The Horror of It All

This film, almost impossible to find today, has received a bad rap since its day of release, and maybe before, since the distributors put it on the bottom of a double bill with Lon Chaney's "Witchcraft." The temptation to dismiss this film is strong, but its pedigree is impossible to ignore. Genre master Terence Fisher is at the helm, during his unofficial banishment from Hammer Films; Ray Russell wrote the script; and the cast includes Valentine Dyall from "Horror Hotel"/"City of the Dead", Andree Melly, one of the "Brides of Dracula" and British stalwart Dennis Price, just beginning his flirtation with the horror genre.

So what went wrong?

The film's greatest offense is undoubtedly that it was made in black & white during the era when movies were going all-color in a big way. It's co-feature likewise; and that was a film that everyone liked and it still slipped into obscurity.

The casting of Pat Boone has stuck in the craws of many horror fans but, truthfully, he's as palatable as Tom Poston is in "Zotz" and 1963's "The Old Dark House". And Boone's boyish screen persona is just right for the kind of hapless hero he plays here. He does sing a totally unnecessary song, however.

Perhaps the most surprising aspect of this film is its similarity to two other films made about the same time: Hammer's "The Old Dark House", made the same year, and "What A Carve Up" (AKA "There's No Place Like Homicide") from 1962. The plot similarities, especially with the Hammer film, are so strong that it's a wonder how the persons concerned avoided lawsuits.

A long-unseen comedy-chiller from 1964, The Horror of It All holds the dubious distinction of being one of Hammer horror doyen Terence Fisher's most obscure movies; certainly, amongst the post-1957 filmography that contains all of his most famous and influential directorial credits, it is matched only by the dead-on-arrival, German-produced Sherlock Holmes and the Deadly Necklace (1962) in terms of all-round pointlessness. Both films, in fact, came at the midpoint in Fisher's run as British cinema's number one 'horror man', as after his initial run of trailblazing Gothic chillers that put Hammer on the international map, he appears to have been given a forced sabbatical from the fold following the box office failure of his weak-tea take on The Phantom of the Opera (1962); this resulted in him taking several 'director for hire' type assignments over the next few years, which he eventually started to slot in around his later Hammer efforts.

The very least of a glut of horror spoofs that appeared on UK screens in the 1960s (amongst them the excellent What A Carve Up and the legendary Carry On Screaming), The Horror of It All stars American singer-actor Pat Boone as a dopey everyman who turns up at the country home of his girlfriend Erica Rogers (yes, I'm drawing a blank too) intent on proposing, only to find out that not only are her family a decidedly odd bunch, but there's likely to be a murder there before very much longer as well...

Cheaply produced by Robert L. Lippert, whose stable would also be responsible for Fisher's The Earth Dies Screaming, this impoverished- looking quickie bears just about none of the classy hallmarks found in the director's better films. Certainly not at home with comedy, Fisher struggles to get anything at all funny out of the clichéd situations and very tired gags. The music (including a brief bit of singing by Boone in the middle of the picture) is nondescript, as are most of the supporting performances. The exceptions are reliable turns by Valentine Dyall and Dennis Price as two of the crackpot relatives; former alumni of the films of Powell and Pressburger, both actors would eventually slide much further down the movie industry totem pole than this, but that doesn't change the fact they are essentially wasted here.

Though unsurprisingly unavailable on DVD or any other home format, I finally managed to view The Horror of It All after some helpful individual put it up on YouTube, apparently recorded from an obscure Spanish TV channel (thankfully subtitled rather than dubbed), so if you are enough of a fan of Fisher's to want to see this misfire, you may still find it there.

Horror of It All, The (1963)

* (out of 4)

Terence Fisher directed this incredibly bad "old dark house" film, which tries to blend the scares with laughs. The story is pretty simple as a man (Pat Boone) goes to visit his girlfriend and her uncle inside a strange house and soon mysterious activities start. This film borrows heavily from many of the old dark house films of the 1930's but it fails on pretty much every level. The laughs are never funny and the director never builds up any worthy atmosphere, which leads the horror elements very boring. Boone is horrible in the lead but the supporting cast does include Dennis Price and Valentine Dyall (Horror Hotel).

American encyclopedia salesman working in England pays a surprise visit to his fiancée, who lives with her uncle and assorted relatives in an eerie countryside estate. Retread of "The Old Dark House" given curiously jaunty undermining, but these eccentric spooks are not very funny and one simply longs for the central character to get away. Pat Boone has the lead, and he does very well pretending to be interested in this ridiculous scenario; his intended is a colorless bird, and her family would certainly cause any sane person to head for the hills, but Boone proves to be quite capable here (he might have grown even more as an actor if Fox had given him some half-way decent roles). Talky, low-budget second-feature with flimsy-looking sets tries for a light touch but doesn't have the goods to keep it afloat. * from ****

Neither comedy or horror film.However some decent performances from ,Dyall,Price and Andrew Kelly make up for the bland Boone.Also quite funny is the professor who is 50 years late with his inventions