but a good Atmosphere
5 out of 10
When there's no more room in hell, The dead will walk the earth...
I haven't seen this film since I was a kid, about 15 years back. But I blame this film for my claustrophobia.
**********
They blew up Congress!!! HAHAHA!
You have steadier nerves than I! When I saw this movie, as a child, it terrified me, and also sort of depressed and sickened me, from start to finish. I saw it at the beginning of summer vacation, and the morbid pall that it cast over my imagination pretty much ruined that summer for me. Haven't seen it since, and wonder sometimes if it would have the same effect today.
shareya, a little. I just watched it last night for the first time, and found the ending seemed like it was re-written because it just didn't seem to vent the horror on the main character. It seemed like the last few minutes were written just before shooting them.
shareI don't find it slow and boring at all. In fact, I love the soft stifling feeling and the melancholic, saturnine touch this movie has. And let me also tell you that there a lots of well known movies I find slow and boring, but not this one.
My pain is constant and sharp, and I do not hope for a better world for anyone.
*****SPOILERS*****
The bulk of this movie is a slow boil;. For most of it, the focus is so much on Guy's obsessive fear of death, that you might not even notice there's something else going on at the same time. Then, after he dies, it hits the fan. The last 10 minutes always cracks me up. It becomes a thrill-a-minute. I mean, Guy kills 3 people in about 3 minutes! And then you find out WHY.
What also cracks me up is that it's revealed that the back-story is almost identical to the one in the PREVIOUS film, PIT AND THE PENDULUM, with the wife trying to drive her husband crazy, and he never suspects it. (Of course, in PIT, everybody thought the wife was dead for most of the film...)
I was rather surprised to read that the TV series THRILLER did a very similar variation of this story only about a year before this film was made. Both involve rich men and a women who marry them while planning to kill them and then run off with their younger lovers.
Premature burial is a big part of Corman's HOUSE OF USHER & PIT AND THE PENDULUM, this film, and the later AIP film THE OBLONG BOX. The theme was also covered in the 1968-69 period of DARK SHADOWS, when Nicholas Blair caused Elisabeth Collins Stoddard to develop the obsession, and she has a custom crypt made very similar to the one Ray Milland had built in the movie. In her case, she actually was "buried" in her crypt, which came in handy when she revived, and was able to ring the bell for her daughter Carolyn to hear.
Aww, no way. I think this is a masterpiece of slow burn.
share[deleted]
Xcalat3 I find that the best way to view a film is to imagine that you are one of (normally the main) the characters, that way you get much more involved in the movie.
share