The Dunwich Horror (1970)
Dr. Henry Armitage, an expert in the occult, goes to the old Whateley manor in Dunwich looking for Nancy Wagner, a student who went missing the previous night. He is turned away by Wilbur, the family's insidious heir, who has plans for the young girl. But Armitage won't be deterred. Through conversations with the locals, he soon unearths the Whateleys' darkest secret — as well as a great evil.
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Admirable film.
This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.
A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.
A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.
Weirdo student of the occult Wilbur Whateley (Dean Stockwell) tries to get his hands on a copy of the Necronomicon in order to perform a ritual that will open an inter-dimensional portal and free 'the old ones'. For his ceremony, he also needs a virgin: cue cinematic goody goody Sandra Dee as librarian Nancy Wagner, the actress ultimately shaking off her wholesome screen image by baring some flesh during the film's climactic ritual.Based on the work of H.P. Lovecraft, The Dunwich Horror is an undeniably atmospheric movie, with a great sense of foreboding helped in no small part by a sinister score, but director Daniel Haller's best efforts are undone by a script that treads water until the finale, a plodding pace and an over-reliance on groovy psychedelic visuals, the image becoming negative and changing colours during key scenes: what may have seemed cool to the hippy generation now looks horribly cheesy and incredibly dated.And, of course, anyone looking forward to the arrival of the 'old ones' is heading for disappointment: all the budget can stretch to are some rubbery snake heads, their awfulness partially disguised by one of Haller's crappy visual effects.
I am a real H.P. Lovecraft, having read just about everything he has written, including five volumes of letters. Unfortunately, his canon mostly concerns the Cthulhu mythos. The Old Ones and their ilk are always made worse by an inability to describe something so horrible. In film, one does not have that option. So it's left to our imagination. Dean Stockwell (you may remember for Quantum Leap) is Wilbur Whateley, who is descended from some wizard who knows how to call up these "eldrich" creatures from somewhere beyond. He goes to Miskatonic University and borrows the original copy of the Necronomicon of the dreaded Arab, Abdul Alhazred. He takes with him Sandra Dee who was big in idiotic teen movies in the fifties and sixties. What happens is dense and somewhat incomprehensible. Lovecraft may be slightly below Edgar Allen Poe in skill as a horror writer, but has never garnered the respect he deserved, partly because his creations first appeared in pulp magazines.
As Sandra Dee got older her youthful virginal image did not play well in the 60s counterculture. The Dunwich Horror was an effort to save her career and break the typecasting.Sandra getting a little long in the tooth for a college student meets a rather strange Dean Stockwell who is looking a rare book that professor Ed Begley has. It contains some spells that will bring some creatures from another dimension and Begley doesn't want to part with it. Stockwell then steals it and returns home with Dee.Dean's got big plans for Sandra. She's to be part of a ritual that will open up the portals to another dimension. And he's got reason to want to bring these beings into our universe.The Dunwich Horror didn't serve the careers of Dean Stockwell or Sandra Dee very well. Ed Begley does well in a sympathetic role, one of his last. But I was singularly unmoved by it all.
Nancy Walker and Elizabeth Hamilton, two students who attend Miskatonic University and work in the school library, are putting away the Necronomicon , a rare book on the occult, after a lecture on the supernatural given by visiting professor Dr. Henry Armitage. Dr. Armitage discovers Wilbur Whateley memorizing ritual passages from the Necronomicon and is at first angry, but learns that Wilbur comes from nearby Dunwich, a village having a history of evil occurrences, and that Wilbur is the great-grandson of Oliver Whateley, who was hanged by the villagers as a demon. Nancy, finding herself attracted to Wilbur, offers to drive him home when he misses his bus. Later, in the old mansion where Wilbur lives with his grandfather, Wilbur drugs Nancy and sabotages her car, thus forcing her to stay for the night. (He plans to sacrifice her in a fertility rite in the hopes of gaining for himself contact with the spiritual world.) Nancy accepts his invitation to spend the weekend there, but her absence alarms both Elizabeth and Dr. Armitage, who learn that Wilbur's mother has been living in an insane asylum since giving birth to twins--Wilbur and a boy who has never been seen. Wilbur steals the Necronomicon from the library, kills a guard, and takes Nancy to the "Devil's Hopyard," a rocky hillside, for the ritual. Meanwhile, Elizabeth and Dr. Armitage arrive at the Whateley house; Elizabeth opens a locked door and is immediately devoured by an invisible creature, the Dunwich Horror (Wilbur's twin). The Horror escapes and ravages the countryside, intending to kill Wilbur. Eventually, Dr. Armitage confronts Wilbur and the monster at the Devil's Hopyard, and there Armitage utters a curse which sends both Wilbur and the Dunwich Horror up in flames.