The Dunwich Horror

I don’t really know much about H.P. Lovecraft and his lore, aside from a few odd films that nobody really seems to be very impressed with. Stockwell’s shifty-eyed nut job was fun in the opening scenes as he dished out druggings and general weirdness. Poor Sandra Dee is out of her gourd for most of this. It’s curiously engaging; the setting works and the story is likeably daft. Some scenes don’t work, though, and the pacing is all over the place. Interesting, if a bit shambolic.

Despite his bizarre creatures, Lovecraft's stories are mostly internal & it seems like only Stuart Gordon could figure out how to do them well. This manages to include many of the story's original elements but the villain is neither creepy nor intimidating (unlike the source material), just odd, nerd-like and dull. The short story is also not only stretched at 90 minutes, but paced to induce sleeping.

Features one of my all time favorite movie quotes: "When you're done with the Necronomicon, bring it back to the library". Classic the same way an Edsel is.

Longtime Roger Corman set designer Haller offers up a mediocre movie version of a classic Lovecraft tale that pales beside Stuart Gordon's later exercises in Lovecraft-ian lunacy.

Not my thing; parts seemed kind of weird and unpleasant. I liked seeing Sam Jaffe in it, though.

Amazingly, still one of the best Lovecraft adaptations. Not so good, but fabulously dated and fun to watch.

All falls apart when the tentacled beast is introduced (full of shitty editing and cheesy colour effects to hide it from camera view, presumably for budget reasons) but for first two-thirds, dreamy, erotic and bizarre occult horror at its best. I'm easily pleased with it comes to anything with smoke, sex dreams, weird furniture and rituals so I was in awe. Dean Stockwell is one oddly sexy creep, I feel you Sandra Dee. I'd keep drinking his drugged tea too.

I'd give it a 75 for the first half, but then it gets boring, and just falls apart toward the end. Ed Begley is great though, and Dean Stockwell is appealingly creepy. Worth a watch, just bring a book.

Doesn't really capture the essence of Lovecraft at all, but endearingly insane in its own right.

mildly amusing but the ending is a complete let down.

Scary in parts, but mostly just silly.

The first two thirds of this is what makes cinema special when adapting some one like Lovecraft. So bizarre.

Man, the original story could pretty easily be adapted to a movie on a fairly low budget. You'd only really need a couple creature effects, and the creatures wouldn't have to move very much. Instead we get to waste time on psychedelic dream sequences and a generic villain who wants to perform human sacrifice just because he's evil I guess. The one highlight is a fight scene almost as silly as the one in They Live. I was expecting something more exploitative from a Roger Corman production.

Only interesting for Lovecraft fans, and even then it's a bit of a chore to sit through. Everything just feels so incredibly dated; the cheesy music, the cheesy color effects, the cheesy sets... it never creates a decent mood. A few trippy moments were interesting, but that's about it.

Psychedelic Cthulhu Mayhem!

From what I can remember - I saw it around 1970 as a teen- it was creepy schlock. Based on HP Lovecraft?