DVD Review: It!/The Shuttered Room

Straight from the dust-laden vaults of Warner Brothers comes yet another Double Feature: It! and The Shuttered Room! This double bill (along with another two-fer, Chamber Of Horrors/The Brides Of Fu Manchu) was originally released as a Best Buy Store Exclusive, prompting hoards of horror and sci-fi geeks of every shape and color to pick up as many as they could to sell on eBay.

But selling time was limited for those eBay Power Sellers, as the folks at Warner Home Video realized that people were rarin’-and-a-willin’ to gobble these Gothic ditties up (especially after taking a peek at Best Buy’s tallies on their previously released Sci/Fi Double Features), and so these new pairings were released to the general public shortly after they hit Best Buy shelves.

Now, I’m a lover of British Horror flicks from the '60s, and will pick up just about anything starring Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing that was produced by either Hammer Films or Amicus Productions. Unfortunately, with It! and The Shuttered Room, we are at long last offered up some scientific proof that not every horror film from Great Britain is good…

The Shuttered Room (1967) - Directed by David Greene; Not rated / 100 minutes. Although it is listed as the secondary feature on the artwork (and the title), The Shuttered Room is the first film in this set. The tale, which is taken from a book by August Derleth and H.P. Lovecraft, is loosely taken at best, while the movie itself is unfathomably slow and uninteresting. And no, that’s not my age talking, either — I realize that an entire generation was scared shitless from watching this movie on late night TV back in the '70s and I can see their various reasons for being scared (the movie does have the odd bit of atmosphere and the occasional memorable scary segment here and there) — but honestly, the movie has little to offer than that.

Unless you count the sight of a young Carol Lynley in her undies “nothing.” Or the scene-stealing Oliver Reed (faking a Yankee accent as best he can) as a yokel with an unhealthy hankerin’ for his distant cousin! And what of the iron-clad irony of watching the top-billed American actor Gig Young joking that he’s going to leave his new wife for dead in a ditch (Young did in fact kill his last wife shortly after they married before turning the gun on himself in 1978)? “Nothing?” Surely not!

Article Author: Luigi Bastardo

Luigi Bastardo is the disgruntled alter-ego of Adam Becvar, a thirtysomething lad from Northern California who has watched so many weird movies since the tender age of 3 that a conventional life is out of the question. …

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