Serenata Macabra

In the late 1960s after a long and productive career, Boris Karloff, who was then in his late 70s and in poor health, was asked if he planned to retire. His reply was "He who rests...rusts! Not me. I plan to die in harness." And that's just what he did...almost. He died at 81 just two months after completing a series of four Mexican pictures. While his persistence was admirable, his final cinematic efforts were not. In fact they were pretty awful rivaling the movies that Bela Lugosi made at the end of his career for Ed Wood. This wasn't Karloff's fault. In fact he seemed more energetic in these last four films then he had been in the previous four bigger budget movies where he had been primarily seated in a wheelchair. The problem was in the way these Mexican titles were put together.

His health and the high altitude kept Karloff from going to Mexico City to shoot the films and so his scenes were all shot in Hollywood with an American director (Jack Hill) and an American script. Once his scenes were in the can, the Mexican portions using Mexican actors were filmed and then Boris' scenes were edited in. Director Hill, who had made the cult favorite SPIDER BABY with Lon Chaney Jr, was an old hand at creating composite films. Usually foreign films were purchased and then American scenes were shot and fitted into them. For these Mexican movies the process was reversed. Once back in Mexico, the producers rewrote the original scripts and did pretty much what they wanted including the addition of unsavory and rather violent material.

Fortunately Boris died before he had a chance to see these hybrid curiosities and so it is left for fans of BK to make of them what they will. Unquestionably the best of the lot was the first screenplay, HOUSE OF EVIL, which recycles the story of the dying patriarch and the greedy relatives gathered for the reading of his will. The twist here is that they are bumped off by his collection of mechanical toys. Next came ISLE OF THE SNAKE PEOPLE, a tale of zombies with Karloff as the head of a voodoo cult. The third to be filmed was THE INCREDIBLE INVASION which borrows from Karloff's THE INVISIBLE RAY (1936) and adds outer space aliens. Finally there was THE FEAR CHAMBER which is the weakest so you could say that each movie got progressively worse.

The first two were released a year after being completed. The last two had to wait until 1971 which was two years after Karloff died. All four played the drive-in circuit as double features and were quickly forgotten. In 1987, twenty years after the films were made, a company called Parasol Group Ltd released them on VHS in an edited form and gave them new titles. They became, in order, DANCE OF DEATH, CULT OF THE DEAD, ALIEN TERROR, and TORTURE ZONE. All four are characterized by cheap sets, unimaginative photography, and are badly dubbed. CULT and ZONE have brief nudity and some graphic violence. It is these rather flat looking VHS copies that VCI has issued on DVD as part of their Sprocket Vault series. For BK completists only...For more reviews visit The Capsule Critic.

House of Evil has just one thing going for it, Boris Karloff. One of those actors who always gave his all regardless of the film and material, Karloff's performance is sprightly and dignified, never less than convincing. Unfortunately it is one such performance that deserved a much better film. Nothing else works and any other Karloff film yet to be seen by me has to be really, really bad to be worse than House of Evil. The film is pure tack visually, the sets don't convince at all in Gothic atmosphere and the photography is just slipshod. The dialogue is wretched, a lot of it is ridiculous and senseless and everybody visibly looks awkward saying it. Don't look for a coherent story either, it's instead incredibly dull(not helped by that some scenes are too talky), devoid of thrills, suspense or creepiness and has unintentional humour, mainly because of how bad the dialogue is and how cheesy the deaths are. Let's not forget the music either, shrill, strident and far too obvious, when something sinister or deadly happens the music is annoying and very repetitive too. Last but not least the acting, with the sole exception of Karloff it is very amateurish. In particular Quintin Bulnes seems to be impersonating Peter Lorre, and does so terribly. Julissa is ravishingly beautiful but doesn't have the acting skills to match. All in all, a truly inept film all round apart from Karloff. 2/10 Bethany Cox

This tale based on two Edgar Allen Poe pieces ("The Fall of the House of Usher", "Dance of Death" (poem) ) is actually quite creepy from beginning to end. It is similar to some of the old black-and-white movies about people that meet in an old decrepit house (for example, "The Cat and the Canary", "The Old Dark House", "Night of Terror" and so on). Boris Karloff plays a demented inventor of life-size dolls that terrorize the guests. He dies early in the film (or does he ? ) and the residents of the house are subjected to a number of terrifying experiences. I won't go into too much detail here, but it is definitely a must-see for fans of old dark house mysteries.

Watch it with plenty of popcorn and soda in a darkened room.

Dan Basinger 8/10

Worth a watch if you enjoy the low-budget, B-grade horror of the '60's. No masterpiece, but Karloff is always a treat and the sets are suitably atmospheric. The acting will win no prizes but was ok. All in all, I found the movie watchable - and that's good enough for this genre.

Julissa plays Lucy Durant, a young woman who travels with her fiancee Charles Beasler (Andres Garcia) to visit ancient relative Matthias Morteval (Boris Karloff), in what is a pretty standard period horror. It involves a reading of the will, the typical greedy heirs, and people regularly getting bumped off. The killings are somewhat amusing, because the manufacture of death-dispensing "toys" has been a family pastime for ages.

This was one of four Mexican-American horror films headlined by Karloff that represented the legendary genre actors' last work in movies. It's obviously very low budget, and as a result is very crude. It's also seriously under-lit. It's talky and slowly paced, but its plot is apparently more coherent than those in the other three films in this series. There's mild use of gore, some sexy ladies (Beatriz Baz plays Cordelia, another of those potential heirs), a certain seedy atmosphere, and so-so music composed by Enrico C. Cabiati and Alicia Urreta.

The cast is nondescript performance-wise (that includes the people doing the dubbed-in American voices), although it must be said that Quintin Bulnes (as the dubious Dr. Horvath) and Manuel Alvarado (as the portly Morgenstern Morteval) have great character faces that wouldn't have been out of place in a Universal horror feature of the 30s and 40s.

The real saving grace is Karloff, who's wonderful as always. While it will be dispiriting to his fans to see him reduced to appearing in such schlock, he makes this more entertaining than it has any right to be.

While ultimately underwhelming, "House of Evil" / "Dance of Death" does have that irresistible "late show" quality that always appeals to this viewer.

Five out of 10.