Cheap and Home-made
Every scene has been filmed on the steps and the portico of (what I assume is) some American library. There was no lighting so some scenes are VERY dark. A curiosity piece of no lasting value.
shareYes, it was very low budget and apparently Heston was the only actor that was paid. For the most part, it had a very limited release and was usually played in schools.
I'm just a guy that likes horror flicks.
Cheap and home-made is fine with me. Not much different than what Orson Welles was doing at the time. (See his Othello, for instance.) Anyway, this was filmed in my hometown, mostly. The outdoor scenes were on the steps and balconies of the Museum of Science and Industry in Jackson Park. Not the steps of the Field Museum as often reported. (Although, the Science Museum bldg., left standing after the Columbian Exposition, was the original home of the Field Museum. It was the Palace of Fine Arts at the Expo.) The interior murder scene was filmed in the rotunda of the Elks National Memorial building, on the edge of Lincoln Park. (I learned that from a local PBS travelogue of the Chicago Lakefront). The battle scenes, probably sand dunes in NW Indiana, as Illinois dunes are hardly that hilly.
shareI don't think it was a horrible film and I remember it pretty clearly, considering that I haven't seen it since Theater class in high school some 16 years ago. I do remember my Theater teacher showing it to the class and he is bad-mouthing it the whole way through.
I'm just a guy that likes horror flicks.
An addendum to my previous post. I just saw the PBS(WTTW) Chicago Lakefront travelogue again. What is said, that I had missed last time, is that some scenes were also shot on portions of the Soldier Field grandstands. This was long before the remodeling that put a flying saucer on top of the classic walls and columns.
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