Castle of Evil (1966)

Thanks for the memories!

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

The above quote, as insane as it is, is from this odd little horror film. In fact a lot of this film is insane...and watchable IF you like schlocky movies.When the film starts, six folks who hated Kovic (and vice-versa) are invited to the dead guy's mansion to discuss his will. He promises to give them his fortune but they need to figure out which of them booby-trapped his experiment and made him into a horrid dead guy who is missing part of his face. However, it's all a pretext just to get them in the house to kill them one by one.The premise is ordinary enough but the execution is rather poor. And the plot is just nuts--with zombies and lasers and all sorts of silliness that simply don't belong in a movie! Overall, a rather stupid but oddly enjoyable mess of a film.

A bunch of hopeful heirs to the estate of a reclusive but wealthy scientist arrives on an isolated island to hear the will. The sinister housekeeper, Lupe (well played by Shelley Morrison) turns out to be in cahoots with the horribly scarred scientist. But there is a murderous, equally horribly scarred zombie robot the scientist has made in his own image that threatens and / or starts killing some of the assembled heirs. It becomes a race against time for the survivors to uncover the person responsible for the scientist's disfigurement, to call off the rampages of the robot. The story has some nice touches but the soap opera dialog and unpleasant characters keep Castle of Evil in constant low gear. It is good to see the underrated Lisa Gaye but her character is so dull. Hugh Marlowe and Scott Brady are well cast, and Brady provides a tongue in cheek attitude when he keeps referring Lupe as 'Loopy.' Virginia Mayo is terrible, and she seems to know it... The zombie is menacing, however. As played by William Thourlby, the zombie scientist only has to cock his head slightly to be frightening. (Thourlby was the star of the lamentable Z-movie, The Creeping Terror.) Paul Dunlap's music is not boring and kept waking me up. The secluded castle has many unusual features, including an elaborate electronics and surveillance system.

It's a shame, movies like this are generally what I'm looking for, but `Castle of Evil' doesn't even manage the level of suspense of a `Dark Shadows' episode - and is about as talky and stagy as that series. On the whole, this movie is down there somewhere with the Philippino `Blood Island' series, and the more than competent cast gives some of the most wooden performances of their careers. It is easy to see that Hugh Marlowe was just about ready to begin his interminable run on `Another World' because this is about as close to the Soaps as horror ever comes.The plot is a tried-and-true midnight will reading preceding the six people locked in a house knowing one of them is a murderer routine. Fair enough, but the movie betrays what interest the audience might have in trying to resolve the mystery by showing us the murderer in the first few minutes, then even going so far as to demonstrate the means used for the slayings before the mystery is even fully underway. What could have been an interesting group of characters, each suspecting the others and forming alliances and theories degenerates into a group of non-entities being stalked by a Slasher-type disfigured killer (with minimal gore). The contrived ending seems far, far too long in coming.Natives of Nassau will be offended by the racism of the script and hispanics of all backgrounds will no doubt take issue with the pronunciation of the character Lupe's name (sounds like `Loopy'). Scott Brady seems to be dating one of his daughter's friends, and poor Hugh Marlowe just looks confused as Virginia Mayo's tramp character (`just call me Sable, dear') comes onto him. Overall, one gets the feeling everyone in the cast just wanted to get their check and forget about the whole ordeal. Perhaps we should do them a favor and do the same.

"Castle of Evil" is haunted castle movie much in the style of Roger Corman and England's Hammer productions. Although it doesn't quite measure up to those productions, it is a competent little horror flick. The story involves a group of people who are summoned to a mysterious castle for the reading of the will of the man who has virtually destroyed each of their lives individually. Their host unfortunately has just passed away, or has he? The film contains most of the usual horror cliches and settings. There are the secret passages, sliding doors, dark shadows, murders and the requisite mysterious housekeeper. The film is boosted by its veteran cast of actors who had all seen better days but were still able to deliver solid performances. Scott Brady is the hero of the piece and Virginia Mayo effectively plays a discarded mistress. Hugh Marlowe is along as a doctor, David Brian as a lawyer and the lovely Lisa Gaye as Brady's love interest. Shelley Morrison is quite good as the housekeeper. What now makes this film memorable is the resemblance of the character "Kovic" to a certain former U.S. president. See if you agree.