The Dunwich Horror (1970) The key to enjoying any low rent, cheesball American International movie was to never expect too much......
The general moviegoing public never caught on to the AIP formula: they strategized the marketability of the title before they ever went ahead to make a movie to match up to it......
AIP's never ending parade of monsters, bikers, beach partiers, and youth-in-revolt quickies were specifically engineered trash meant to fill up the drive-ins and grindhouses with plenty 'o product.
But even if you knew what you were getting into with these movies, you could sit back and let them sometimes astonish and surprise you with moments of startling cinematic skill.
Mostly that was due to their legendary primary producer Roger Corman, who hired young and hungry newcomers itching to get their foot in the Hollywood door......people like James Cameron, Francis Ford Coppola, Jack Nicholson, Ron Howard, and many others........
Sorry to say, nobody found any of those moments of greatness in "The Dunwich Horror". It stays stubbornly what it is......cheap junk meant to lure in the suckers with the promise seeing H.P. Lovecraft's horrifying, oozing, slithering monsters pop up on the screen.
It's a promise unkept.
The Lovecraftian beastie here is rendered almost entirely with bottom-rung psychadelic optical effects and the annoying flash cuts that 1970's directors so fell in love with.......and so terribly dated their films.
Still, we found a few minor pleasures floating around in this mess.......
Dean Stockwell enjoys himself as the film's centerpiece madman with a penchant for sacrificing hot naked babes to those too-horrible-too-describe Lovecraft 'Elder Gods' looking to to make world-ending comeback.
Stockwell goes through the first two thirds of the film slyly understating his total nuttiness until the big climax forces him to go full crazy-eyes. (And you can spot Talia Shire in an early role.)
And the creative, imaginative animated main titles go over the top in announcing the kind of movie that you just know AIP will never live up to.
The sad part of viewing this film comes from watching its designated Babe In A Boatload Of Trouble.....played by the one and only 1950's beach bunny and American's Sweetheart, Sandra Dee.
Dee trudges through the movie subdued, exhausted and depressed........as if she's fully aware that a movie like this functions as nothing but a career end-of-the-road.....and she behaves accordingly.
(At the very least, she's convincing in the role, since the film has Stockwell keeping her in a drug induced haze through most of the film's running time. So we can't blame her for moaning every so often as she's stripped naked on a sacrificial alter, waiting to be ravished by....uh......a screeching whining optical effect.)
Don't look for any future hidden talents in this one. There's no gold in them thar junky hills.........1 star (*).....and that's more than generous.
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