It’s on Tubi.

Why did I watch The Terror? Because it’s on Tubi. Up until now I’ve tried to keep my reviews to movies that have come out in the last four years, and I’m not sure why I did that. For starters nobody reads this goddamn website and I do this wholly for my own entertainment. The only thing putting arbitrary rules on myself has done is burn me out of finding movies to watch and make it so I don’t want to watch older films.

Well I don’t care anymore.

The Terror is a 1963 film that falls into that world of very interesting origin stories. Filmed using a lot of the sets from The Raven, The Terror is famous for having five directors and taking a very long time to shoot, with some scenes being shot literally as the set was being demolished because Roger Corman was using sets he didn’t have permission to use and funding a lot of the film out of pocket. And then they didn’t put a copyright notice on the film and it fell into public domain anyway.

Jack Nicholson plays André Duvalier, a soldier in Napoleon’s army who gets lost following a battle. He finds a beautiful woman in the form of Sandra Knight who in addition to being gorgeous is absolutely beautiful. Stricken by this lovely woman, Andre must know who she is and how she manages to keep disappearing and reappearing in different places. He follows her to the castle of Baron von Leppe played by Boris Karloff. Yeah, Boris Karloff and Jack Nicholson were in films together.

This movie is a great example of actors doing the best they can with what they’ve got. The thing about this film is that director Roger Corman had no clue what he was doing when the film was being made, and I mean that in the most respectful way possible. It’s a bit like Inland Empire, where David Lynch allegedly just got a camera and started filming stuff and then the movie pieced itself together much later on. A lot of Corman’s material is just actors walking around, changing costumes, and walking around.

Nobody really knew what the hell was going on or what this film was going to be, and like a George Romero film it just kinda got pieced together and improvised. Apparently in a few scenes they didn’t even bother slating. So the end result is this film that routinely feels like it’s going nowhere full of actors who clearly have no clue what’s going on. As a result the film can be kinda boring. Or really boring. Or incredibly boring. Boring by 1963 slow burn film standards, and that’s watching paint dry in slow motion boring.

Should you watch it? If you have an hour and twenty minutes to spare or you want something to fall asleep to. It’s not terrible by any means.

Rating: C+