Die, Monster, Die! (1965)

Nice effects though.

What begins as a feel-good-human-interest story turns into a mystery, then a tragedy, and ultimately an outrage.

The acting in this movie is really good.

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

Karloff rules, the story needs lots of help.Karloff was great in this movie. He's better here then in some of the other pile of crap movies he was in prior to this. The other actors are only decent. The actress playing the wife was also good. The male lead sucks. He just does nothing. The female lead was better but that's not saying much. The guy who played the butler dies, maybe of boredom, like some of the audience. He did OK in the dying role. Some of the townspeople were also OK. So, wait for Karloff, and unfortunately he's not given great dialogue or enough screen time. The cinematography was good, as well as the sets. Music was good too. FX sucked. The story sucks. It stars similar to Harker heading to the Dracula's castle. Beginning is handled well, with mystery of the family. Then we meet the family, like the Munsters, there's a beautiful normal daughter in a house with strange characters. She acts like everything is normal. So, the story goes down hill from here. After some time of boredom we find out that people and plants are being mutated from some meteor, and then everybody dies, places goes on fire and the young couple escape. Happy ending. This movie first needed a better story. The basics are there, but the scenes/actions/tensions are not there. It also needed a better male lead. The daughter was fine. And it needed more Karloff. So, as is. I can only give this C-, or 3 stars

An okay but flawed movie in the spirit of the Corman Poe films (1960-1965), this has its moments but is let down by a sluggish pace and a familiarity with the proceedings. By now the "outsider goes to crumbling house and meets owner with dark secrets" plot had been done to death and it shows here. Plus, the imported American lead, Nick Adams, is hopelessly miscast, nothing more than wooden throughout the film's running time and hardly charismatic.I was hoping this film to be a Lovecraft tour-de-force but I was disappointed : Lovecraft's source material is barely used in the film, and the makers saw fit to add in an ancestral black magic subplot seemingly lifted from THE HAUNTED PALACE instead. Only in the last half an hour do things really pick up and become quite exciting, but by then we really don't care that much anyway. Everything that happens in this film is predictable. The acting, aside from Karloff's, is mundane too, with Suzan Farmer a forgettable love interest and Freda Jackson (THE BRIDES OF Dracula) given too little to do. Patrick Magee (DEMENTIA 13) is also wasted in his one-scene cameo as the town's doctor, a character whom I would have liked to have seen more of.Still, the ending itself is pretty good, with some tacky but effective special effects work. The special effects, while low budget, are still a lot of fun, especially the monster who just looks like somebody covered in tin foil and with green lights shining upon them. There are some fun clichéd bits - the skeleton behind the door shock is routine, yet reminded me of THE HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL, and some lame ones, but sadly the silly bits outweigh the good. Just watch a moment where a woman is attacked by a mutated plant in the greenhouse - it's as stupid as it sounds, although not without its merits. On the plus side, the sets and scenery are quite nice and claustrophobic, and Boris Karloff is very good in his role. Despite being in a wheelchair and nearing the end of his life, Karloff gives a nicely sinister performance in his finest tradition and it's great to see the old master at work.DIE, MONSTER, DIE! is a cheesy B-movie, nothing more. It's worth seeing if you're a Lovecraft or Karloff fan, yes, but the outlandish title promises a lot of fun which just doesn't appear, sadly. Check out the 1987 movie THE CURSE for another version of Lovecraft's story, which is about the same in terms of quality.

I do love the old American International Pictures films from the 1960s. Many of them were directed by Roger Corman, starred Vincent Price, and were based on Edgar Allan Poe and H.P. Lovecraft stories. What did AIP do when they couldn't rely on Corman or Price to head up one of these moneymaking projects? They replaced them with other reliable talent like Boris Karloff and Set Designer / first time Director Daniel Haller.The outcome of this pairing was 1965's strange mix of sci-fi paranoia and classic haunted house themes entitled "Die, Monster, Die!" Imagine a 1950's space invader film like "The Quartermass Xperiment" and "The Thing" colliding with the setting of "The Haunted Palace." An American scientist (Nick Adams) is summoned to the secluded estate of his fiancée (Suzan Farmer). Her home sits on the edge of a crater in the center of a countryside devastated by what appears to be fire. Upon arriving, he is met by the woman's embittered and secretive father (Boris Karloff). After he's urged by his girlfriend's sickly mother (Freda Jackson) to take her as far away as possible, he begins investigating the mysteries surrounding the old house and its devastated grounds."Die, Monster, Die!" is not rated. There are some rather graphic and gory death scenes which would merit a PG rating now. They're not going to freak out anyone who's used to the realistic effects of today. However, they quite possibly could frighten children.Although not directly related to the storyline, I found "Die, Monster, Die's" use of Biblical and religious elements fascinating. The mother talks quite openly about the sins of the father coming down on the son. She also states that one can be a man of strong faith and lose it only to become a tool of the Devil.In hindsight, "Die, Monster, Die!" is a unique little film that isn't what it appears to be from the get-go. Screenwriter Jerry Sohl and Director Haller did their best to lead audiences in one direction before banging them over the head in the climax of the movie with a twist on the haunted house genre. It suffers a little from pacing, but one could almost explain that away to the era it was made in. People didn't demand such quick delivery in the 1960s and 1970s.

The American Stephen Reinhart (Nick Adams) arrives by train in Arkham, a small town in the countryside of England. He tries to travel to the real estate of a man called Witley by taxi or bicycle, but the locals are frightened by the name and refuse to help him. Stephen has to walk to the property and he is badly received by Nahum Witley (Boris Karloff), who is on the wheelchair.Stephen informs that he had been invited by his fiancée, Susan Witley (Suzan Farmer), who welcomes him when she sees Stephen. The young man is summoned by Susan's mother, Letitia Witley (Freda Jackson), who is very ill, to have a private conversation with her, and she asks Stephen to leave the real estate as soon as possible with Susan. Further he learns that the maid Helga has disappeared and the butler Merwyn (Terence de Marney) is also very ill.Stephen notes that there are weird things happening in the house, with a woman in black wandering in the garden and screams during the night. He snoops around and finds the Nahum is using the radiation of a meteorite in the greenhouse to turn the wasteland into a place of beauty with giant plants. However the side effect of the radiation has killed Merwyn and affected the health and turned Helga and Letitia into monsters. Now Nahum wants to destroy the stone with tragic consequences."Die, Monster, Die!" is a good sci-fi horror movie with Boris Karloff. The creepy story has a promising beginning but when the mystery is disclosed, it is a little disappointing. I was expecting that Corbin Witley was behind the dark events but the plots changes to science fiction and becomes silly. My vote is seven.Title (Brazil): "Morte Para Um Monstro" ("Death for a Monster")