Die, Monster, Die! (1965)

[kooshmeister]

Stephen Reinhart is an American abroad, stepping off the train at the rural English town of Arkham. He meets a friendly cabbie, who is in the middle of loading his bags into the taxi when Stephen inquires after "the Witley place," specifically if the cabbie can drive him there. The second the man learns of Stephen's intended destination, he emphatically takes the bags back out of the car and speeds off without explanation. Stephen then decides he'll walk, ignoring the cab driver's rudeness. He walks to a local grocer's, where he politely asks for directions to the Witley residence from proprietor Potter. The grocer promptly flees inside his store at Stephen's question.

Now beginning to become perplexed, Stephen tries some men boozing it up outside the local pub. Their reaction to his inquiries is less aggressive, but still rude. They laugh at him. His confusion turning into annoyance, Stephen demands to know what's wrong with the Witley place. This elicits more laughter from the barflies. One old codger in particular, a man named Pierce, is laughing so hard he seems as though he'll die of a heart attack. None of them will offer Stephen directions, although one slightly younger man, Henry, does direct the American to bike shop owner Jason, and Stephen, feeling humiliated, goes to see Jason and gets the same spiel: a mixture of friendliness and tolerated indifference when he asks to rent a bicycle... and heated anger and refusal to sell the American anything the second the proprietor learns of Stephen's destination. Apparently, there is something very, very wrong about wanting to get to the Witley house... but none of the Englishmen will tell Stephen what or why. They've all either been amused as if he's the butt of some secret joke, or acting like he just told them he fornicated with their mother.

No longer merely annoyed but understandably enraged. He demands to know what the hell is wrong with everyone in Arkham that he can get neither assistance nor any direct answer to his simple question what has he done wrong? Jason remains obstinate, simply telling the foreigner that he'll have to walk. Managing to somehow keep his temper in check and not slug the bastard, Stephen reverts to his original plan following the exit of the cabbie: walk.

Off he goes. "The Witley place," it turns out, is an ancient mansion located some distance outside of Arkham. To get to the estate, Stephen has to walk across a vast expanse of burned and blackened earth and ashen, brittle vegetation with an enormous sinkhole of sorts in the center. It looks for all the world like there was a fire there, and recently, but nothing is noticeably smoking. Disturbed but resolute after all the harassment he endured in town, Stephen dutifully presses on. He's a man on a mission, we just don't know what kind yet.

The mansion looks as if hasn't been lived in for decades, perhaps longer. Nevertheless, Stephen isn't going to return to the train station without at least trying the front door. You can't fault the man his determination. Considering what he's about to get himself into, it probably won't be long before he'll be wishing he listened to the townsfolk. However, Stephen's situation is a little different from the usual "guy comes to town and fails to heed the locals' warnings" scenario, mostly because nobody bothers explaining anything to him. In fact, they give no warnings to heed at all, now that I think about it. Not directly anyone. No one says "You shouldn't go there" or any variation thereon. They simply stop talking to him the minute he mentions the mansion and then scurry off to hide somewhere. And how very un-Lovecraftian of them, too! In Lovecraft's works, the rural folks always are happy to explain in great detail why it's best to avoid a certain place, or at least make some effort to prevent some poor bastard from walking into danger.

So, there you have it. Die, Monster, Die! has the least helpful superstitious rural villagers in movie history.

Anyway, Stephen finds the front door open and goes inside. Turns out someone does live in the house. The outside is quite different from the inside. Although from the exterior you'd think it was abandoned, the interior is warm and hospitable (seemingly), clean and richly furnished, almost as if Stephen has stepped through a portal into a different world. He explores a little until he encounters Nahum Witley, the owner, a very cantankerous-looking elderly man in a very ornate wheelchair, who demands to know just who in the world he is and why he's in his house. We finally get some insight into what Stephen is doing here. He went to school with a woman named Susan Witley, and recently got a letter from her mother asking for him to please come to Arkham pronto, reasons ungiven. Not one to abandon a friend in need, Stephen has done just that, and even has the letter as proof. So much he tells the old man and his equally geriatric butler Merwyn, who wears really cool purple-tinted sunglasses indoors and who seems to have materialized out of nowhere between cuts.

