Die Monster Die (1965)
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Steven is coming to visit his girlfriend, Suzan, at her father’s house but is getting nothing but disrespect form the local townsfolk on the way there. Turns out everyone is scared of the house and once inside, he finds out why. Suzan’s mother is locked in her room, her dad is in a wheelchair and mysterious glowing things are coming from the greenhouse. Once hell starts to break loose, Steven is just gonna have to run as far away as he can.
Overall: Please, tell me by the 45-minute mark that this didn’t look identical to “House of Usher”? I read HP Lovecraft’s Story “Color of the Space” so I know what this film was supposedly based on….but frankly, this was not a good rendering of that. The Lovecraft story centers around an old man telling a story of how a meteorite fell on a neighbor’s farm and slowly everything on the farm including plants, humans and animals had life sucked out of them...hence why townspeople were scared. In this movie, it takes 54 minutes for us to figure out about the meteor but the film eliminated a few kids from Lovecraft’s story and also fails to truly explain why the town is unhappy with the family. Everything is so hidden in the Whitley house, it takes 54 minutes for Steven to figure out there was a problem and yet magically the townspeople knew. The “creature” at the end was fairly pathetic in terms of who/what it represented. If the meteor was supposed to make things bigger ala radiation, how come the humans stayed the same height? At least Lovecraft made the meteor suck the power from everything, which made more sense at least. It’s really a slow movie, which doesn’t do the story justice, and even then it’s not one of Lovecraft’s best works. Outside of the appearance by a dying Boris Karloff, the film is forgettable. Comparison: House of Usher meets Them |
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