Die, Monster, Die! [Monster of Terror] ** (1965, Boris Karloff, Nick Adams, Freda Jackson, Suzan Farmer) – Classic Movie Review 6145

‘It COULD happen! It MAY happen! It MIGHT happen! to YOU!’ Really? I don’t think so! Debut director Daniel Haller’s atmospheric and well acted but slow-moving horror movie is a loose adaptation of the H P Lovecraft’s story The Colour Out of Space.

Boris Karloff stars as old wheelchair-bound scientist Nahum Witley, who has discovered a meteorite that emits radiation rays that he uses to mutate plant and animal life, with of course horrific results. It’s a horror movie, duh!

Nick Adams co-stars as American scientist Steve Reinhart, who visits the Witley family estate to see his British fiancée Susan Witley (Suzan Farmer), and finds a scorched area of wasteland countryside near a huge crater. Then he discovers what her dad is up to with the radioactive meteorite hidden in his basement. Freda Jackson plays Nahum’s wife Latetia, who is mutated by the meteorite and driven insane, and dies in an attempt to attack Steve and Susan.

It was shot in February and March 1965 at Shepperton Studios with a working title of The House at the End of the World.

American International Pictures released the film in the US on 27 October 1965 in a double bill with Mario Bava’s Planet of the Vampires (1965). It was released in the UK on 20 February 1966 with Roger Corman’s The Haunted Palace (1963), another Lovecraft story.

Also in the cast are Terence De Marney as Merwyn, Patrick Magee as Dr Henderson, Paul Farrell as Jason, Leslie Dwyer as Potter, Harold Goodwin as the taxi driver, Sydney Bromley as Pierce, Billy Milton as Henry and Sheila Raynor as Miss Bailey.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 6145

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