Directed by Roger Corman, Francis Ford Coppola, Jack Hill, Monte Hellman, Dennis Jakob, Jack Nicholson
Starring Boris Karloff, Jack Nicholson, Sandra Knight, Dick Miller, Dorothy Neumann, Jonathan Haze

The Terror (1963) was one of those films that you always would see on the shelf when you went to any video store back in the day, or at places like the grocery stores if they had these bins of cheap VHS tapes. The main reason for that was because this was public domain title, so there were multiple different releases out at any given time, and all of them looking pretty shabby quality-wise. The more you learned about the film itself and how it came to be, you probably found that to be more entertaining, or at least more fascinating, than the actual picture itself!

The rumors were always that Boris Karloff owed Roger Corman a couple of days on his contract from The Raven (1963), so Corman decided to quickly shoot some scenes of Karloff and then come up with a movie around that. Well, part of that is true.

They had just finished shooting The Raven and while the sets were still standing, Corman came up with an idea to quickly get some footage with Karloff on the set, with the idea to film the rest afterwards. Corman met with Leo Gordon, who was an actor known for playing the heavy, mainly due to his size and looks, but also was a screenwriter, who had worked with Corman in the past on films like The Wasp Woman (1959), Attack of the Giant Leeches (1959), and the more recent Tower of London (1962). They came up with a basic storyline where they could film a good chunk of it with Karloff in a very short time, like two days.

While Karloff’s agent demanded his normal pay rate per picture, Corman negotiated with the elderly actor to do it for a much lesser fee. So, in those two days, with actors Jach Nicholson, Sandra Knight, and Dick Miller, they quickly filmed about 30 pages of a script that wasn’t even fully developed yet! It was just bits and pieces of dialogue with Miller or Nicholson, and shots of Karloff walking here, walking back over there.

The best part was that this was not another feature for AIP, who had financed The Raven, but for Corman’s own production company, even though he was still using the sets built and paid for by AIP. Granted, once AIP found out, with Corman getting caught there filming, AIP would eventually distribute the film to theaters, once it was finally done!

Before that could happen, Corman spent 9 months, and using 6 other directors (not 5 as he states), some of whom were re-writing the storyline as they went! Besides Corman, you had Francis Ford Coppola, Monte Hellman, Jack Hill, Jack Hale, Dennis Jakob, and even Jack Nicholson for a day! In his autobiography, Corman wrote “The Terror began as a challenge: to shoot most of a gothic horror film in two days, using leftover sets from The Raven. It turned into the longest production of my career – an ordeal that required five directors and nine months to complete. But like Little Shop, it’s a classic story of how to make a film out of nothing.”

The story revolves around a lost French solider trying to find his way back to his troops. Along the way, he meets a ghostly woman and almost drowns trying to save her. While he is rescued by an old woman, he learns that this mysterious woman he saw is at the castle of Baron Von Leppe, where he goes to investigate. Once there, he runs into more and more deception and mystery as he tries to unravel just what is going at this old castle.

Some might say that this film is a jumbled mess, which with the way it was made, could be completely understandable. But really, if you dig a little deeper than the surface, there is a lot to be enjoyed here, and at least, be admired. The look of the film is amazing, with a lot of sequences filled with the gothic feel of Corman’s other Poe inspired pictures. With lots of fog and mist, graveyards, and underground tombs, and Boris Karloff, what more could a horror fan want?

The one thing that was always there, no matter which VHS release you saw, was the poor quality of the prints. This might have something to do with the actual production, since it was so rushed, some of the normal setup time was reduced dramatically. Corman mentioned that “You just don’t get super lighting when you’re shooting thirty pages a day.”

Thankfully, Film Masters has taken on the task to try to make this film look the best it has, and with this new HD restoration from 35mm archival elements, I think they have succeeded. While there are some parts that look a bit rougher than your average Blu-ray, it still looks above and beyond the best version I’ve ever seen. The disc comes with a fact-filled commentary by film historians Dr. Steve Haberman and C. Courtney Joyner that is worth listening to discover even more about the film.

One of the best extras here, for me, was the visual essay by Howard S. Berger entitled “Ghosts in the Machine: Art & Artifice in Roger Corman’s Celluloid Castle, which not only covers a bit of Corman’s earlier work, but really dives into the story line of The Terror, giving us a lot of different ways to think about the film. You can’t come away from this 40-minute featurette without having a lot more appreciation for the film.

There is another feature, Hollywood Intruders: The Filmgroup Story, which is Part 2 of the Corman story by Ballyhoo Pictures, which is another very informative piece.

Even more of a bonus is the extra disc with features Corman’s Little Shop of Horrors (1960) feature that he made in record time, in a newly restored HD version. This film has commentary by Author Justin Humphreys and film star Jonathan Haze.

Add in the booklet with essays by C. Courtney Joyner and Mark McGee, this release is a must for any fan of Roger Corman and low budget filmmaking. I guarantee after going through all the extra material on these discs, you’ll have a lot more appreciation for both of these pictures. Not to mention that they are both pretty fun flicks!