At the end of the Napoleonic
wars, a young French soldier by the name of Andre Duvalier (Nicholson)
becomes separated from his platoon. Wandering
the barren coastline, he sees a mysterious young woman vanish into a
cave. Before he can discover her identity, he’s attacked by a hawk
and must fight for his life in the surf. Yes, The Terror opens with the
majestic sight of a 26-year-old Jack Nicholson punching a falcon while
the ocean crashes around him and, rather understandably, it struggles
to improve on this powerful and iconic image.
Duvalier is rescued by a wizened old woman (who might as well be called
Witches McCauldron such is the obviousness of her profession) and he
is informed repeatedly that there was no young woman. The witch also
owns a hawk but, no, it wasn’t the hawk that attacked him. Honest.
Our plucky soldier discovers from the crone’s dim-but-strong assistant
that the young woman (who does not exist) may have something to do with
the castle of Baron Von Leppe (Boris Karloff). Of course, the combination
of a spooky castle and a morose Boris Karloff suggests that things are
going to take a turn for the morbid – and you’d be right.
Duvalier’s mystery girl bears an uncanny resemblance to the young
wife of the Baron, though she died twenty years ago. Despite stern warnings
not to delve any deeper, nosy old Duvalier won’t let it lie – he’s
been away at war for years, he’s got the hots for the ghostly gal
and as long as there’s even a vague hope of getting some sort of
tonsil action going, he’s not giving up.
The Baron caves in. He confesses that it was he who murdered his wife,
after discovering she was having an affair with a local lad called Eric.
His manservant, Stefan (played by Corman regular Dick Miller), put an
end to the adulterous Eric for good measure.
So what does the spectral lady want? Well, it all gets a bit convoluted
as we amble along towards the inevitable castle-crumbling conclusion.
It turns out that the mystery girl is real. She’s actually Helene,
an innocent lass spellbound by the old witch, who in turn is the mother
of the murdered Eric. The crone’s plan is to drive the Baron to
suicide, thus damning his soul for all eternity.
As Helene goads the Baron into flooding his castle by opening up the
subterranean vault to the incoming tide, we’re slapped in the face
by an even more baffling plot twist. The Baron isn’t really the
Baron. He’s Eric. You see, Stefan accidentally killed the Baron
rather than Eric, and Eric, distraught at the death of his lover, went
mental and convinced himself he was the Baron.
Discovering this complex – and highly unlikely – web of misconceptions
just too late, Duvalier drags the witch along to try and prevent the
unfolding tragedy but, being a witch, she can’t enter the consecrated
ground of the vault and God makes her explode. Literally. As the Baron
vanishes beneath the waves, Duvalier pulls Helene from the tumbling tomb
but when they reach safety she suddenly decomposes into a putrid skeleton.
Could she – gasp! – have been the Baron’s wife all
along? Jack doesn’t care. He just pulls a face like he’s
found a 3-month-old ham sandwich behind the sofa and, quite understandably,
buggers off back to the calming embrace of war.
It’s difficult to be too down on a Roger Corman movie starring
Boris Karloff. There’s a ramshackle ingenuity to the whole enterprise
that almost manages to hide its insanely crammed four-day production
schedule. As for Jack, don’t go into this movie expecting to see
the arched eyebrows and lascivious drawl we know and love – that
wouldn’t manifest until the late Sixties, when Nicholson started
hanging out with Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper and the other frazzled anti-heroes
of New Hollywood. Instead, he provides a surprisingly muted and sensitive
romantic hero, appropriate really as the story owes more to the melancholy
creepiness of Poe than the gut-wrenching terror implied by the title.
Plus,
he punches a falcon. Let’s not forget that.
Need to know: The Terror was one of three movies the
young Jack Nicholson made with Roger Corman at the dawn of his illustrious
career. First was
the 1960 cheapie, Little Shop of Horrors, in which Nicholson had a small
role as Wilbur Force, a man with a masochistic love of dental work. Little
Shop is legendary as one of the quickest movie shoots in history – Corman
got the whole film in the can in just two days. Nicholson worked with
Corman again in 1963, in the very loose Edgar Allen Poe movie, The Raven.
Starring the timeless triumvirate of Vincent Price, Peter Lorre and Boris
Karloff, Corman shot The Terror straight afterwards using the same sets
and retaining the services of Karloff and Nicholson for the extra four
days it took to film.
Among the other talents roped in to churn The Terror
out was one Francis Ford Coppola, who directed many of the location scenes
on the cliffs and earned an Associate Producer credit into the bargain.
Co-writing The Terror was Jack Hill, a legend on the exploitation cinema
circuit and a big influence on Quentin Tarantino. Hill’s directorial
work includes such gems as the darkly comic Spider Baby, the Pam Grier
blaxploitation classics Coffy and Foxy Brown, and violent chick flicks
like Switchblade Sisters. For another Hollywood legend in a Napoleonic
era horror quickie, see: Donald Sutherland.
Honourable mention: Jack can also be seen whooping it up in the background
of the surreal 1968 Monkees movie, Head. A commercial disaster, the deeply
trippy flick torpedoed the proto-boyband’s wholesome image and
marked the beginning of their slide into more interesting esoteric musical
avenues. Nicholson’s appearance (during a bar brawl during which
Peter Tork punches a transvestite) came about because it was he and director
Bob Rafelson who came up with the idea for the film while hanging out
with the band.
Availability: As The Terror is in the public domain, allowing anyone
to reproduce and distribute copies, it’s physically impossible
not to find a DVD edition of it.
