HOUSE OF THE DAMNED

Merry Anders 

HOUSE OF THE DAMNED (1963). Director: Maury Dexter. 

Architect Scott Campbell (Ron Foster of The Music Box Kid) is hired to survey Rochester Castle and bring his wife and partner, Nancy (Merry Anders), along. Eventually lawyer Joseph Schiller (Richard Crane of No Man's Woman) and his excitable wife, Loy (Erika Peters), also arrive on the scene. There are 13 keys for the house and a variety of rooms, as well as strange people skulking about in the shadows. Then Loy is chased by a giant figure (Richard Kiel of "To Serve Man" on Twilight Zone) and disappears, until Merry seems to find her headless corpse ...

Peters, Crane, Foster, Anders

Be warned that the above description makes House of the Damned sound a lot better than it is. The whole project just seems so languid and mediocre. It was as if this great location, the castle, were chosen first and then a script was hastily -- very hastily -- scripted around it, so there are no real characters and only one genuinely creepy moment, when some thing sneaks into the bedroom and borrows those keys. The house is beautiful, but it's not enough to save the movie. You might groan when you discover exactly who or what is behind the "horror." 

Ron Foster was a handsome and talented actor who chiefly appeared in "B" movies, and despite the fact that this was produced by 20th Century Fox in CinemaScope, this is no different; he couldn't catch a break. Henry Vars has contributed a nice and eerie theme, but otherwise the score is just too lethargic.   

Verdict: Promises a lot but delivers very little. **.   

THE DAY MARS INVADED EARTH

THE DAY MARS INVADED EARTH (1962). Director: Maury Dexter. NOTE: One important plot point is revealed in this review.

Ever since I was a kid I'd been hoping to catch a glimpse of this little-seen [it's not even in Bill Warren's Keep Watching the Skies] sci fi movie from the early sixties. Be careful what you wish for ... Apparently somebody had this big empty estate with large rooms and beautiful gardens and long pathways that was just perfect for filming. Unfortunately, instead of making a haunted house film or thriller which would have been more appropriate, they instead made a tacky science fiction film with a minimum of FX work. Kent Taylor is a scientist who has sent a probe to Mars. Back with his family for a long overdue visit, Taylor discovers that Martians have landed on Earth as energy forms and have duplicated the bodies of himself and his family. There's a lot of aimless wide-screen wandering around through this pretty estate as Taylor, his wife (Marie Windsor) and their two children see their doppelgängers in the distance and either chase, or are chased by, them. The very downbeat ending, which packs a small wallop – we see the ashes of the bodies of Taylor and his family being washed away after their duplicates replace them – is the only thing of interest about the movie. Richard La Salle fashioned a full-fledged romantic score of a minor variety for the picture with some suitably eerie passages when required. Harry Spalding's script never really catches fire despite some attempts at characterization. The actors do what they can with insufficiently developed material.

Verdict: Not worth the time to track it down. **.