Two on a Guillotine

This is one of those films from 1965 that my friends and I went to in our small-town movie theater. I remember it as being full of those jump-out-at-you moments with people in the theater screaming. Connie Stevens is the heir to her father's estate but must stay in the old house for seven days. He is one of the great magicians of his time and has promised, upon his death, to return to the house. The house itself is great fun, full of remnants of his magic world. There is a cabinet that opens when a switch is flipped, allowing a skeleton on a wire to come face to face with the unwary victim. The guillotine in question is part of the act that killed the man's wife and assistant. Stevens then was farmed out and never saw her father again. She also never knew what happened to her mother. It's full of fun stuff with a plot that shouldn't be too closely evaluated. There are two characters that are left out of the will who become suspects. What they really know is always in doubt. Connie Stevens was a cute TV star at the time and well worth watching and makes a good victim. She is stubborn on the one hand and terrified on the other. She can also scream with the best of them. Dean Jones (a long time Disney staple) plays the love interest.

I don't understand the low rating on this film at all. Although I can understand why people would be skeptical about a horror film starring Connie Stevens and Walt Disney leading man Dean Jones, these two really click in this one. John Harley 'Duke' Duquesne (Cesar Romero) is a magician whose wife (Connie Stevens in a dual role as wife Melinda/daughter Cassie twenty years later) is part of the act. Daughter Cassie has been living with an aunt that does not approve of her show-business parents ever since her mother disappeared when she was two. Neither father nor mother have ever tried to contact her in all of these years, and then one day she is notified of her father's death and comes to the funeral.

Thus Cassie returns to L.A. first for the funeral and then to take up residence in her father's mansion for a week, which is a condition of his will in which he promises to rise from the grave within that time. If he does not, Cassie is free to move out and take possession of her inheritance. In the meantime, reporter Val Henderson (Dean Jones) has taken an interest in the story and in Cassie. Complicating matters is the fact that if Cassie for any reason leaves the mansion between midnight and dawn during these seven days then her former nursemaid and her father's long-time care-taker and her father's former agent get to split the fortune instead. Let me also mention that the fact that Duquesne retired from show business twenty years before has left the two indigent. So when Cassie starts hearing and seeing things in the wee hours, is this Duke back from the dead, is it the two secondary heirs trying to drive her out of the mansion, or something else entirely? Watch and find out.

The big creepy mansion is full of tricks and traps that somewhat presage the ending, and then there's the movie's score that is about the creepiest thing I've ever heard, aptly done by Max Steiner. Take it from me, this is no mediocre six star horror film.

This was one of my favorite movies when I was growing up. They just don't make movies like this anymore. I have been trying to find this movie on VHS or DVD for years, apparently it is not available to buy, which doesn't make any sense considering there are a ton of stupid movies out there by the billions and none of this one - which is one of the greatest movies ever! I really hope that Two On A Guillitine comes out on video really really soon, this movie mesmerized me when I was very young, it would be nice to go back to it again! It wasn't a gory type of movie, I am surprised it's considered a thriller actually. I never thought of it as scary. But it definitely should get a lot more credit, A LOT MORE!!!!

Like some others who've seen this film as children, I have fond memories of Two On a Guillotine when it played as a Friday night movie on network TV in the mid-1960s. The sight of a lifeless Cesar Romero being lowered into a grave in a glass coffin at the beginning sets the spooky tone for the rest of the story. His character, a famous magician, promised to one day perform his greatest feat of all by returning from the dead. His wife (identical to his daughter) died some years before when he botched the guillotine trick she was assisting with. Without giving anything away, a lot of the suspense is built on the anticipation of his re-materializing at any time, to the horror of his daughter. This is a movie which has many of the elements necessary for genuine horror. No spilled guts, no splatter. It works on a neater, more effective plane.

"Two on a Guillotine" is an effective little BW chiller when aiming for the scares, but when that's not the case it becomes ponderous (the budding romance between the leads) and it in end too long-winded when it finally reach it very foreseeable conclusion. Still it's entertainingly solid with able performances by the ever delightful Connie Stevens and a charming Dean Jones. They work off each other rather well and the script stays compelling within its mystery building or trivial exchanges. Some slow spots, but never that distracting.

In order to inherit her recently deceased father's fortune, his only daughter (who hadn't seen her father in years after an incident during a magic trick featuring her mother in a guillotine) must stay seven nights in his mansion. If not, the fortune is split between his carer and manager. Things soon get weird, but it hard to tell if it's just games or the house is really haunted. Although he did promise to return from the dead.

The plot is a typical haunted house mystery (as nothing seems quite like what it is), but it's well presented and exemplary photographed. Director William Conrad mixes successfully the playful elements (an acceptable light-hearted funny bone) with the creepy moments (where it can draw some intensity). Cesar Romero is quite good as the illusionist too.

An earnest little spook drama.