Benevolent Misanthropy

“Actually it’s German. It means ‘The, Monster, The!’”

Darn it, I thought this would be a respite from badness.

American International Pictures’s string of Edgar Allen Poe and H.P. Lovecraft adaptations from the early 1960s are old favorites of mine (especially House of Usher and The Raven, though I’m also keen on The Pit and the Pendulum, The Haunted Palace, and others). There were warning signs, though, that this one was going to reek. First, the script is not by Richard Matheson, scribe on all the best Poe pictures. Second, no Roger Corman. (When the absence of Corman is a bad sign, things are bad indeed.) Third, the title. While a groovy title, this is an adaptation of Lovecraft’s The Colour Out of Space. Hmmm.

But none of that hints at the levels of banality to which this film stoops.

The plot is so perfectly incoherent that I fear prolonged logical analysis will cause my DVD to vanish in a puff of smoke.

A tough–minded American arrives in Arkham, England, to visit his girl. We know that he is tough because he always squints, nearly always wears his raincoat even though we see no rain in the film, and because he had a bit part in Rebel Without a Cause. He asks a few locals how he can get to the Witley place and each one pulls back, makes a sign of the cross, and hisses until he goes away. Well, okay, not quite, but close. He can’t even get someone to rent him a bike to go out there, and he ends up walking.

You may not realize it, but this sequence is toying with you. It seems to make sense. The Witley place is bad, and the locals know it and have known it for generations, right?

Wrong. The Witley place has been bad for, maybe, four weeks. More likely two.

Even worse, there are two competing worldviews presented by the film, but instead of clashing or struggling with each other, they seem to inhabit two different, albeit similar, stories which have been pasted together willy nilly.

The master of the Witley place, Nahum Witley (Boris Karloff), believes himself to be cursed because of one of his ancestors, who tried to summon forth evil spirits and went mad. He has been experimenting with a rock that fell from the sky, pieces of which cause plants to grow to enormous proportions, and animals to grow to resemble Lovecraftian horrors. At first, the rock seemed a boon; now Witley sees it as a curse.

The American, Rinehart (gad, don’t you just love those rock–ribbed American names!), has a different point of view. He says, persistently and annoyingly, that the rock is radiation, that there is no curse, and everyone will be just fine if they just light out for Arkham or wherever.

The two views do not engage each other. There are one or two scenes where they each yell in the presence of the other, but there is no dialogue in any real sense.

And the film itself is schizophrenic on the issue. Through most of the story, it seems that Rinehart is not only right, but obviously so. At a few points in the story, though, the protrait of the loony ancestor leers at the camera—especially over the closing shots of the house going down in flames.

But wait, this makes it sound like the film comes close to making sense. Damn me and my logic!

Okay, so Rinehart thinks there is no curse. Why doesn’t he leave? Well, his girl is Witley’s daughter, and she doesn’t want to go against her father. Okay. But then, once she sees her father’s a loon? Um, well… they stay because… uh… if they left, the movie would be over? There’s no other reason.

And, in the middle, Rinehart walks back to Arkham to talk to a retired doctor, to ask what the sam hill is going on. The doctor retired because he drinks, and because Nahum Witley’s father (the loon, apparently) died in the doctor’s arms, and nobody else ever saw the body.

Foreshadowing, atmosphere, a hint at What’s Really Going On mayhap? Nopers, it’s got nothing to do with the story, except to mention the crazy ancestor again and make things seem mysterious.

And what the heck is up with the Lovecraftian book about summoning the Old Ones, or whatever the movie changes their name to? We’ll never know, because the movie never tells us.

On the plus side, Die, Monster, Die! recycles some sets that AIP used in earlier, better horror films. The most notable to me was the prop wherein the rock rested, which turned up in The Haunted Palace, a Lovecraft adaptation sporting a Poe title. (The story is from The Strange Case of Charles Dexter Ward, the title from a Poe poem.)

Also, Boris Karloff gives it his best, and his best is far better than this film ever deserved.

Still, this is one lousy film.