The Dismembered

This Philly shot amateur film was unreleased for 55 years! I see why but I'm really surprised it never even had some cheapo VHS releases back in the 80's. It would have been a perfect Good Times or Alpha Video release since the artwork promises what this boring little movie never comes close to delivering. Just released as a $30!! Blu Ray when it should have been a $10 DVD. As is the case with a lot of these cheezy old films the director's commentary track is more interesting than the actual film.

The film runs a mere 65 minutes and 5 minutes of that is the opening titles. The title sequence is actually done well with everyone in the cast appearing inside of a creepy frame. The opening music is actually pretty cool as well. Sounding like a old Frankie Stein Lp. Jazzy/creepy piano and weird electronic noises. Those same electronic noises get pretty irritating when they randomly happen throughout the film though.

First off the real title is "Oswald,you botched it again!" and that title comes from the main ghost Oswald trying to remove living people from the house of ghosts but accidentally killing them in the process. The "ghosts" are just 4 older people who talk endlessly about keeping people out.

A lot of the music and the way this was shot reminds me any generic 1930's haunted house movie. It's basically shot like a play and the old-timey piano had me expecting a guy in a gorilla suit to show up...thankfully that never happens. The pacing is terribly slow but surprisingly the acting is mostly OK ranging from pretty good to total ham.

Let me save you 65 minutes of your life by summing this up. 3 thieves steal some jewels and use a ambulance to escape. They drive out to a old house in the woods to lay low but it's inhabited by 4 very boring ghosts that can't be seen. The ghosts go on and on about how they don't want anyone there so they try to get rid of the robbers but accidentally kill them. They also keep mentioning "those things in the graveyard" which turn out to be one semi-creepy girl in a white dress and a few random body parts that come crawling into the house in the last 10 minutes.

None of this is done creepily it's all done "for laughs"....but no laughter came out of me...just a few yawns. At 47 minutes in a hand strangles a guy. 53 minuted in the body parts start crawling around. Talk talk talk...THE END.

This could have been pretty good if they had picked a real direction HORROR or HAM? The old house has some real atmosphere,the lighting is good,the makeup is good,and as stated the acting is not atrocious. The director said it was shot in just 11 days. I would have guessed one long weekend.

The Dismembered (1962)

* (out of 4)

Three thieves take some valuable jewelry and on their getaway then end up stopping on a creepy old house. They plan to just stay there a few hours to let things cool down but they don't realize that the house is actually the home to some dead people.

THE DISMEMBERED was a film that was completed in 1962 but not released until 2017. That's right, this Philadelphia based horror film didn't find a theatrical screening back in the day, it was never released to any low-rent VHS, it skipped any sort of budget DVD release but it finally made its way to Blu-ray. I'm not going to life, this here is a pretty bad film but at the same time I'm a little shocked that it never got some sort of release until now since there are much worse films out there.

With that said, there's no question this is a pretty bad movie and I think the majority of its troubles start with the screenplay. This thing clocks in at 65-minutes and I'm really don't know what it was trying to do. Was it trying to be funny? The scenes with the old dead people commenting on the "younger people" is just so lame and boring. Nothing they say is funny nor is it at any level entertaining. The horror elements are just as worse because you've basically got a woman in white walking around. That's it. No ghouls. No real monsters. No major ghost scares. Nothing.

I'm not sure what they were trying to do with this film but I'm going to guess that the filmmakers simply liked the idea of making a movie and wanted to make one. The commentary track that is on the disc has the director talking about the experience and there's no question that the making of stories are a lot more entertaining than what's actually on the screen. The movie is shot quite flat and there's just nothing interesting going on. Thankfully it's only 65-minutes and thankfully it was found after all these years but I'm going to guess that had the film gotten a release back in 1962, it would have already been forgotten anyway.