Well here's one bet I would have lost - Boris Karloff and Nick Adams in the same movie! I would have watched this one for Karloff alone, but throw Adams into the mix, and this one had me stay up way past my bedtime, even with work the next day. And I get up early.
I only wish I could be more positive about the result. The story takes an interesting premise, and turns it into a laughably pretentious exercise in Gothic pseudo-horror. Not only that, but it takes an agonizingly long time to get to the punch line. I swear, never have I seen a movie where one of the principals (Adams) spends the bulk of his time just walking around. Through corridors, up and down stairs, into rooms and out of rooms, sometimes alone and sometimes with a companion. Every once in a while Stephen Reinhart breaks into a trot, and like the Energizer bunny, he just keeps on going.
You know, I had to chuckle as I considered Nick Adams' character in one of my favorite classic TV Westerns, that of Johnny Yuma in "The Rebel". Not an episode would go by where Johnny wouldn't get into a fistfight over some grievance or another, usually with some villain much bigger than himself. So I'm watching as his girlfriend Susan (Suzan Farmer) gets attacked by the grabby vine plant, and Reinhart tries to punch out the vegetation! One of the many surreal moments in this picture.
Which all comes down to beg the question - why was anyone making a movie this inane as late as 1965? There isn't much of a recommendation here except to catch Boris Karloff in a wind down to an illustrious career, along with that unusual casting decision to pair him up with Adams. Even in a wheel chair, Karloff had a regal bearing to his look, and if he had to play a role in a debilitated condition, at least he made it look professional.
I only wish I could be more positive about the result. The story takes an interesting premise, and turns it into a laughably pretentious exercise in Gothic pseudo-horror. Not only that, but it takes an agonizingly long time to get to the punch line. I swear, never have I seen a movie where one of the principals (Adams) spends the bulk of his time just walking around. Through corridors, up and down stairs, into rooms and out of rooms, sometimes alone and sometimes with a companion. Every once in a while Stephen Reinhart breaks into a trot, and like the Energizer bunny, he just keeps on going.
You know, I had to chuckle as I considered Nick Adams' character in one of my favorite classic TV Westerns, that of Johnny Yuma in "The Rebel". Not an episode would go by where Johnny wouldn't get into a fistfight over some grievance or another, usually with some villain much bigger than himself. So I'm watching as his girlfriend Susan (Suzan Farmer) gets attacked by the grabby vine plant, and Reinhart tries to punch out the vegetation! One of the many surreal moments in this picture.
Which all comes down to beg the question - why was anyone making a movie this inane as late as 1965? There isn't much of a recommendation here except to catch Boris Karloff in a wind down to an illustrious career, along with that unusual casting decision to pair him up with Adams. Even in a wheel chair, Karloff had a regal bearing to his look, and if he had to play a role in a debilitated condition, at least he made it look professional.