Nahum proves about as helpful as the other people Stephen has met so far, which is not at all. The most he'll do is tell Stephen that Susan Witley is his daughter. Other than that, he wants him out of the house and now. How he intends to force the clearly fit young man is beyond me, he being an ancient codger in a wheelchair, and his (so far) only servant just old and frail-looking as him. I can't quite see Merwyn playing bouncer.

The tense mood is interrupted when the first friendly person Stephen has met since just before he told the cab driver where he was headed comes flouncing down the stairs, calling his name. It's Susan and she's glad to see him, and will hear none of Nahum's curmudgeonly demands that the American get out, and insists her old schoolmate stay. So Stephen is staying. For now. As Susan drags him upstairs to meet her mother Letitia, Nahum watches them go ominously, then directs Merwyn to wheel him down the basement so he can continue his work... whatever that is.

Goodness, but whatever can Stephen have walked into?

[valdemar]

He's possibly walked into a loose [and it is so loose in places it's falling to bits], adaptation of Lovecraft's 'The Color Out Of Space' [sic]. Directed by Roger Corman's usual Art Director, Daniel Haller, this is a real 'Curate's Egg' of a movie. It is annoying to me, as it's source material is my favourite Lovecraft story, and I watched it, thinking: 'No, that's wrong', over and over. It's redeeming feature is the very great Boris Karloff, who always makes everything better - his world-weariness here is totally believable. [he was probably thinking 'what the hell am I doing here?'] His transformation and demise were fun, and the disintegration of his wife pleasingly disgusting. but on the whole, a bit 'Meh'. But at least I have seen it. Tick it off my list. It would be nice if someone, possibly Guillermo Del Toro, or maybe gross-out king Eli Roth would do it properly. Anyway, I'm now going to enjoy Roddy McDowell, and a very scary Golem in 'It!' again.

[kooshmeister]

It also has some elements of The Dunwich Horror - the name Witley is obviously a spin on the Whateley family in that story (Nahum's surname in The Colour Out of Space is Gardner in it, not Witley). I think everyone involved gives a decent performance. Karloff is great, and I even like Nick Adams as the long-suffering American abroad. He does a good job as an audience surrogate here, although if I were in his shoes and dealing with those jerk townspeople at the beginning, I might not have been able to keep my temper in check.

Regarding said townspeople, this movie doesn't do the rural English any favors. The decision to relate Arkham to England is an odd one, as it adds nothing to the story except to make Stephen that much more of an outsider. However, his nationality never becomes an issue, so the townspeople would've treated him the same if he were an Englishman like them - or indeed if Arkham was where it's supposed to be, in America.

Granted, a later film, set in the proper country, called The Curse did a much better adaptation of the story (in terms of faithfulness to the source material, anyway; as a film unto itself it's a pretty unpleasant and dire affair). I think what happened with Die, Monster, Die! is they attempted to "scale it up" or at least put it more in line with the kind of "creepy old mansion" stories popular at the time by setting it in another country, making it a palatial mansion instead of a farm, etc.,

For me, the weirdest changes of all is changing the identity of Merwin, who was one of Nahum Gardner's children in the story, into butler Merwyn, and the demotion of Ammi Pierce, a major character in the story, to one of the random drunks at the pub (the one played by Sydney Bromley) who gets only one line. In fact, I didn't even know he had a name until I checked the credits.

That said, I still like Die, Monster, Die! My one real problem with it (besides the ornery and hostile townspeople) is the title. Jesus, why that title...?

And please, keep Eli Roth as far away from anything Lovecraft related as possible...

