- Directed by Daniel Haller
- Written by Curtis Hanson, Henry Rosenbaum, Ronald Silkosky
- Stars Sandra Dee, Dean Stockwell, Ed Begley
- Run Time:
- Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QA1WCp8hGB0
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
It’s an okay telling of a Lovecraft tale. Awesome house and settings. Decent, though kind of talky, adaptation. Watchable, but overall pretty middling.
Synopsis
A woman moans in pain surrounded by strange old people and mystical symbols; there’s one on her forehead. Some very cool animated credits roll.
Dr. Armitage hands over the Necronomicon to Nancy Wagner, one of his students. Wilbur Whately walks up and asks her if he can take a look at the book. At first, she refuses, but she looks into his eyes and gives it over to him. Wilber reads the book, and it’s about how to release the Old Ones. Armitage confronts Wilbur, and when he finds out who he is, he wants to get together in Dunwich. Armitage refuses to allow Wilbur to borrow the priceless book, but Wilbur decides to get close to Nancy instead.
He misses his bus home, so Nancy volunteers to drive him to Dunwich. He invites her inside, and it’s a really cool old place. He’s nice enough, and normal-looking, but also just slightly creepy. While Nancy goes to the bathroom, he runs outside and sabotages her car.
Nancy gets a jump scare from old man Whately, Wilbur’s grandfather. When Nancy’s car doesn’t work, she stays in the guest room and has weird nightmares about tribal rituals and sacrifice.
Elizabeth talks to Dr. Armitage about Nancy, who didn’t come home last night. They drive up to see if everything’s all right. They shoo them off with assurances that she’s fine , but the old doctor is concerned. Armitage knows all about their family history. Meanwhile, Armitgae does more research on the Whately family. He looks up Wilbur’s parents and the doctor who assisted in Wilbur’s birth.
Wilbur tells Nancy all about his father, who was hanged by an angry mob who caught him doing some kind of ritual they didn’t like. Armitage goes to see Dr. Cory, who helped every baby in town being born. Elizabeth talks to Nurse Cory, who explains some of the bad stories about “Weird Wilbur ” and the old Whately House.
Armitage warns Cory about the Necronomicon and the thought that he might believe in the magic. We flash back to the pre-credit sequence, which was the birth of Wilbur. There were twins, and one of them was supposed to have died, but Cory never saw the body. The mother, Lavinia, lost her mind, and still lives in the local mental hospital.
Nancy and Wilbur have a picnic, and she’s wobbly on her feet afterward. He takes her up the mountain to an old, isolated altar atop a cliff. It’s called “The Devil’s Hopyard.” It’s obvious that he has some kind of hypnotic influence over her. He wants to bring “Yog Sothoth” and the other Old Ones back into the world. The two have hallucinogenic sex (I think) on the altar.
Elizabeth comes back in a panic to get Nancy, and knocks the old grandpa down. She goes upstairs and opens the ominous locked door. Things get positively “colorful” as the tentacles and flashing colors attack her from within. The old man says that Wilbur will fail, but Wilbur says he can do it. The old man then falls down the stairs to his death.
Nancy stands next to Wilbur at the funeral as he does another ritual over the old man’s open grave. A bunch of the local people charge in and put a stop to the non-christian ritual. There’s no death certificate, so the sheriff impounds the old man’s body. Later that night, Wilbur breaks into the library and steals the Necronomicon, killing a security guard in the process.
Armitage and Cory go to see Lavinia, who is dying. She’s quoting something from the Necronomicon, so Armitage rushes to the library.
Meanwhile, Wilbur is wearing his dark cloak and has prepared the ritual to sacrifice Nancy and release the Old Ones. Something gets out of that upstairs bedroom and starts terrorizing the neighbors, mutilating the bodies. The locals do the “Let’s go get ‘em!” routine.
Armitage tells them not to kill Wilbur, as he’s the only one who might be able to stop the monster. The monster then kills nurse Cory. The police arrive at the Dunwich House, which is in the process of burning to the ground. They can all hear the monster in the woods, which seems to be invisible.
The invisible monster of many colors kills several of the hunters in the woods. Armitage arrives at the altar, and Wilbur says magic words and shows his power. These two men have a battle of powers, and things go really badly really fast for Wilbur. We get a very brief view of Yog Sothoth as he fades from reality. Armitage explains that the monster, Wilbur’s twin, took after his father, and the father was not of this Earth.
Then we get a shot of the baby growing inside of Nancy…
Commentary
I really liked the music during the opening credits, but then they repeated the same ten-note theme about every ten seconds throughout the film, and it got old within ten minutes. It’s like they could only pay the composer for two minutes of music and really made it stretch.
Other than a couple of weird false-color negative images, there aren’t any special effects here, but the story could really have used some. There’s way too much evil-talking and not enough evil-doing. The acting is mediocre at best, with Dean Stockwell trying really hard to look menacing, and Sandra Dee trying to revive her failing career. Neither were particularly successful here.
It’s a nice attempt at an H.P. Lovecraft story, but the budget and effects just weren’t there. This really could use a remake, and we’re going to get one, according to Hollywood rumors. This is to be the sequel to 2020’s “The Color Out of Space.”
It’s not great, but if you’re a Lovecraft fan, it’s a must-see.