline beside Dean's house. We don't get to see much of the Twin Brother, but the POV shots are nice, done in blood red negatives. Dean Stockwell delivers a truly icky performance as the not-quite-human Wilbur who succeeds in seducing virginal Sandy, whose Good Girl image goes bye-bye here pretty quickly. The ending is a tad rushed and somewhat silly, but everything leading up to it is nice and tense, with minimal gore and some haunting sound effects. I give it a fat 8 on a scale of 10.

The film boasts fairly good performances by some veteran Character actors. Ed Begley is a rock-like Armitage, and Sam Jaffe is an appropriately mangy (and deranged) Old Whately.However, it could have benefited from much better direction and a tighter script.It would also have helped to set it in the Twenties. Perhaps Tim Burton could do a remake. In fact a couple of Lovecraft's tales could stand retelling by Burton-or Lynch.