Remembered by Nicholson as the only movie he ever made without a plot (a debatable point), this infamous quickie was improvised to make use of the castle set from _The Raven_ and two days owed on Karloff's contract, with the rest of the film finished on weekends with everyone from Francis Ford Coppola to Monte Hellman contributing to the shooting. Jack is profoundly miscast. Despite almost total confusion, a few of the scenes have a nice spooky quality to them, and the ending is a shocker.

Boring and nonsensical. The ending came out of nowhere though and did genuinely take me by surprise. It's nice to see Nicholson so young and Karloff so old together.

This is a fun low budget horror film. The film is not scary but amusing. Jack Nicholson and Boris Karloff are very interesting to watch. If you like fun B movies then check this one out.

Its plot twist will make your head explode. Seriously. Whatever you may think it is, you're way off. Karloff, the constant professional, gave a great performance. Nicholson on the other hand was wooden and gave quite probably his worst performance. Corman laid on the Gothic atmosphere real thick but no amount of spooky layers could save this.

Wonderful face-melting ending.

An old gothic classic with everything necessary: a handsome hero, a beautiful young girl, an old witch woman and an old baron with a servent the only companion in an old dusty castle with the crypt. What else you need? Jack Nicholson, Boris Karloff and Roger Corman. Okay, I was not that attentive for the entire movie...

Jack Nicholson doing his Pinocchio impersonation.

Pretty bad....but, it has Boris Karloff, so it isn't ALL bad.

This is exactly what an old-fashioned gothic horror movie should be, from the sets to the score to the dialogue to the presence of Boris Karloff. Campy and fun, although perhaps a bit slow-moving.

Kind of interesting in that there were many different directors running around grabbing footage for this (often the dialogue doesn't even remotely match the lip movements of the actors) in their very tight shooting schedule. Then Corman and the boys assembled and said, "OK, what the hell do we DO with all this crap that we've filmed?" What a mess

Jack Nicholson... as a Frenchman?

Can't hate a movie with Jacko, Karloff AND Dick Miller.

Engaging chiller nonsense.

I think it was impossible to sit through this whole thing in 1963, too...