[pulphack]

Oh it's a cracking little film, if a bit skewed if you read the Lovecraft first (I think I did it the other way around, it's hard to recall this far removed). Boris is just wonderful, and even the stuntman crashing around in the glowing Boz mask is cool. I like Nick Adams a lot, and it's a shame he passed away so young. Reckon you're right, having him as an American in the UK does make him a kind of audience surrogate/identifier, especially as this would have been intended primarily for a US market.

The title is just typical Deke Hayward re-titling and pitching for a horror audience that would probably think The Color Out Of Space was an art house rinky-dink movie (I can almost hear him saying that), and the change to an English setting I would put down to nothing more than the fact that AIP had a London office at that time and were also making a lot of co-productions with the likes of Amicus and Tigon - it's hard to imagine now, but the UK had a film industry that was dying in terms of local product, but had a great appeal for US producers because of the swinging London image and (perhaps more importantly) the kind of tax breaks that Harold Wilson's government was offering to boost the arts-based industries. Wilson believed that these industries would replace the more traditional manufacturing industries of the UK that were spluttering and dying at that time (and are now long dead), hence his infamous (in UK history) 'white heat of technology' speech.

[kooshmeister]

Stephen is introduced to Letitia Witley, Susan's mother, but she is apparently bedridden and there's a veil over the four poster bed, obscuring her to little more than a silhouette. Letitia sends her daughter out of the room so she can talk to Stephen in private. Exit Susan, and Stephen understandably is curious why Mrs. Witley wanted him there, although he has some vague and ominous suspicions. Letitia goes into some detail about her husband's ancestor, Corbin Witley, whose portrait is ominously hung in the main hall. Apparently a long time ago, Corbin turned to some kind of profane religious worship, and built a Satanic altar in the basement in preparation for something he felt was coming. We see this altar when Nahum and Merwyn go down into the cellar to do whatever it is they do down there.

Anyway, after Corbin died, his activities and reputation have tainted the Witleys in Arkham, probably forever. Stephen understands all of that (boy does he ever!), but still isn't quite sure why Letitia summoned him. Well, it seems that something happened out in that field Stephen passed through on the way to the house. A meteor or something like one crashed there, and Nahum had it dug up and brought to the mansion. What he's done with it, exactly, Letitia doesn't know, but she does know that since then, the household feels as though it's come under a malign sickness. First, she started feeling tired all of the time and developed a compulsion to shut herself away in her dark bedroom behind the veils. Merwyn the butler has become frailer than usual and taken to wearing sunglasses indoors as noted, Helga the maid, who we've yet to see, has just up and disappeared following a mysterious illness, and then there's Nahum, who wasn't always in that wheelchair...

In fact, the only member of the Witley household so far unaffected by the whatever-it-is, is Susan. Letitia isn't sure why. But she wants to keep it that way, and so she has summoned her daughter's old schoolmate here for the purpose of taking her away from Arkham. To where, she doesn't care. Just as long as it's away from this poisoned house and out of the hateful town. Stephen isn't entirely sure how to respond. He can clearly tell something is wrong, and sympathizes with Letitia, the second nice person he's met since arriving, but he wants to do some poking around some more and getting some more concrete proof that there's something bad afoot before he honors Letitia's wishes and gets her daughter out of there. But at least Letitia has an ally now and someone to confide in, and someone who, having experienced the hostility of the townspeople and seen where the meteor landed, is taking her worries seriously.

Back down in the cellar, Nahum is selecting a big length of chain and a padlock while Merwyn goes and looks down into a big pit set before Corbin Witley's altar. A bright greenish glow comes forth from inside it, bathing the butler in its light, and he stares down at it with a mixture of awe and fear. I guess now we know where Nahum put the meteor. Then Nahum finishes selecting chains, and has Merwyn take him back upstairs, and out to the brightly-lit greenhouse. There, he and Merwyn use the chains and padlock to lock up the front door of the structure good and tight. Apparently, whatever it is Nahum is doing with the meteor, he is doing part of it in there, and doesn't want Stephen snooping in there...